Army Building an Airport Just For Drones

schwit1 writes The Army's ever-growing use of unmanned aerial systems has gotten to the point where two of the most commonly used UAS are getting their own airport. The service's Corps of Engineers at Fort Worth, Texas, has awarded a $33 million contract to SGS to build a 150-acre unmanned aircraft launch and recovery complex at Fort Bliss for Grey Eagle and Shadow UAS. In related news, the FAA has just cleared 4 companies (Trimble Navigation Limited, VDOS Global, Clayco Inc. and Woolpert Inc.) to use drones commercially, for purposes such as site inspection and aerial surveys. (A lot of drones are already in use, of course, but the FAA doesn't like it.)

Comments

Re:too expensive

[AaronLS]

That and "associated maintenance shops, administrative space, storage space, 5-ton bridge crane, oil/water separator, aircraft container and forklift storage, UAV runway, taxiway, access apron, oil and hazardous waste storage buildings, vehicle storage facilities, organizational vehicle parking, and overhead protection/canopy"

Re:too expensive

[Nidi62]

You need shelter for the aircraft (hangars), storage for fuel and other consumables (ammunition, film/data storage, etc), repair facilities and their associated storage requirements, facilities for the personnel assigned to the base (at the very least breakrooms and bathrooms, not to mention workspaces and command/control facilities, and probably housing as well-which comes with its own needs), a control tower with both visual and equipment navigation, and of course security personnel and the related infrastructure needed to secure and patrol a secure-access facility. I don't think 10 grand and an old KMart would be able to supply all of those things.

Re:too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure this is something you could crack off from a kmart parking lot.

http://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/ae5d20f/2147483647/resize/652x%3E/quality/85/?url=%2Fcmsmedia%2Fd3%2Fdd56dff8b3364db93f0786ba87db6b%2F43931widemodern_drone_070213.jpg

http://img.rt.com/files/news/1f/be/20/00/an-x-47b-drone.si.jpg

These are medium sized ones.

They also many times reuse old F-XX type craft and turn them into drones. Never mind most kmart parking lots are located in residential type areas and the noise of jet aircraft taking off and landing seems to upset people... (go figure...)

You may be thinking of those little toy rc aircraft people have been playing with that have a camera on them. Then yeah you could do that. But the military basically lives by 'go big or go home'. They do that because they want to land 500-2000lb bombs on buildings and obliterate them. Your little ac craft from amazon probably will not pull that off...

tl;dr These are full out aircraft they are messing with. Not small rc model planes. You need an airstrip for that.

Re:too expensive

[hey!]

When you hear "drone" you probably are picturing civilian quad copters. While some military drones are that small, others are substantial aircraft. The Air Force's Global Hawk weighs over ten tons and requires a runway 3700 feet long to take off.

Obviously some military drones can be hand launched, but the MQ-1Cs mentioned in the article weigh 2200 lbs fully loaded and requires a minimum runway of 2000 feet.

Re:too expensive

[dcw3]

By the time they pad out the budget, get some money for black projects, pay $10K for a hammer ... this should easily hit a few hundred million.

I think there's a common misconception that this "pad out" occurs on purpose. Most of the military officers involved in procurement are still wet behind the ears, and fresh out of college. Requirements come extremely poorly written, and any long term project often ends up with those officers being replaced as the originals move on to their next duty assignment. That means that the next guy in charge frequently changes the whole project.

Don't get me wrong, these aren't the only reasons for high expense on military projects, but they are a huge factor.