Death from Above
Posted on 07/15/2007 7:39:33 PM PDT by B-Chan
Jul 15, 1:59 PM (ET)
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AP) - The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It's outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.
The Reaper is loaded, but there's no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada. The arrival of these outsized U.S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill. That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected "soon," says the regional U.S. air commander. How soon? "We're still working that," Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview...
"With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home," North said.
...At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator. Its size - 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan - is comparable to the profile of the Air Force's workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.
While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons - or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs...
"The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system," Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
you can run but you can’t hide ahkmed!
300mph?
...
fly it from nevada?
okay, lets port it into xboxe/playstation tournaments to find the best pilots!
wishful thinking? why not!
Mors ab alto
Very impressive system. However, how come it’s a turboprop, which limits its performance? Why didn’t the builders opt for a pure jet?
And we'll have THOUSANDS of expert operators all trained up for service some day, and at a rock-bottom price for our services.
Longer loiter time with a turboprop.
Interesting. It looks like a cross between a RQ-1A Global Hawk and a Predator or sort of a turboprop version of the Global Hawk. 50,000 ft seem a bit high for a turboprop to be very efficient, but I imagine most of it’s work is done from lower altitudes. I know these UAVs do great work, but everytime I read about these things, I have the Terminator movie playing in my head.
One of the big limiters to Predator employing LGBs is it's slow speed. Slow speed makes for a small envelope or "basket" and little time for offset maneuvers.
I notice that whenever I have doubt over an aspect of new technology I’m not familiar with, someone with training will answer the doubt and get a big “well duh, why didn’t I think of that!?” in return.
Thanks :) The “big duh” would be the pedestal effect, mainly.
If you look at the Reaper you see a compromise for its mission.
It will most likely spend most of its mission at 120 mph loitering doing its primary task, sensor employment. That requires turboprop performance with a big straight wing.
The top speed requirement is for getting on station if time is critical and for the employment of all weapons. You can really help the range of even a Hellfire by going fast prior to the pushing the big red button.
As far as the "well, duh" part, I work for you and part of my job is providing non-sensitive information to the public that buys the tools of our trade.
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