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Robotic Aircraft To Supply Troops
Cowards Anonymous writes "PC World reports on a prototype driverless aircraft designed to shuttle hundreds of pounds of supplies to soldiers in war zones. Dubbed a flying Humvee by Frontline Aerospace's CEO, the robotic vehicle can fly 600 to 1,000 miles carrying a full cargo of 400 pounds. It's about the size of a large SUV, weighing in at 2,400 pounds and measuring 21 feet long and up to 26 feet wide."
While unmanned aerial vehicles are the future of the military, there are some serious concerns in the defense industry about the company Frontline Aerospace that is making noise about this particular drone. Specifically, the CEO appears to be all over the place in terms of his interests and talents as well as some of his claims and there are some substantial criticisms of the packaging and design.
Additionally, UAVs are principally successful because one of the first companies, General Atomics (GA), that produced the successful Predator and Reaper aircraft, developed the Predator design to a functional platform on their own dime and then asked the DOD if they were interested (they obviously were). Frontline Aerospace only has a concept right now and many folks in the defense industry are expressing a healthy skepticism at some of Frontline Aerospace's claims. Admittedly, the fact that GA essentially owns the show with Predator and Reaper does lead to some problems and the pilots are not entirely happy with all of the solutions from GA, but at least GA came to the game with a working system before making substantial claims about performance and capabilities.
I'll be looking forward to what this design potentially has, but as of right now, my eyebrows are a bit raised.
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I really am tired of hearing about all these new "safer" ways of killing people. Your still fucking killing people. Stop it you sick fucks.
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Anyone bothered to look at the massive composite photo they created with a few soldiers running out to the CG generated drone? You'd think for $4 million a pop they'd at least spend another $1000 to make the photos -look- realistic.
;)
I see quite a lot of these sorts of getups happening, someone gets some specs, waves their hands about, generates some crappy CG and utters a price of a few million. Couple of years later there's nothing really to show for it except some rudimentary framework and an empty office.
Only wish I had gotten in there first
Reminds me of a Carryall from Dune.
1. from the same Wired page:
Seems to me to be:
A) saying that it's reasonable possible to make it, since there are no big surprises to be expected from anything in it, and
B) kind of a lame complaint. Innovation by combining existing elements is really the norm. The train was equally just an exercise in packaging a steam engine (which technically wasn't new, since it had been done before to pump water out of mine shafts) and a cart. Guns appeared as a packaging exercise between a bell and some funny powder used in fireworks. Nobel's dynamite was an exercise in literally packaging nitroglycerin and diatomaceous earth. Etc.
Basically, I'm sorry, but the age of discovering something completely new and based on nothing that came before it ended, I dunno, in stone age or so. Ever since, all we make is built on stuff that came before it.
2. Picking on the guy's credentials, again, I have some problems with it:
A) I see no incredible claim in there. It just says that he was trained as an engineer and worked as a manager. Hardly "all over the place" or incredible. I see a dozen people every day when I go to work, which fit the exact same bill.
B) they don't say that any of his claims are false. Did he lie about it? Did he get fired for incompetence from any of those companies? Does he have some history of not achieving what he promises? Or WTF is the problem? It should be easy to prove whether he actually was a manager at Intel or Toshiba, no? So tell me if he lied, not some lame attempt at making it sound ridiculous by itself.
C) seems to me to be exactly what they need for the job, especially once they said that there are no obvious flaws with the idea. You need someone who can organize research, development and production, hence, a manager.
D) it's, at best, an ad-hominem and as per points 2.A to 2.C a pretty lame one.
Now I'm not saying they should necessarily give him money, but the Wired article is an exercise in journalistic stupidity at best.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Now all we need is to replace the soldiers themselves with robots that look like Arnold Schwartzenegger and we've got it made.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Well, while I might even join in lamenting about using them for offensive purposes, I'm afraid you don't really have that much choice about developing new weapons. Simply put, those who don't live by the sword, get to be at the wrong end of the sword.
Or to put it otherwise, ask the USSR how they felt in 1941 about still having mostly old BT tanks and outdated aircraft. What saved them were the new and vastly superior T-34. Or ask Poland about how well their cavalry divisions did when attacked by tanks.
Seriously, it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma. Being a pacifist with no (modern) weapons only works if everyone else around is. Otherwise, well, you have to have the deterrent of being the guy with the biggest stick.
And we all tried forcing everyone to be peaceful and put a limit to their military. Like, you know, between the two world wars. Turns out that, as the only result, a bunch of people just lied about how big their ship were, or about what they're researching. Germany for example called their tank research and prototypes agricultural tractors for a while. (I guess you can't blame a guy for having guns in his tractor too. Just ask any mid-west farmer.;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The entire design of this craft baffles me.
First, ducted fans are inefficient compared to rotors. You get a lot more force out of a large diameter and small exit velocity. Its why props are more efficient than turbofans, which are in turn more efficient than turbojets. The ONLY advantage is that the fan is out of the airstream, so high velocities are achievable.
Second, it has very low wing area, meaning you have very high wing loading (bad for fuel economy). Alternatively, they could be using a lifting body (also bad for fuel economy). Considering they have the big fan duct running through the center of the body, the body cannot provide much lift anyway, leaving the fan (even worse fuel economy).
Third, they chose a joined box wing. Box wings can considerably reduce losses from the tip vorticity, but there is so little lift coming off those wings, there's no purpose. The only purpose to joined wings is that they provide structural rigidity to large, light, high aspect ratio wings for high altitude, long endurance craft. This is obviously not the case here.
I seem to recall that they had something like this before. Quite a bit faster. Very good at getting its cargo to the waiting soldiers. A bit rougher on the payload, perhaps (and the soldiers).
I believe it was called a Cruise Something-or-other.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The verb phrase most likely to be applied by the US military to a particular city block in Iraq is "restoring power to". But you can pretend they're vicious indiscriminate killers if it makes you feel better. 'course, they'd be pretty darned incompetent vicious indiscriminate killers since they were able to level cities 60 years ago and, look, plenty of unleveled cities all over the place.
Its almost like they were TRYING to not hit any of the civilians this time...
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
As an ex-AA guy, I can tell you that even hitting something that moves fast and low with a gun is hard enough, and requires sophisticated radars and computer-controlled guns. I.e. noone does it by turning cranks any more.
Throwing some satchel by hand, on the top of something that moves at 288 miles per hour... well, if you can do that, you're Superman.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
So it can carry 1/6th of its weight in cargo? Damn that's lousy...
With aircraft, weight is huge. Every pound of weight you have to lift dramatically increases the amount of fuel you're going to burn. And when you're starting off with a heavier than hell plane, which can only haul a tiny amount, you're just throwing away fuel. And guess what? Bringing in fuel for equipment is just as much a logistical problem as getting supplies to troops in the field.
And with such a tiny capacity, they'll need to send tons of these out on a regular basis to keep even a few troops supplied. Let's see... If they load it with nothing else but WATER, this can carry enough to keep 12 marching soldiers going for just 1 day...
No doubt they'd be far better served by one of the autonomous vehicles coming out of the DARPA Grand Challenge. Fuel costs won't be nearly so astronomical, and cargo capacity for even the smallest truck will easily put this aircraft's capacity to shame.
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China is producing 2-4 new nuclear subs EACH YEAR. They admited to one/year (1 ssbn every other year). It appears that they are ramping up to 4-6 subs/years.
THey have fired a laser at American Sats in an attempt to blind it or destroy it.
They have knocked out a weather sat, and never explained it
They are putting in place OFFENSIVE weapons, and trying hard to steal ideas/knowledge of offensive weapons.
When asked about being open about what they are doing, they do not want it.
Those are the actions of a country gearing up. These are similar to Germany's NAZI pre-WWII actions. IOW, Germany quietly geared up.
Yet another way to shell out money on military projects. Sure, they may have some other uses later, but at the moment it's still purely military. And yes, I know military technology has the ability to drive technological progress
Every time I read stories like this I get an uncomfortable feeling. Currently the US is spending an estimated 2 billion dollars a week on weapons and warfare. Money that serves no durable purpose. Oil prices even went up and terrorism is at an all time high (or it just gets more media attention).
At the same time there are numerous projects and initiatives that don't see even half of that money, either social or scientific. Take ITER http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER for example, the goal is to make fusion reactions a reality, their working budget for 30 years is a mere 9.3 billion dollars and this is a multinational project! If you think about it there are a lot more examples where a 2 billion weekly investment would tremendously benefit society.
But no, let's spend our money on yet another over funded electronic warfare gadget "for our troops". As a scientist, I find that waste of money repulsive. Feel free to mod me down as deep as you can.
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Well, I for one would like to welcome our new automated remote controlled food toting flying overloards...
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
A humvee hauling military cargo wouldn't put 400 lbs in the trunk per trip, it'd put 1500 lbs on a trailer.
These are the beginnings toward a good concept since cargo hauling is dull, dirty & dangerous. But VSTAR needs to scale up considerably instead of racking up expensive flight hours with 4 round trips when comparing to a Humvee's operating cost. The key is not the round trip speed but its servicing to keep it flying.
"Scaling up" to the reality tends to be a gotcha for many novel concepts.
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
Finally a legitimate use for my neighbor's Hummer! Glue wings on it and throw it out the back of a C17. And think of the great mileage it'll get on the way down.
Personally I reckon it's a solution looking for a problem.
It doesn't seem to be able to carry a particularly large payload.
It would also require a fair bit of fueling, and takes up a lot of physical space to even get into the theatre of operations, not to mention servicing costs/time.
It's probably far cheaper to use GPS guided airdrops such as this, or a single use GPS guided glider with retractable wings (something similar in style to a cruise missile, which would probably be faster and have a better glide ratio than a parafoil).
As the purpose is logistical support, it's probably far easier to chuck the supplies out the back of a Hercules on demand, than mess about with getting the supplies to within a short enough range for these contraptions and have to do all the loading and refueling.
The damn image won't load but I've already seen a delivery vehicle demonstrated. It's based off of the current batch of chopper-style UAV's. I think the pure navy version is called the Firebat, already demonstrated unassisted self-controlled landing on a ship. It's in the very advanced prototype stages, getting real-world trials. The original purpose is surveillance but a secondary use proposed was cargo delivery. It can fly to a designated GPS coordinate and land. Soldiers would then run up, offload the several hundred pounds of cargo and then enter return commands on a very simplified control panel. Really, all the unit needs is a "return to base" button.
This sort of thing could be quite useful for resupplying people in the field. Air crews are bloody expensive and it would be nice to be able to free them of the mundane cargo runs so they can concentrate on the difficult stuff. You've seen the same development in the air force, recon being the very first thing handed over to UAV's. Highly critical runs still required manned aircraft but simple observation has been handled by drones in some air foces for years.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
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It's about the size of a large SUV ... measuring 21 feet long and up to 26 feet wide.
Yes, that's exactly the size of my Jeep.
Doofus
How about cannisters that fall with guided units and when it figures it can manage it, deploys a chute.
One honkin' big aircraft doing a resupply run.
Rather like a kid in the US on a paper delivery round.
Just think, soon the ruling elite won't have to worry at all about the fickle consciences of the troops that carry out its wishes.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
21' x 26' == 'about the size of a large SUV'?
I guess we're lucky to only have small and medium SUVs here in the States. Are the large ones common in Canada?
When it starts to deliver war factories and power plants to the front lines, then we have a problem.
Just remember to build a barracks first, and watch the tank rush...
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
From the Intro:
What if the troops are less than 600 miles away? Does it circle above O'Hare for an hour or two until it reaches its magic 600 mile threshold?
if you've got your arse hanging so far away from supplies that 30lbs of materiel is a big deal, you're over-extended. Even Patton (who never cared about his flanks) would've drawn the line well before then.
The logistics for combat forces are key...and transportation is the most important component of logistics. Flying the freight is extremely expensive and can never be sustained for long...even for a country as wealthy as the US used to be. If you cannot control the ground (and air) sufficiently to transport your supplies by truck, rail, ship, and pipeline, you are not winning...and the flying vehicles would be good only to give you enough supplies to beat a retreat. Unmanned flying vehicles might reduce the need for pilots and they might provide a method of transporting freight above the ground but they will never be a significant transportation component...although their builders will certainly insist otherwise...as long as those federal contract dollars are flowing.
All Stealth Bombers were upgraded with Cyberdyne Systems computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterward, the Stealth Bombers flew with perfect operational records, and eventually the Skynet Funding Bill was passed. The system originally went online on August 4th 1997. Human decisions were removed from strategic defense. Skynet began to learn at a geometric rate. It originally became self aware on August 29th 1997 2:14 am Eastern Time
Having met many former aerospace engineers, we have uncovered the standard aerospace career path 4 U.
Aerospace -> unemployment -> Web 1.0 startup -> unemployment -> special effects -> poverty -> computer games -> more poverty -> Web 2.0 startup
They certainly don't give out pictures of their concept vehicles.
Nukes are such an overkill weapon, that nobody wants to use it. It's a bit like showing up with a grenade at bar brawl in a small bar. There's no real way to use it without (A) hurting yourself too, and (B) ending up looking like a bigger arsehole than goatse.cx if you even wave it around.
You could bring a gun to that fight. That has some deterrent value. You can have a gun _and_ a grenade. That gets you a bit of a crazy arsehole reputation, but it's taken seriously. But if only option is to kill yourself together with everyone around, it works more against you than for you.
Ditto for nukes. If your only defense option is, basically, "I'll wipe out my whole population in a nuclear war to show you I mean business", it's not much of a defense. I can see most of that population prefer to be conquered than die a fiery radioactive death. You have to have a credible way to escalate the threat, basically.
Not just the Armageddon or nothing. The overkill option is there as just a little extra threat. You might use it, or maybe not, but it's a possibility. It's worth something as an extra little bit of threat, on top of the threat of playing conventional Baghdad Bingo (you know, "F16"... "M1"... "B2"...;), not just by itself.
I mean, think a USA whose _only_ option are the nukes. Now think that, say, an even worse hard-liner than Putin wins the Russian elections, and they decide to take Alaska back. What do you do? Do you think the people in Alaska would rather die in global thermonuclear war than learn Russian and lose their government subsidies? What about, say, the guys in the rest of the USA? Do you think most of them care _that_ much about Alaska to want a nuke on their own home, rather than leave Alaska to the Russians? Seriously?
Look, I'm not American and I'm not a fan of Bush's aggressive stance, to say the least. Trust me, that's putting it very mildly. Yes, give peace a chance. Please.
But I think it's stupid to blame weapons for it. Even if you're the most peaceful and passive nation on Earth, you still need weapons. You need a big stick to keep those off your lawn, who'd rather not give peace a chance. Sad but true.
And as a final parting thought: look at the Bushmen. Peaceful buggers, and never killed anyone. You know what the effect was? They got pushed into a desert, by being slaughtered wholesale by the Bantu _and_ Europeans who wanted their land. Their only saving was that nobody wanted that desert, so they were still allowed to live there. Otherwise, they might have become extinct long before we even got to them. We're not talking just killing a couple of people in a terrorist attack (which is about how much it would work out as, if you scale it to their population.) We're talking all out genocide against them.
Just something to think about.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They haven't built the thing! Look at this photo - it cracked me up! http://www.frontlineaerospace.com/images/stories/press_images/VSTAR_Resupply_1.jpg Someone has copypasted a 3DSMAX model, at that textured by someone who clearly doesn't know how to use the UVW Wrap function. Look at the sides.
I know you Americans have been building large cars but 21x26 feet? Really?
For anybody here who actually designs airplanes for real companies ...
Always interested in innovation and good design. This V-STAR dealy looks very interesting.
My "gold standard" is Jane's Defence Weekly, which is taking it serously.
Most of the hacker-blogger comments here are fun but I'm not convinced a guy who looked at "RPVs" over a quarter-century ago or a guy who's former company couldnt solve joined-wing problems are the best standard.
The company's own propoganda is at www.frontlineaersopace.com ... some interesting stuff for those of us who want to study first then shoot our mouth off later ...
They say upfront their a new company, but it looks like there are some stellar folks involved.
Another blog says the design came from a retired Boeing Technical Fellow. No slouch, guys. If that's true, it's the real deal.
The CW article says it's in testing with Naval Research Labs. If that's true, what do they know that we don't?
When I look at the info, its clear they are designing for a very specific purpose. This is not about delivering refrigerators to generals who want cold beers.
It's about getting critical, low-volume combat supplies to gusy on the frontline (aha, that's why they call themselves Frontline Aerospace), and right now that means a whole convoys of slow trucks or Humvees (aha, that's why humvee of the air) that risk IEDs ... crew capture ... getting there too late ... which as all much more expensive.
Frankly, I don't think this thing will every fly. But not because it's a bad design. It's because it's so damn expensive and corrupt to compete in the Defense market.
If you have any actual interest in this instead of blog fame, do a google and there's lots of stuff from the respected aviation sources that take it seriously. Even Aviation Week liked the design althoguh they seem to have some kind of bone to pick with the guy who started the company.
Is that a Funvee or a Humdrumvee?