Boeing, BAE Systems Show Off New Unmanned Planes

gilgsn writes The hydrogen-powered Phantom Eye unmanned airborne system, a demonstrator that will stay aloft at 65,000 feet for up to four days, was unveiled by Boeing today. 'Phantom Eye is powered by two 2.3-liter, four-cylinder engines that provide 150 horsepower each. It has a 150-foot wingspan, will cruise at approximately 150 knots and can carry up to a 450-pound payload.' Across the pond, BAE Systems showed off Taranis, a UAV that will test the possibility of developing the first ever autonomous, stealth Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle that would ultimately be capable of precisely striking targets at long range — even in another continent."

Comments

Re:Cost?

[somaTh]

According to Dailymail, it should be around £143 million ($214 million for those too lazy to google it yourself).

UAV ? ICBM

[B5_geek]

UAV capable of reaching inter-continental target - check
UAV payload nuclear - check
UAV 'hard to hit' and/or find - check

Ladies and Gentleman; let me present to you your new ICBM replacement (and don't worry about treaties with the Russians, these qualify as airplanes not missles, so we are clear to rebuild our stockpiles!)

Re:UAV ? ICBM

[Jeng]

The military has been moving to precision instead of magnitude, I'm sure there are plenty of warheads that could be loaded on this.

After all, the suitcase nuke is a real weapon. A nuke does not have to weigh tons to do tons of damage.

Re:UAV ? ICBM

[moogied]

Uh. No. Not even a little tiny wee bit. The issue with nuclear warfare between America and Russia is not ones capability to produce X amount of Weapon Y with a nuke on it. Its about the capability to have X fire Weapon Y and for Weapon Y to have 10 nukes. Before we started using the MIRV's it was possible to defend against a nuclear strike. Now though we know we are eff'd if the nukes start flying. Sure, we can shoot down 80 missiles if we get lucky.. can we shoot down 800? No.
So how exactly do these replace THAT capability? Also, the big threat of nuclear weapons is speed and stealth. Not having some frigen UAV flying around that any MIG built in the last 40 years could shoot down with ease.

Cue Terminator Theme...

[dmgxmichael]

So when do the land based killer units get going?

Re:Cue Terminator Theme...

[Jeng]

Don't worry, we have a copy of Norton we can load on to Skynet's computers when the day comes. That should delay things.

Re:SAMs?

[brainboyz]

The B2 has a 170ish foot wingspan and the radar cross section of a ball bearing, so size is not necessarily a stealth disqualifier.

Hydrogen

[OzPeter]

I was going to ask "why hydrogen?", then I think I answered my question myself. I would guess that if you had a fossil fuel based system then all your enemies would need to do is point some sort of spectrographic analyzer at the sky and detect a trail of combustion emissions - where the trail ends is where you aim your counter measures. With a hydrogen based system it would be a lot harder to detect a trail a of water vapour in a sky full of water vapour.

Re:Hydrogen

[Dynedain]

Actually it's probably more likely that making it hydrogen-based qualifies it for earmarked expenditures in Congressional appropriations.

Re:Cost?

[demonbug]

According to Dailymail, it should be around £143 million ($214 million for those too lazy to google it yourself).

If you read the article (and others), you will also see that this was a technology demonstrator, and £143 million was the cost to build it. If it went into production it would likely cost significantly less, certainly less than a $191 million JSF. Getting the pilot out of there cuts down a hell of a lot on the cost, as all of a sudden you can replace all sorts of expensive weight, volume, and logistics with relatively cheap computers (theoretically, anyway).

Re:SAMs?

[demonbug]

it has a 150-foot wingspan, will cruise at approximately 150 knots...

...and will only be deployed in places where Surface to Air Missiles are unavailable and the natives don't have radar.

So, pretty much all of the conflicts the U.S. and allies are currently embroiled in.

Fantastic...

[vvaduva]

We constantly find new and amazing ways to kill each other more easily. Too bad this much effort doesn't go in other directions which are more beneficial to mankind, and are aimed at saving lives rather than taking them.

Re:SAMs?

[Wyatt Earp]

You can eyeball a plane going 150 mph at 60,000 feet without sensors?

Hydrogen for Long Endurance Flight?

[perpenso]

Hydrogen may be the most efficient combustible fuel, giving the aircraft the longest range per fuel payload? With an unmanned aircraft the usual safety concerns regarding hydrogen do not apply.

More unmanned weapons? Egh...

[Que914]

The extent to which we've removed humans from the battlefield is really starting to disturb me. The public objection to American coming home in body bags up 'til the past decade has served as at least a mild deterrent to using force, but when we can kill with little or no risk to our own soldiers, what's left to provide our leaders with a motive for restraint?

Egh...

So has Taranis flown yet?

[meringuoid]

I've been reading the odd scraps of information coming out about Taranis for a few years now. Supposedly it was supposed to begin flight trials in 2010; has this happened yet, or have they just shown off the prototype model on the ground to a few media hacks?

There was an interesting conspiracy theory put about a while back that Taranis was only incidentally a scary UAV project - that its real purpose was technology laundering. BAE have had access to American stealth technology through the JSF project; Taranis is a stealth aircraft supposedly developed independently. So if ten years from now BAE start selling stealth drones to every sheikh with a few billion quid in his trousers, they'll say 'oh, this technology is derived from the Taranis project. Nothing to do with the American secrets we were shown while working on the F-35, no, not at all...'