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...

 

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.

It's all good. This UCAV kind of reminds me of the Terminator Hunter-Killers and might have inspired the filmakers with their design in the last film. Of real interest to me is that the variety of UAV these days is really expanding with new designed coming out with great regularity. It's almost the way it used to be with fighters in the Cold War where we had many different types all the time in some sort of development of going IOC. One can't help but notice how quickly the R&D process is and subsequent rapid fielding. Looks like the droid/drone Army and Air Force are coming a lot faster than people thought as I review documents and technology roadmaps in the archives. 

-DA 

 

The simulation model is very different from the photo.

 

Seems to me like they have thrown in the 3D model to "impress the yokels", "dazzle the with BS" so to speak..

Unfortunately this yokel is not impressed and suspects they are pulling a fast one.

 

The huge variety is the result of our still trying to figure out how we are going to make the things so they will do the job, and what is not possible.  In a comparison to the development of fighter aircraft I would guess we have about reached the point of transition from bi-planes to mono-planes, but that might be optimistic.

No, the number is because of the more diverse nature of unmanned systems. Also, the development timeline is not linear. The UA are well beyond that. More like bi-plane to ODS in the timeline you suggested and things are speeding up.

-DA 

The hover configuration is a three point FAIL and an unnecessary to mission engineering complication. JATO aloft and parachute or net recover. KISS!.