151–160 of 188 posts
I work with nano-UAVs. I am very skeptical that the 40 minute flight time is even close to being real. Especially with a quadcopter design. They are way to inefficient.
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They're claiming flight time - in the battery section of the infographic it claims "flight times of more than 40 minutes". Tri-blade props are not the most efficient - we use them in racing applications because we want to generate maximum thrust and we don't need more than around 2-3 minutes per battery but we wouldn't use them in an aerial photo rig where we want long flight times - 2 blade props would be the go to.…
Since you seem to have some expertise in this area, I am going to use the opportunity to ask a bit of a diagonal question I've wondered for a while: I've seen claims about increase in airflow from bladeless fan designs (I know it's a bit of misnomer, as the blades are just hidden) for home applications. Is there a reason bladeless designs haven't been used in the UAV realm? I assumed the claims were just marketing, o…
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Don't a lot of the DJI models have a ~30 minute flight time? Point taken though, that there's a wall we hit with current battery tech.
The DJI drones that can do that are significantly larger. A 250 gram DJI mavic mini can do 30 minutes and with significantly larger propellers. The efficiency goes down with smaller blade sizes (more losses to vortexes) so from the photo 20 min is the max to expect with regular lipo batteries.
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"The BAE drone probably costs $50,000 apiece" That may be a little high. UAVTek's site says they beat the FLIR Black Hornet 3 bid[1]. Estimates based on US Army budget requests say the Black Hornet 3 is coming in between $15k and $16k per unit[2]. Probably still 5 figures though. [1] https://uavtek.co.uk/news/uk-mod-acquire-latest-nano-drone-t... [2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26359/the-pocket-sized...
In addition you have to think of the trade-offs. If the army multiplied the price by 10 to get 10% better performance, that might save a soldier’s life. Hmm, shades of Kipling‘s Frontier Arithmetic : “four thousand pounds of education/Drops to a ten-rupee jezail”....
Hmm...from a tech porn perspective it’s a cool little gadget. But given the shadow surveillance and police state that was erected post 9/11 and how often “national security” outfits have been caught playing fast and loose with the laws of the land, there is a good chance that bugs like this one will be eventually be used to illegally spy on domestic dissidents and whistleblowers. Governments in most western countries…
There are probably bigger worries in the surveillance area already (smartphones etc). I’d be more concerned about their potential use for assassination. How heavy does a bomb have to be?
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Whoa that's a bit of a US Centric broad brush there. "Most Western Countries" - there's more to the West than the US, UK and less than half a dozenish who have or are doing that. I'm Irish and the vast majority of the EU and other Western Countries (however that is defined) aren't in the business of disappearing people.
> I'm Irish and the vast majority of the EU and other Western Countries (however that is defined) aren't in the business of disappearing people. True, but that's comparable only if these countries had the same responsibilities (it's like comparing people, say a soldier vs a librarian). Ireland for instance has no Air Force, and has to call on the RAF to provide air defence (as it happened when Russian Tu-95s intruded…
Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by "Russian belligerence"? Do you have some example of Europe relying on NATO's firepower against it?
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They're claiming flight time - in the battery section of the infographic it claims "flight times of more than 40 minutes". Tri-blade props are not the most efficient - we use them in racing applications because we want to generate maximum thrust and we don't need more than around 2-3 minutes per battery but we wouldn't use them in an aerial photo rig where we want long flight times - 2 blade props would be the go to.…
In a military context, "flight" can mean "mission". I only suggest that something may have been lost in the language. I find that easier to believe than this thing hovering over a battlefield for 40 minutes.
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> I'm Irish and the vast majority of the EU and other Western Countries (however that is defined) aren't in the business of disappearing people. True, but that's comparable only if these countries had the same responsibilities (it's like comparing people, say a soldier vs a librarian). Ireland for instance has no Air Force, and has to call on the RAF to provide air defence (as it happened when Russian Tu-95s intruded…
> Likewise, the rest of Europe relies entirely on NATO's firepower against Russian belligerence. Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by "Russian belligerence"? Do you have some example of Europe relying on NATO's firepower against it?
In the absence of a European defence infrastructure like NATO that's pretty much all they have.
Russian belligerence being invading the Baltic states. Crimea and eastern Ukraine were less clear cut than supposed for historical reasons but many in the East live in fear of the same happening to them.
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With a cell phone and Google Maps, you can get distance, elevation, obstacles, and more with good-enough precision. Or, even use our own mission planning software against us - ATAK[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Team_Awareness_Kit [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atakmap.ap...
Yes, these are the kind of modern aids I mentioned. You're still likely to miss your first one. Mortar is not a precision weapon, it's a Monte Carlo prop.