US Army Hopes To Outfit Soldiers With Tiny Drones By 2018 (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The U.S. Army has requested industry information on the feasibility of making tiny drones that would help infantry gather intelligence on a small scale, such as peeping over a hill or around a building. its dream recon machine would weigh no more than a third of a pound, launch within one minute and fly for at least 15 minutes. Ideally, the drones would be in service as soon as 2018. "[A nano-drone] will send real-time video back to the operator to give them real-time situational awareness of what's in the immediate vicinity," says Phil Cheatham, the deputy branch chief for electronics at the Army's Maneuvers Center for Excellence (MCOE). Cheatham says he and his team want something cheap enough to deploy with every squad, noting the Army already uses satellite imagery and larger drones to provide broader battlefield intelligence.

Comments

Cheap enough

[110010001000]

Cheap means it needs to cost $50k at least.

Re:Cheap enough

[jklovanc]

Take your $1000 drone and do the following.
1. Rugedize the controller and drone so they can stand up to battlefield conditions which includes the following: temperature extremes; being dropped, stepped on, etc; waterproof; dust/sand resistant; etc
2. Make the communications channel both jam resistant and secure.
3. Make it, including a protected carrying case for the drone, small and light enough not to be a burden.
4. Go through several rounds of testing and modification so everyone has a say in the design and politicians are seen to be doing something.
5. Parcel out the production to several states to spread the money around.
That $1000 drone just got much more expensive.
The main issue is that military equipment has to work in harsh conditions. On the battlefield you can't say "my machine is not working so I am not going to play today".

Re:Cheap enough

[FlyHelicopters]

And what happens in practice is that the 80% solution is 1/10th the cost and so you have twice as many, so there are more working than the ideal at 1/5 the cost.

Twice as many that don't work isn't much of an improvement.

Yes, in some situations, you can get 5 times as many for the same cost, until they don't work.

Read up a bit of history of WWII, the problems of taking vehicles into the desert, then the arctic, then Western Russia and the mud. Then the jungles of SE Asia.

Stuff that is reliable as dirt in one place is worthless in another.

Part of what makes military stuff cost so much is the ability to work everywhere. Our M1 tanks have to be geared up to work in 120 degree deserts and -40 degree arctic snow.

That is harder than you might think.

Re:Cheap enough

[Areyoukiddingme]

2. Make the communications channel both jam resistant and secure.

Since when did anybody do that? If we can't be arsed to encrypt Predator communications, what makes you think the shitty little hand carry toy is going to have it?

Re:Ah, shame.

[AchilleTalon]

Yes, quadrotors are more energy hungry than a plane or an helicopter and it makes probably more noise and is less compact than an helicopter as well.

Re:Screw Standing Armies. Just Nuke The Bastards.

[peragrin]

except it denies the resources those areas have to us.

nukes are like permanently poisoning the well. it makes the region useless to us afterwards. look at Chernobyl. 30 years later it's resources are useless to us. another 200 years it will still be useless.

You may not think it useful, but nuking the majority of easy access oil when the USA is still importing oil on a daily basis is a bad idea.

Dangerous Government Waste

[s.petry]

If remote controlled tiny aircraft were better on the battlefield we would not need soldiers at all. There is a huge issue with putting soldier under the dependency of gadgets. I say this as a Veteran (US Army) in case you weigh things by experience.

Communications is important, but so is a lack of communications. Soldiers walking around with broadcast devices have no ability to hide, they also run the risk of interception and force feeding bogus orders.

Save a soldier's life and write Congress. Tech companies don't need to make money off of soldier's lives.

Re:Ah, shame.

[ShanghaiBill]

Yes, quadrotors are more energy hungry than a plane or an helicopter and it makes probably more noise and is less compact than an helicopter as well.

I bought my son a $69 quadrotor drone for his birthday that has a 10 minute flight time, and meets all of the other criteria listed in the summary. So instead of spending their budget investigating the feasibility, they should get in their Humvee and drive to the closest mall.

The quadrotor may be slightly bigger than a heli-drone, but it is much more stable and easier to fly. My son was flying his skillfully after 2 hours of practice, so the Pentagon should be able to train operators for about $50k each.

Re:Ah, shame.

[Syberz]

I'd be curious to see how your 69$ drone would fare after being lugged around a dusty/windy desert for a few days and/or a very humid jungle and/or stuck in a tight pack that was thrown around a few times.

Fun but distracting

[Archtech]

"If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped--say with a stone ax---will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier".

- Robert Heinlein (“Starship Troopers”)

Re:Ah, shame.

[drinkypoo]

I'd be curious to see how your 69$ drone would fare after being lugged around a dusty/windy desert for a few days and/or a very humid jungle and/or stuck in a tight pack that was thrown around a few times.

You know, nobody has more experience paying people to make fancy cases for equipment than our military. You should see the kind of boxes that fucking cable sets are carried around in. They'd make adequate cover in a firefight.