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Invisible Unmanned Aircraft
MattSparkes writes, "A Minnesota company, VeraTech, has applied for a patent on an unmanned drone that is nearly invisible to the naked eye. The Phantom Sentinel takes advantage of the phenomenon where fast moving objects appear as only a blur, so it fades out of view once it speeds up. This is achieved by rotating the entire craft. The center of gravity is in open air between two of the blade-like wings. There are some videos of a prototype in action on the VeraTech site." The company says you could get usable video of the terrain by processing the images from a spinning camera. One version of the drone is small enough to launch by throwing it like a boomerang. And it folds for travel.
Is that really invisible? It looked like they just changed the focus of the camera. Plus, I really wouldn't want to be the pilot. Holy bed spins. Er, just kidding, but it really didn't look too invisible.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
The site has a photo of two kids in flea market knockoff BDUs. One is wearing set of, probably broken, VR goggles and the other has $7.99 Tasco folding binoculars around his neck.
Somehow I get the feeling these people are not going to impress anyone in US military procurement enough to get much more than laughed at.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
It would take another incredible invention to get usable photos from this thing, photos with any decent resolution. Seems like a fun toy, but how could a camera composite the images?
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Problem: new drone design rotates so quick the human eye can't see it.
Solution: strobing LCD glasses.
Once again a $50M defense project defeated by $30 worth of hardware.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Have a look at the site. The first two demo videos blur the craft out towards the end of the clip to give the impression of being invisible. I reality, the craft is not that invisible - it certainly has a center of rotation that is clearly visible, and in many ways it looks like a very large boomerang.
On of the largest drawbacks I can see is that the drone does spin around, and around and around. It will be very difficult to fit a useful payload on a craft like this. It's design is such that the cargo room for anything but the operational parts is severly limited. I might add, how does one determine the direction of travel when one's compass is constantly spinning around?
Also the amount of post processing needed to create a useful video feed from such a craft makes it almost impractical for use. Not to mention that other detection systems (IR comes to mind) would be largely incompatible with the operation of this machine.
Finally, the web site has clearly been created by the guy in the videos. It's also clear that he's completely infatuated with intellectual property. I think his craft is interesting, but in a novelty sort of way.
And that reason is called "adblock".
Your response is both factually incorrect and unimaginative.
There are a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles in the US armed forces that serve a variety of missions. Surely you've heard of the UAV launched from Iowa class battleships as a targeting / BDA unit, that an Iraqi tried to surrender to ? (IIRC, this one was a "Predator").
In any case, there is probably a role for a unit-deployable, short range, low altatitude, small form factor, long "hang time" (ability to stay airborne in a localized area for extended time) UAV. The scenrio here is that a small company of men and one or two armored vehicles needs to enter a town with an unknown enemy force deployment. On the outskirts of town, they unpack their suit-case sized UAV, start its engines, and hand-launch it into the sky. The trained operator (for now) watches the real time video feed on their laptop. The UAV gives the troops an aerial view of the town - they can map out block or unblocked streets/alleys.. they can spot rooftop snipers.. they can get early warnings of people spilling out of buildings in other parts of the town.
The key here is distributed, localized intelligence gathering that is deployed and consumed by field units.. it is more pertinent and easier (and faster!) to act on then something more full size where intel goes back to an Air conditioned trailer hundreds of miles away from the theater of operation, and intel goes up and down the chain of command.
small-unit sized deployable semi-autonomous robots are a cutting edge application of commodity hardware and software. You need something cheap, field proof, and easy for lower level enlisted men to launch, operate, and recover. The smarter the software, the less of a burden it is on the operator(s), and the more value it provides. Given the changing nature of combat (trained army goes through town hoping to not get ambushed), small-scale UAVs are absolutely worth persuing.
Never mind that they're dirt cheap (as military hardware goes) - some prototypes are little more than the RC model aircraft you see at hobbyist stores with some cameras, radio control equipment, and a small embedded device.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
It's more of a question of the best tool for the job, IMO... The micro UAV's actually work quite well for Special Warfare teams, where the problems are more portability, quick launch, and short recon runs. You're absolutely right that the Predator drones are better for conventional warfare, but I think this was created to address a different set of requirements, and should do rather well from what I've seen (or not seen, as the case may be).
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.