-DA

What a horribly designed piece of junk!

 

Herald

I want the whole vid :)

I want to watch the demo! A friend of mine I was commissioned with is an AH-64 pilot. I can't wait to discuss this with him. We bumped into each other on the tail end of our deployments as he was leaving theater. It's interesting when we talk about how American defense aviation production expertise is dwindling and all rest on the F-35. IMHO thats not the case. It's simply evolving to other areas such as UAS which are beginning to encroach into areas previously dominated by manned platforms. So yes, there is a decline in the variety of manned aircraft in production. But a dramatic increase if we include the work being done on unmanned aircraft.

-DA 

Yea you're right DA. I mean, what would a guy that actually IS part of the aviation side of the equation know about it compared to a guy who drives trucks? I'm sure he's looking forward to being enlightened by the expert on all things military simply because as you so eliquently told me once.. "You can't help it if you just know more then most". lol

BTW, how much does that company you work for as a civilian stand to gain from this unmanned tech that you're pushing harder then a whore down on main street pushing her *specialty*? I'm a firm believer in *follow the money* ;-) I mean, why else would someone post that piece of junk for all to see? I'd have been more impressed with a blimp!!

Thank You Beazz for the kind, insightful and contributive remarks.

Regards

-DA 

 

whatever else, it's butt ugly!

 

We'll see if it's just that by 2009 i guess.

Anything to make the resident truck driving expert feel better. I'll take that as a *you are not going to tell me how much your company/employer stands to gain*. I expected as much.

 

Beazz

Some interesting design details:

 

The lift fans slide retract into of the ends of the wing when not in use.

 

The craft takes off upside down and then flips over in flight.  No indication if weapons can be launched while inverted or in a hover.

 

I agree that the design seems more than a little screwy.

Remember, form follows function. There was a time when this was considered an abomination...

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The interesting thing is that the video says it "is not remotely piloted, allowing operators to focus on mission planning, finding, and designating targets", by which they must mean it has a really simple navigation interface where you basically point and click on a map.  That in itself is a pretty interesting advance, particularly for an armed UAV.

 

I don't think its inabilitiy to fire while hovering is really a valid criticism -- we don't bash the Predator because it can't fire in a hover, do we?  The VTOL feature is to allow it to operate from totally unprepared surfaces and confined quarters.  Once it's in flight it can apparently dash at over 400kts and loiter as low as 100kts, which are good speeds for the kind of mission it is intended for.

 

The whole inverted thing does look pretty awkward, but it is an interesting approach to fixed-wing VTOL.  According to the manufacturer, the reason for the inverted landing and takeoff is that this way the wings protect the weapons payload from dust and debris thrown up by the aircraft's thrust.  That isn't really obvious from the cgi video so I'm guessing the full scale version will have its weapons mounted on the wings instead of on those little stubs on the fuselage.

 

Neat stuff in any case.