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

On the other hand...

[Moraelin]

On the other hand,

1. from the same Wired page:

Another issue, he warns, is that "V-STAR seems more like a packaging exercise than a true innovation and "none of the technologies is new."

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.

Not much choice, I'm afraid

[Moraelin]

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.;)

Re:Not much choice, I'm afraid

[dave1791]

In Iraq, the US military has had its greatest success when troops are out among the population and "get to know the locals". They have had their worst failures when everything is automated and remote. Unlike their political masters in the white house, they do learn. They also have to deal with a manpower shortage, so to them robotics is something they have a LOT of interest in.

Put two and two together and you get robts ferrying supplies and real live humans doing the shooting and dealing with people. That IS common sense. I'd rather see that than people ferrying supplies and robots doing the shooting.

Re:Poor Design

[Serpentine]

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. It's designed to ferry cargo to troops under fire: with ducted fans you don't have to worry about clonkin' yer rotors on the sides of buildings and the blades can given some protection from small arms. Besides, I doubt a military that sticks jet engines in its tanks cares much for fuel efficiency =P