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UK MOD To Spend 20 Million On Toy Size Spy Drones
garymortimer writes "The Ministry of Defense (MOD) is making 20 million pounds available for Nano UAS. This is the second story this week in which military organizations seem to be looking for small multicopters. A market to date that has been ignored by the big defense contractors and a space owned by small start ups. No doubt some of those small start ups will soon become big defense contractors!"
UK MOD to spend 20 million Pounds on toy sized drones which will then be added to every McHappy meal sold in the UK so that they can watch the not quite toy sized British youth.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No doubt some of those small start ups will soon become big defense contractors!"
Or they'll be bought by big defense contractors, and the existing big defense contractors will continue to be the big defense contractors....
Well, they can't very well let Ogden, Utah and Miami, Florida get too far ahead of them, can they?
OMG I laughed at the mental picture of a member of the Brass choking having inhaled one of their spy drones...
Imagine the recovery effort.
"Captain, drone 6 is emerging"
"Very good Leftenant, alert the recovery teams and let me know when we have splashdown."
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You'll either end up in prison or buried in a land fill.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Defense is the American spelling.
The US and indeed, nations around the world, are implementing or preparing to implement aircraft regulations for UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), which includes the model aircraft of us radio controlled airplane hobbyists. While there isn't much in common with the typical model aircraft and a Predator drone with a Hellfire Missile, there is a LOT in common between these new nUAS's and a model aircraft. Just look at the thing. I have seen hobbyists at my local hobby field fly similar hobby planes they purchased for a few hundred dollars that already fly 20 minutes and longer. In case you weren't aware, the aircraft model hobby is moving in huge numbers from gas powered planes to the new LiPo battery powered planes. There are now battery-electric motor combinations that match the power of every gas powered model airplane engine in the world. And my own batteries easily keep my planes in the air for 20 minutes each, same as these military specifications. There is a good overview of upcoming regulatory actions worldwide, on the "sUAS News" website: http://www.suasnews.com/uas-regulations/.
On a tangental note, I enjoy flying radio control helicopters, I have three of them (a "micro sized" heli, T-Rex 250, with a rotor disc of about 25 cm diameter, weighing about 350g), a 500-size and a 600-size (which weighs about 2.5kg, IIRC with a rotor diameter of 1.6 metres), all of them are collective pitch and extremely agile (they are all aerobatic models). All of them are electric too.
What worries me a little is that the wider political world will see the small drones, which don't look an awful lot different to a model RC heli, then start invoking the "terrorism!" bogeyman and trying to ban/restrict the RC flying we do or making us go through a painful registration process to be able to buy parts or helis. It won't take a huge leap of imagination for some politician to think that my T-Rex 600 could be some sort of threat to a public figure if fitted with an FPV (first person view) system, and then we have yet another avenue of pleasure closed off due to the war-on-terror :-(
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Hmm, lets ponder that for a moment. £20m will buy you one, maybe two Tornado aircraft.
Two aircraft, no pilots, no training, no ground crew, no parts, no maintained runway, or 300 drones that are more useful in asymmetrical warfare?
The pilots can retrain as drone pilots if they want, or they can take their RAF training and go work for EasyJet. Their choice.
The AR drone with a bigger battery pack and longer range(no wifi) is exactly what they want out of the devices. nimble enough to go inside, stable enough for winds.
the AR drone might be a toy but it is a better package than most of them so far. especially for urban environments.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"UK MOD To Spend 20 Million On Toy Size Spy Drones"
What will the rockers counter with?
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