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New Draganflyer Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
John Jorsett writes "I've long lusted for the Draganflyer indoor-outdoor radio-controlled helicopter, but now I've got a new object of desire. Since seeing it flown on The History Channel's 'Tactical to Practical' show last September, I've been waiting for the Draganflyer Predator, modeled on the military aircraft of the same name. Electrically powered, the $750 Draganflyer Predator can be equipped with video cameras and a GPS receiver to carry out radio-controlled or pre-programmed self-guided surveillance missions of up to 20 miles range, the company claims. Time to buy my own UAV and find out what's really going on over there in Area 51."
As if they won't shoot THAT down, too. :)
You are not the customer.
it'll be interesting to see if the government will impose some restrictions on such device, so that it can't be used for anything threating the homeland.
more importantly, can this Predator still be controlled if someone's using a jammer of some sort?
It would be pretty cool to chase my brother around the house with that three-pronged flying silver ball from phantasm. Someone ought to start making those (without the drill of course). Every kid will want one.
All they're doing there is building spy planes, UFOs and talking to aliens and shit. Boring stuff.
.
On the other hand there's this sunbathing little cutie next door. .
KFG
I'll bet they's toast your flying machine pretty quickly if you sent it into their airspace ...
...
Be fun to try, though.
Oh, yeah, have a realtime video link back to your base - I doubt if you'd get your video camera back. In fact, I doubt you'd really want to ask for it
Heck with area 51. I want to find out what's going on over at the Playboy mansion. :)
Oh please, like they don't already have a backdoor in the thing to watch you.
The closest distance between two points is a tunnel.
- Lyndon Johnson
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Time to buy my own UAV and find out what's really going on over there in Area 51
Hello John, I was glad to read your Slashdot article. Now, can you hear the knock on your door? Can you see the black vans with the engine running in the street? well, rejoice: you'll get to see a classified site very soon, and even visit it with a couple of muscular new friends, without even having to buy a UAV. I hope you'll enjoy your trip!
Regards,
-- J. Ashcroft (johnny_the_poo@dhs.gov)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So what is stopping someone from using this like a real predator and strapping something not so nice to it like a small bomb or gun. Since it can fly autonomously it looks like they just made a cheap over the counter missile platform. Just fly around a building transmitting real time images till your target emerges from the building and....boom!
A Remote Threat
This past June, quoting a German intelligence official, the Reuters news agency reported that al Qaeda might be planning to attack passenger aircraft using model airplanes. Some have dismissed this threat as unlikely or fanciful, but other terrorism experts foresee terrorist groups' using remote-control planes, boats, helicopters, and other delivery devices to attack people and sites without sacrificing any of their members.
Is the time ripe for such attacks? With the Western world hardening its defenses after 9-11, terrorists will be looking for creative ways to get past security, says Louis R. Mizell, a private security expert and ex-U.S. intelligence officer.
Mizell, who gathers data on security and terrorist incidents, says precedent for such attacks exists. He has recorded 43 cases involving 14 terrorist groups in which remote-control delivery systems were "either threatened, developed, or actually utilized." Only last year it was reported, for example, that Osama bin Laden considered using remote-control airplanes packed with explosives to kill President George W. Bush and other heads of state at the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy. In 1995, reports indicated that Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese terrorist group that attacked the Tokyo subway with sarin gas, planned to use remote-control helicopters to spray dangerous chemicals from the air. The helicopters crashed during testing. In the 1980s, the Basque separatist group ETA tried to blow up a Spanish patrol ship using a four-foot remote-control boat packed with explosives.
The U.S. military is devoting considerable resources to its own remote-control delivery systems. For example, engineers are working on enhancing pilotless "drones" to make them effective means of attack without putting a flight crew at risk.
Critics have downplayed this threat because of the relatively small payloads that such devices can deliver. But some remote-control devices on the market can hold large amounts of explosives. A Mississippi company called Bergen R/C Helicopters, for example, advertises over the Internet a five-foot-long remote-control helicopter, costing $4,000, that can carry a 20 kg (44 lb) payload for 30 minutes without needing to refuel. Yamaha Motor Co. markets over the Internet a remote-control helicopter with a 20 kg payload as a pilotless crop duster. And, Mizell points out, terrorists could use many vehicles with smaller payloads en masse to create the same effect.
Other experts agree that the threat is legitimate. "Do you want to know if this is a real threat?" asks Gary Richter, a systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories who evaluates the goals and capabilities of terrorist groups. "The answer is an unequivocal yes."
Robert Blitzer, a former chief of the Domestic Terrorism/Counterterrorism Planning Section in the FBI's National Security Division, said he hadn't personally encountered that threat while with the FBI but conceded that it was viable. "I wouldn't be at all surprised that al Qaeda would have the wherewithal to do something like that," Blitzer says.
"Remote-control vehicles of various sorts do have to be considered," agrees RAND analyst Brian Jenkins, "but they have a limited spectrum in terms of utility." He points out that remote-control bombs "would barely dent a skyscraper" and wouldn't compromise the dome of a nuclear reactor. Jenkins adds that remote-control delivery devices would be unnecessary in situations where terrorists could simply plant a bomb and walk away--in Times Square, for example.
But Mizell sees a much broader scope of potential applications, such as boat attacks on maritime vessels and littoral utilities, as well as plane, helicopter, or car attacks on targeted VIPs' vehicles. "Real-life analogous situations show us what could be done," he says. For example, in 1998, a radio-control model airplane forced the pilot of a DC-9 to change his approach to Dulles International Airport.
source
MoFscker
You want Area 6413.
If you were to place a windows based OS on it, could you get away with flying it over a classified area? You could always claim there was a programming glitch, and since it was a classified area, you didn't have a phone number to call them, so you decided to just watch the video instead.
I mean, we all know how error prone programs are when they are still in alpha stage anyway, right? It's not like you can be faulted for testing your prototype to find all the bugs in it and having it "accidently" go where it's not supposed to, right?
>:)
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
I can feel myself wasting money just reading that site.
I should step outside before I find my wallet.
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-- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
I just transfered from the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and while there my Microprocessor Systems Professor who took me in shared with me information of the UAV project that he was starting. The following was the information about the UAV he planned: -It will be small, the craft being a helicopter -It would be cheap. $15k ($7k - Helicopter, $8k Electronics) -Price to public would be $50k-$75k -It would be easy to fly & user friendly. Requiring NO pilot training. Would be similar to flying a video game airplane. -Allowing for single-user operation. With high level command structure. -Object-oriented design with much more robust software to ensure it won't fail like the Predator in combat. -Includes GPS & Video for non-combat survillance work. Most people in the Aviation field laughed at him after making most of these statements including the price. Unfortunately, they don't understand his background and full knowledge of the field. After being a Microprocessor Engineer for Texas Instruments and Intel he took a liking to flying and started an aviation business for UAV flight control system in 1994. His knowledge and abilities will be make it able for him to help the students of Embry-Riddle create the UAV despite the many people who continue to laugh in his face!
If I remember right having a GPS on board could make this product considered as guilded missile.
Don't be suprised if someone wearing dark glasses and jack boots showing up ready to give you a rectal exam.
My father got into building and flying RC aircraft - he even became the president of his local RC flying organization. It is a cool hobby to play with - but there's two things you have to expect.
One: You are going to crash and damage your toys. Be prepared for the emotional effects this may have. Having a camera up front is a nice way to tie controls in with movement, certainly nicer than the fly-by-watching indirect controls my dad had to use - but the dynamics of RC scale speed Vs. large scale wind means that you are still going to have to contend with hard landings and rapid unexpected direction changes. Always stay clear of ANY obstacles, never fly around people or property, and come prepared to climb trees to retrieve your toy.
Two: This is NOT a cheap hobby. In terms of time and resources, the $750 is just the tip of the iceburg in terms of the resources you are going to spend to maintain this little aircraft if you plan on flying it regularly. You'll need a little workshop, epoxies and other wear-and-tear repair equipment, scraps of all kinds to repair larger issues, spark plugs, oils and other maintenence tools depending on engine, carrying equipment, etc., etc. You've got to be fairly finantially devoted to keep this hobby up - and I'm not even mentioning the costs of a serious crash.
It is a hobby you can be proud of in your accoplishments - but it's also one you have to take great care with, and be ready for literally crushing emotions when gravity takes its toll.
Ryan Fenton
Engage geek drool mode - affordable uber geek toys. At current exchange rates the camera model is only 400GBP. For any old R/C aircraft that's pretty good - for a self controlled one complete with camera that's goddamn amazing :D
It's just a shame I don't actually own 400
It looks like an additional 5 grand for the 2028 model. Now they might offer a package deal but it still isn't going to be cheap.
if you really wanted to get it done, train a bird to carry a camera and then fly it over the base. any radar signature outside of a bird would probably trigger a big response and a triangulation of any radio signals in the surrounding area. of course being paranoid enough to annex the mountaintops around the base means that they probably auto eyeball every object in local space.
"Time to buy my own UAV and find out what's really going on over there in Area 51."
You could get one to the top of Tikaboo Peak and launch it, no problem. They may or may not catch the model, but with the sensors they have all over around the area, they'd definitely catch you, both trudging around on the ground and the radio transmitter you'd be using. The same, though less stringent, warning would go for using one to view any sensitive area. The end result would be going to jail, and could well end up with the goobermint trying to make RC aircraft illegal, or at least heavily licensed, under PATRIOT II. Seriously.
They've already been hard at work trying to outlaw model rockets engines. They're under the impression these can be taken apart and used to make a bomb. Technically, they're correct, but it'd be far easier and cheaper to get shotgun shell reloading material and make it from that. Rocket engine propellant is designed to burn at a certain speed, not as fast as possible, and so makes a lousy explosive. That's not stopping them.
The ATF tried asking model rocket engine manufacturers to supply them with some engines for testing. All refused. So they came up with a court order, forcing one of the manufacturers to supply some engines. They complied.
ATF rented a van and set out to test these engines. They got some rockets, went out to a remote area, and started launching them. Out of the back of the van. Which contained the rest of the engines. The rest of the engines caught fire. The rented van burned to the ground. (Details, and confirmation of same by the owner of the company forced to supply the engines, available from Google Groups usenet archive for newsgroup rec.models.rockets).
They were enjoying their newfound freedom to "protect" at all costs way too much before. Now they're also humiliated, so they're tryng all the harder. If someone were to take some of the widely available still- or movie-camera carrying rockets and launch those from Tikaboo Peak, there's no doubt in my mind "America's 87th Most Popular Hobby" would be grounded without even the comfort of having lost out in a congressional vote.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
If you want to see something really cool, check out AeroSonde, an ultra-long-range model airplane.
I have fantasized about loading up a model with flyers and then leafletting north korea or some other freedom-of-information deprived hole.
Its about 70g for a single round of SPAS12/Benelli/M203 ammunition. (A 12 guage shell).
:D
Now, when you consider the autopilot for the predator only weighs 10g, that 70g shell looks pretty heavy. - The predators battery is probably 70g so you'd probably be hard pushed to balance/make it fly.
Then there's the issue of how to trigger, rather than just deliver the shell. You'd need some sort of trigger.
Now a complete shotgun mechanism would weight a hell of a lot (probably as much as the predator) so you'd need something else - probably 1 of three options:
1) A mechanical pin trigger which is activated by a servo. Drawbacks: can't be fired remotely so very inaccurate.
2) Same as above but the craft flies to a GPS point then dives in to strike the ground (and a firing pin). Drawbacks: Hard to target with GPS and minimal shot-dispersal on the ground.
3) An electronic (Battery and filament) trigger but you still can't target remotely and a shell fired without a (heavy) barrel is very inefective.
All of the above assume that you'd want to be out of radio range (hence retaliation range).
Your best option would just be to fit it with a sharp point and try to hit someone in the head with it (for all the luck you'd have)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.