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."

Comments

Apparently...

[ulash]

... the US is winning the war in Iraq (from TFA):

Logistics is what's winning the war in many ways in Afghanistan and Iraq If this is the whole justification for the project I am afraid someone missed a memo somewhere.

Yet another military money sink

[Wolf von Niflheim]

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.