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First Robotic Drone Squadron Deployed
coondoggie writes with a link to a Network World blog post on the world's first unmanned attack squadron. The US is deploying a full squadron of combat drones to Iraq this week. These armed and remotely controlled robots can be manipulated from on the ground in the field, or via satellite from thousands of miles away. "The MQ-9 Reaper is the Air Force's first hunter-killer unmanned aircraft. It is the big brother to the highly successful and sometimes controversial Predator aircraft, which General Atomics said this week had flown over 300,000 flight hours, with over 80% of that time spent in combat. The company said Predator series aircraft have flown an average of 8,200 hours per month over the past six months while maintaining the highest operational readiness rates in the U.S. military aircraft inventory. The MQ-9 Reaper is twice as fast as the Predator - it has a 900-horsepower turbo-prop engine, compared to the 119-horsepower Predator engine - and can carry far more ordnance - 14 Hellfire missiles as opposed to two."
Continuing the Great American tradition of testing new weaponry on the battle-field. I wonder how many people will be unintenionally harmed in this experiment, this time.
It's no wonder most humans are terrified of America right now.. and that includes many Americans themselves: they might agree however, that it's better than testing on your own people.
yup. us navy has developed the mq-8 fire scout, and its not being used by bunch of branches of us forces. its designed to provide recon, and battlefield awareness to ground forces. im sure that there are others, but from what i remember, the marines and the army have tiny uavs (backpack size) that they can launch by throwing. they got little cameras on them, and can stream video. apparently the guys on the ground love this stuff.
Communication is done using MILSAT's ultra-high-frequency burst communications I'm assuming. Extremely hard to both jam and detect who is transmitting when the transmitting is done in hostile areas.
Robots don't necessarily need to have any type of autonomy. You can have a robotic arm that requires human control, for example. You can have robotic industrial machines that just repeat the same motions in response to specific input switches. I don't know of any robots that have autonomy to do anything that they're not specifically built to do.
If anyone is interested, learn to program in ladder logic, and you'll understand how industrial machines and robots operate.
1950's actually. It was the atomic energy division of General Dynamics and was spun off in 1955.
1) Why is there what appears to be a cockpit?
0 06915126462.aspx for a nice view of it.
Because you'd better cover the big satellite dish below it.
2) Why is the prop on the back?
To give a clear view in front so it can see where it is going. Also it gives you space in the nose of the plane since the engine is also in the back.
3) What is with the crazy tail wings and fins on the back? They seem to go in all directions.
It's a V-tail. It's lighter and more aerodynamic than a normal tail. Also it is less visable for radar. But it's more complex to control which isn't an issue for a computer controlled plane.
4) Is that a camera in the front? Why is it not recessed for aerodynamics?
Because that would obstruct its field of vision. The camera can pan and tilt. See http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/add/2
Here's the details on the MQ-8: http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app2/q-8. html
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1) comms/antenna dome (url:http://science.howstuffworks.com/predator1.ht m)
2) pusher prop planes can be more efficient (eliminate prop wash leads to less drag)
3) V-tail planes use two fins in place of three to reduce drag and weight. Can reduce radar signature in some instances. Original predator used this. But there must have been reason to flip them and add a third fin, keeping some semblance to the original (able to use existing parts and avionics?).
4) same reason camera/laser designators stick out on manned aircraft (including your local news chopper): wider field of view for the swiveling optics. Sometimes it's worth adding a bit of drag if you don't have to fly the aircraft all wonky just to see something.
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The compartment up front houses a satellite dish.
2) Why is the prop on the back?Speculations: reduces vibration, airflow turbulence, and runway debris for the camera up front.
3) What is with the crazy tail wings and fins on the back? They seem to go in all directions.Speculation: Perhaps the Y shaped stabilizers reduce blockage for the satellite dish?
4) Is that a camera in the front? Why is it not recessed for aerodynamics?I believe the camera housing encompases more than one camera (IR, visual) and a laser designator. It protrudes to enable full-field scanning out to the horizon.
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Here are your answers:
1) The bulge covers the satellite dish. The dish has to rotate and change it's elevation angle to track the satellite that it's looking at so it needs a nice big bulge to move around in.
2) The prop is in the back because it elminates the effects of prop wash over the body of the plane. A prop in front will cause the plane to yaw side to side with power changes. In the back you avoid all that. (It's in the front of manned planes so pilots won't hit it as if they have to bail out.)
3) The tail is a V-tail with a stabliazation fin on the bottom. The v-tail has been around for a while, and the plane needs a little more yaw stabliazation than a V-tail can provide.
4) The ball on the bottom of the nose is the sensor with a day-TV camera, an IR camera, an IR illuminator, and a laser designator. It's sticking out because if it was recessed you lose a lot of visiblity. At the speeds it's flying it's not too big of a drag on the plane.
And yes, the satellite link is the weak point, but only the big boys have the ability to knock out one. But we all saw from the Chinese test how messy that can be for everyone, so it's not to likely a threat.
Flying at 50,000ft (just short of 10 miles!), with a really small engine, it would probably be hard to even hear the aircraft at all, especially in any kind of Urban environment. If you can't hear the aircraft, you don't know it is there. I couldn't find any information on a radar cross section, but I could imagine that it might be hard to target from the ground with a shoulder-mounted SAM.
For those that have seen Transformers, there is a scene when the Special Ops team calls in fire support and a Predator (or what is supposed to be one) comes over the sand dunes. From what I understand that is NOT how a Predator is used. They stand off a ways and take pictures from a high altitude (25,000ft).
What I would be really interested in hearing are anecdotal accounts by soldiers/airmen who have been either supported by or used the Predator systems. Assuming, of course, that they are allowed to talk about it.
Obligatory wikipedia links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-1_Predator Predator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-9_Reaper Reaper
Even if they were using Radar guidance it looks like these drones have a small enough profile to make tracking sketchy at best to begin with.
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That doesn't seem like it would be very useful. How far can someone throw a backpack sized object, and how do they control the orientation of the cameras? Seems like you'd get a 3 second view of your immediate surroundings followed by a picture of the ground.
The backpack-sized UAVs don't actually fly by being thrown into the air (you could do that just tossing a camcorder up), they have a diesel engine and can hover around for about 15 minutes, sending footage back to the guy controlling it. See here and here for more info.
There is about a 3 second time delay. That is why they are controlled by local pilots for takeoff and landing, and after they are in the air the control is passed off to the pilots in Nevada.
Do you really think that the US military cares about abuses of power and civilian casualties, or even friendly fire deaths, if they come to light and negatively portray the services?
The US doesn't even keep a track of the number of civilians accidentally killed by its forces. Why do you think that is?
The US routinely covers up evidence and hampers investigations into actions such as media and friendly fire deaths. Want examples?
Nine British service personnel were killed in the 1991 Gulf War by A-10 pilots in a single incident, as many as died to enemy fire in the whole war, and yet the US Army refused for over 16 years to hand over footage from the aircraft of the incident, which it had claimed from day one didn't exist. Even now, it refuses to name the pilots concerned and admits that they haven't been disciplined. Read this and tell me that you still have faith in the US Army's ability to fairly investigate and discipline its personnel.
Then once you've read that, go google for Terry Lloyd and find out how he died.
Then consider the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman. What did the US Army do there? Tell the truth or cover it up? Perhaps the most prominent US soldier to ever die in action and they lied through their teeth.
And those are just a few of the many examples of the code of silence that surrounds US forces when they kill (or should I say murder?) their own, their allies or neutrals.
I find it incredible that you are naive enough to believe that such abuses would stop just because the guys doing the firing were away from the combat zone.
When it comes to criminal actions, unless it needs a convenient scapegoat, the military looks after its own. Always has, always will.
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