Robotic Aircraft To Supply Troops

Cowards Anonymous writes "PC World reports on a prototype driverless aircraft designed to shuttle hundreds of pounds of supplies to soldiers in war zones. Dubbed a flying Humvee by Frontline Aerospace's CEO, the robotic vehicle can fly 600 to 1,000 miles carrying a full cargo of 400 pounds. It's about the size of a large SUV, weighing in at 2,400 pounds and measuring 21 feet long and up to 26 feet wide."

My eyebrows are raised...

While unmanned aerial vehicles are the future of the military [utah.edu], there are some serious concerns in the defense industry about the company Frontline Aerospace that is making noise about this particular drone. Specifically, the CEO appears to be all over the place in terms of his interests and talents as well as some of his claims [wired.com] and there are some substantial criticisms of the packaging and design.

Additionally, UAVs are principally successful because one of the first companies, General Atomics (GA), that produced the successful Predator and Reaper aircraft, developed the Predator design to a functional platform on their own dime and then asked the DOD if they were interested (they obviously were). Frontline Aerospace only has a concept right now and many folks in the defense industry are expressing a healthy skepticism at some of Frontline Aerospace's claims. Admittedly, the fact that GA essentially owns the show with Predator and Reaper does lead to some problems and the pilots are not entirely happy with all of the solutions from GA, but at least GA came to the game with a working system before making substantial claims about performance and capabilities.

I'll be looking forward to what this design potentially has, but as of right now, my eyebrows are a bit raised.

Re:My eyebrows are raised...

But, there's like, 12 cup holders in here...

On the other hand...

On the other hand,

1. from the same Wired page:

Another issue, he warns, is that "V-STAR seems more like a packaging exercise than a true innovation and "none of the technologies is new."

Seems to me to be:

A) saying that it's reasonable possible to make it, since there are no big surprises to be expected from anything in it, and

B) kind of a lame complaint. Innovation by combining existing elements is really the norm. The train was equally just an exercise in packaging a steam engine (which technically wasn't new, since it had been done before to pump water out of mine shafts) and a cart. Guns appeared as a packaging exercise between a bell and some funny powder used in fireworks. Nobel's dynamite was an exercise in literally packaging nitroglycerin and diatomaceous earth. Etc.

Basically, I'm sorry, but the age of discovering something completely new and based on nothing that came before it ended, I dunno, in stone age or so. Ever since, all we make is built on stuff that came before it.

2. Picking on the guy's credentials, again, I have some problems with it:

A) I see no incredible claim in there. It just says that he was trained as an engineer and worked as a manager. Hardly "all over the place" or incredible. I see a dozen people every day when I go to work, which fit the exact same bill.

B) they don't say that any of his claims are false. Did he lie about it? Did he get fired for incompetence from any of those companies? Does he have some history of not achieving what he promises? Or WTF is the problem? It should be easy to prove whether he actually was a manager at Intel or Toshiba, no? So tell me if he lied, not some lame attempt at making it sound ridiculous by itself.

C) seems to me to be exactly what they need for the job, especially once they said that there are no obvious flaws with the idea. You need someone who can organize research, development and production, hence, a manager.

D) it's, at best, an ad-hominem and as per points 2.A to 2.C a pretty lame one.

Now I'm not saying they should necessarily give him money, but the Wired article is an exercise in journalistic stupidity at best.

Re:My eyebrows are raised...

As a guy who used to airdrop cargo and troops in the Air Force, I'm skeptical about the utility of this vehicle. 400 pounds is about one fully-loaded CDS (container delivery system) bundle, which is about enough stuff for a handful of troops for a day if it includes any munitions at all. To be useful, I believe a ton of cargo is a better target capacity.

OTOH, 400 pounds is a nice package size for one clandestine operative and all his gear. Hmm...

It's harder than it sounds

As an ex-AA guy, I can tell you that even hitting something that moves fast and low with a gun is hard enough, and requires sophisticated radars and computer-controlled guns. I.e. noone does it by turning cranks any more.

Throwing some satchel by hand, on the top of something that moves at 288 miles per hour... well, if you can do that, you're Superman.

I'm tired of this shit

Yea, its great that you can now drop bombs on unsuspecting "insurgents". Its great that you can level a city block in Iraq from your comfy seat in Nevada.

I really am tired of hearing about all these new "safer" ways of killing people. Your still fucking killing people. Stop it you sick fucks.

Re:

Perhaps this same technology could be used to drop aid in Burma....

Re:I'm tired of this shit

I hardly think the US would be willing to replace their "Hellfire" missile hardpoints with aid-dropping hardpoints. The sad part about this is that they talk this up like its going to to be used for good, when really that is never going to happen,.

Re:I'm tired of this shit

Well back in WWII, US had numerous military jeeps that are leftovers from the war. Well they gave/sold it to us in the Philippines and look what we had done to it -> Jeepneys [wikipedia.org]

If you guys got a surplus of these things in the future, I'm sure someone would think of some non-military use of it...

Not much choice, I'm afraid

Well, while I might even join in lamenting about using them for offensive purposes, I'm afraid you don't really have that much choice about developing new weapons. Simply put, those who don't live by the sword, get to be at the wrong end of the sword.

Or to put it otherwise, ask the USSR how they felt in 1941 about still having mostly old BT tanks and outdated aircraft. What saved them were the new and vastly superior T-34. Or ask Poland about how well their cavalry divisions did when attacked by tanks.

Seriously, it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma. Being a pacifist with no (modern) weapons only works if everyone else around is. Otherwise, well, you have to have the deterrent of being the guy with the biggest stick.

And we all tried forcing everyone to be peaceful and put a limit to their military. Like, you know, between the two world wars. Turns out that, as the only result, a bunch of people just lied about how big their ship were, or about what they're researching. Germany for example called their tank research and prototypes agricultural tractors for a while. (I guess you can't blame a guy for having guns in his tractor too. Just ask any mid-west farmer.;)

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What saved them were the new and vastly superior T-34

Nope. What saved them was their ability to relocate the whole factories from behind enemy lines.
Its true that Germans did not have T-34/76 equivalent during 1941. But there were not enough T-34 for the Germans to kill either.
By 1943, The german Tiger and Panther were more than a match for T-34/76. And as the Battle of Kursk proved, the T-34 was inadequate to save the soviet butts.
The Tiger's 88mm gun coupled with 88mm Flak battery was more than a match for the T-34.
By 1944 the battle had swung in Soviet fa

Re:Not much choice, I'm afraid

In Iraq, the US military has had its greatest success when troops are out among the population and "get to know the locals". They have had their worst failures when everything is automated and remote. Unlike their political masters in the white house, they do learn. They also have to deal with a manpower shortage, so to them robotics is something they have a LOT of interest in.

Put two and two together and you get robts ferrying supplies and real live humans doing the shooting and dealing with people. That IS common sense. I'd rather see that than people ferrying supplies and robots doing the shooting.

Back in real life...

The verb phrase most likely to be applied by the US military to a particular city block in Iraq is "restoring power to". But you can pretend they're vicious indiscriminate killers if it makes you feel better. 'course, they'd be pretty darned incompetent vicious indiscriminate killers since they were able to level cities 60 years ago and, look, plenty of unleveled cities all over the place.

Its almost like they were TRYING to not hit any of the civilians this time...

Usual high flying business cruft

Anyone bothered to look at the massive composite photo they created with a few soldiers running out to the CG generated drone? You'd think for $4 million a pop they'd at least spend another $1000 to make the photos -look- realistic.

I see quite a lot of these sorts of getups happening, someone gets some specs, waves their hands about, generates some crappy CG and utters a price of a few million. Couple of years later there's nothing really to show for it except some rudimentary framework and an empty office.

Only wish I had gotten in there first ;)

Re:Usual high flying business cruft

Holy crap, the picture rocks:

http://www.frontlineaerospace.com/images/stories/press_images/VSTAR_Resupply_1.jpg [frontlineaerospace.com]

I can't even tell if it's supposed to be in the air or not. If it is, those two dudes are about to get crushed/pixelated to death.

This is my new desktop background.

Carryall

Reminds me of a Carryall from Dune.

Re:

Melange [wikipedia.org] = Oil [wikipedia.org], Interstellar travel [wikipedia.org] = grocery runs to Wal-Mart [wikipedia.org]...

Hence why Iraq was important.. or something, where am I?

Poor Design

The entire design of this craft baffles me.

First, ducted fans are inefficient compared to rotors. You get a lot more force out of a large diameter and small exit velocity. Its why props are more efficient than turbofans, which are in turn more efficient than turbojets. The ONLY advantage is that the fan is out of the airstream, so high velocities are achievable.

Second, it has very low wing area, meaning you have very high wing loading (bad for fuel economy). Alternatively, they could be using a lifting body (also bad for fuel economy). Considering they have the big fan duct running through the center of the body, the body cannot provide much lift anyway, leaving the fan (even worse fuel economy).

Third, they chose a joined box wing. Box wings can considerably reduce losses from the tip vorticity, but there is so little lift coming off those wings, there's no purpose. The only purpose to joined wings is that they provide structural rigidity to large, light, high aspect ratio wings for high altitude, long endurance craft. This is obviously not the case here.

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>The entire design of this craft baffles me.

If it scores DARPA funding, it will have served its purpose ;) It does not have to be practical and it does not have to work

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It looks like an artists impression of a ground effect vehicle. The louvers in the fuselage look like a moller air car ducted hovercraft kind of thing.

The ducted fan might be safe to operate from a dirt road because it is mounted high and somewhat unable to suck stones into the works.

The idea seems to be to set up camp along a country road or remote strip. Call in the UAV, load/unload and relaunch it for a fast low altitude sprint to the next camp.

Landing and takeoff would happen stalled at low spe

Re:Poor Design

First, ducted fans are inefficient compared to rotors. You get a lot more force out of a large diameter and small exit velocity. Its why props are more efficient than turbofans, which are in turn more efficient than turbojets. The ONLY advantage is that the fan is out of the airstream, so high velocities are achievable.

It's designed to ferry cargo to troops under fire: with ducted fans you don't have to worry about clonkin' yer rotors on the sides of buildings and the blades can given some protection from small arms. Besides, I doubt a military that sticks jet engines in its tanks cares much for fuel efficiency =P

Re:Poor Design

I worked on a UAV program in the 1980s (back when they were called RPVs.) We went through several iterations of wing configurations. Joined wings, of almost any configuration, had absolutely bizarre aerodynamic interactions near the intersections. It's very complicated to get right, and usually doesn't provide an overall benefit - one particular aspect, like max cruise speed, may be improved, but at the expense of *everything* else.

The wings on this aircraft don't seem designed for the mission profile described. Supporting forward infantry is a short-range low-speed mission profile. I expect the wings to have a low rake angle, and to be fairly chunky across the airfoil section. Low-speed wings are blunt and fat; high-speed wings are angled and skinny.

At best, this is an "artist's misconception" drawing. Avionics, engine and fuel are going in the fuselage, as there's no room internal to those wings for anything but structure. Where did the payload go? Oh, "inside" ... with everything else. (The main site is slashdotted, so I'm working off an article from an Australian site.)

Sounds familiar

I seem to recall that they had something like this before. Quite a bit faster. Very good at getting its cargo to the waiting soldiers. A bit rougher on the payload, perhaps (and the soldiers).

I believe it was called a Cruise Something-or-other.

Well, I for one...

Well, I for one would like to welcome our new automated remote controlled food toting flying overloards...

Re:Woefully inefficient...

A marching soldier needs 4 gallons of water per day?

Well, actually, that's a fairly conservative estimate...

"a person performing hard work in the sun at 43 degrees C requires 19 liters of water daily." http://www.aircav.com/survival/asch13/asch13p02.html [aircav.com]

"A general guide for planning to meet the water requirements in an arid zone is 3-6 gallons per individual per day" http://www.cs.amedd.army.mil/dphs/EQB/doc/Instructor%20Manual/L004LP%20Water%20Supply%20LP.doc [army.mil]

If marching soldiers needed 4 gallons a day each, they'd all be dead pretty quick.

Interesting... Because most of them appear to be quite alive...