Coming To a War Near You: Nuclear Powered Drones

An anonymous reader writes "American scientists and engineers are researching a new generation of UAV's that would be nuclear-powered. Why do this? They would have the capacity to stay over a target area for months and only be limited by the ordinance they could drop on a potential foe. They would be similar to a nuclear attack submarine but not limited to the amount of food on-board. The article notes: 'The blueprints for the new drones, which have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories – the U.S. government's principal nuclear research and development agency – and defense contractor Northrop Grumman, were designed to increase flying time "from days to months" while making more power available for operating equipment, according to a project summary published by Sandia,' the paper reported."

Comments

But they are not working on it

[gewalker]

And unsurprisingly the Slashdot headline fails to note that the program work has been halted and that it was never approved. Doing a little feasibility research is entirely reasonable for the military. That is, assuming they don't waste too much money on something that has serious downsides -- yeah I know, leap of faith time.

Crazy ideas turn out to be reasonable once in a great while -- we call they breakthroughs.

Re:Downed drone plan?

[icebike]

So when these inevitably are downed for some reason (e.g. technical malfunctions, enemy interference, etc), what's to stop the enemy from reverse engineering the technology and gaining "nuclear secrets"?

I wouldn't worry so much about the secrets, but rather the nuclear materials you provide them free of charge for anyone who manages to shoot (or lure) one down.

And the summary completely misses the main point of the story:

The fact that the program has been halted is something that Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on drone warfare, suggests may be lost in the attention on the nuclear aspect of the project.

“What people seem to be missing is that the program was not approved. We are not building it!” he told me. “All sorts of ideas are proposed by scientists, and this one was found to involve a technology not yet ready for prime time and which carries some deep concerns about its implications for operations, legal concerns, and fear of accident impact. So it was not approved.”

Apparently the submitter, in typical Anonymous Coward fashion, failed to read past the first paragraph.