Posted on 01/13/2013 12:21:08 PM PST by blam
Britain's New Stealth Bomber Is Unmanned And Fully Autonomous
Robert Johnson
Jan. 13, 2013, 4:38 AM
Britain's New Stealth Bomber Is Unmanned And Fully Autonomous
BAE Taranis
Britain's Air Force has been using Tornado jets as bombers for decades and is already building a fleet of new Typhoons, but BAE hopes to supplement those forces with a powerful new drone.
The Taranis, named for the Celtic god of thunder will fly faster than the speed of sound and beyond the eye of enemy radar with its single-wing stealth design, and UK officials hope to see it replace piloted planes and current unmanned drones alike.
It's a tall order, but the Taranis already has some nifty technology built into it. In the event the Taranis is spotted and efforts to bring the drone down begun, it can self-evade without input from a controller.
It can also independently identify targets and would only check back with a human controller before initiating an attack. At about $200 million the Taranis prototype isn't cheap, but the RAF believes it's a good investment.
The Telegraph:
Nigel Whitehead, group managing director of programmes at BAE Systems, which has been developing Taranis, said the new drone could change the way aircraft are used by the MoD in the future, which currently uses manned planes for combat missions.
Remote controlled drones such as Reaper are also used by the Ministry of Defence and US military to attack targets ... the Taranis is expected to provide a prototype of a new kind of bomber that will replace piloted planes and the current drones.
Replacing full-sized manned bombers with more than three decades of battle-tested experience is no small feat, and the Taranis, at least this version, isn't terribly large.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
And comes with no conscious objection when it's used against British civilians.
The downfall of drones is the failure to maintain EMCON. Someone will eventually figure out how to ferret out the signal and get a location on the drone. Unless the software exists for the to identify the target in a dynamic environment, there will still be some signals activity going on. So the only way to implement stealth technology with EMCON is to have a manned aircraft.
Drones may still work for now dealing with low-tech opponents, or we think low tech - one will eventually develop a countermeasure.
Just remember that an F-117 Nighthawk was shot down over Serbia by an SA-3 Goa in 1999. Not exactly a state of the art missile at that time.
Thanks for the posting and pix
B-2 me too.
“Who could shoot down an air armada of 300 aircraft, much less 3,000? 30,000?”
Stalin: “quantity has a quality all its own.”
The zigzag landing gear doors are hardly conducive to high speed.
All of the drones that we have that look exactly like this one are
subsonic.
I tend to believe they received some drawings from Boeing.
British drone bomber.
British drone bomber.
Thanks for the ping. I wonder who they intend to use this against.
Argentina perhaps?
The higher it flies, the less aerodynamic it has to be to attain supersonic speed, eh? (electronics don't need oxygen)
It is a longstanding equation, that quality and quantity need to be balanced, because if you go too far in one direction, it makes you vulnerable to the other.
The best example of a time when quantity mattered was during the Korean War, which despite US technology, the Chinese should have won, save for the hemorrhagic hantavirus epidemic that suddenly decimated their forces.
In recent years, technology has dominated, such as in the Iran-Iraq war, where the Iranians had raw numbers that they were willing to expend; and the Iraqis had mechanized infantry, though greatly outnumbered. In that case, a terribly bloody stalemate resulting in a draw.
But I think my point is that all a country would need would be the ability to mass produce cars, along with some off the shelf aircraft engines, bombs and computers. They could discreetly build their air armada for years, and it would be a huge shock to whatever typical army fought them.
lol.
When the landing gear are retracted (which is most of the time, when in flight), they are flush with the rest of the aircraft, minimizing drag.
The zig-zag may be to minimize radar reflections.
That is exactly what the zigzag pattern is for.
It still produces a drag especially at supersonic speeds.
If it is completely flush it doesn’t need to be zigzag does it?
Besides that the intake doesn’t look like a supersonic intake.
Again. This is a copy of our drones. Our drones are close to but not
supersonic. So why would theirs be supersonic and ours not if they look the same?
It looks more like the optimum design.
Seriously, no. All that happens with these things is that the "pilot" is in some safe concrete bunker miles from the action. By autonomous they mean the thing pretty much flies itself, allowing the ground "pilot" to concentrate solely on tactical control.
These systems are nowhere near as good as manned aircraft. As far as I know, none of them have a dogfight capability at the moment but that is certainly being developed. These things are getting better all the time. Odds are they will be the future.
Since Soros and his bankster ilk won't allow anyone to fight back against his islamofascist terrorists and shock troops, that leaves just English football hooligans.
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