Coming Soon: An Unblinking "Gorgon Stare" For Air Force Drones

problem = cost (15 mill!!)

my DIY "Spy Plane" project (also my favorite creation) is made from several RC planes, cut up beefed, up and soldered together. Along with a 20ft antenna braced by a tree in my backyard. Although I havnt risked going above 800 ft (if it loses signal it'll drop out of the sky..and crash) ... equipped with my video camera it can zoom in 500x and...its small! effective! and cheap! if they want more resolution, they can put on a better camera...you could mass produce my kind of "Spy Plane"...its parts are easily replaceable...losing one isnt the end of the world like it would be with the 15 mill plane...no need for protection of any kind whatsoever since its to small a target

so someone please enlighten me...what military requirement isnt met?!

Two words : Payload and range

@technofreakface
close but no. Yes you could replace some of what they do. But you could not as you admit go above 800 feet, and they fly at 10s of thousands. They also have sattelite upload. Eventually if not already they will have autonomous capability so if link is lost they can finish out a mission and return to base.

The optics they have are not only used for visible light like your camera. They have infrared sights as well.. and really possibley a few other bands as well. Starlight cams?

and its not the plane thats 15mil, its the new camera alone.

Use these for border control.

@technofreakface

-How are you going to launch a Hellfire from it? Never mind loading 4 of them (each one weighs about 108 lbs).

Your RC plane might be fun to play with, but as a weapons platform, it definitely ain't. You might be able to tie a grenade to it and figure out a way to "deploy" it...but how effective would that be?

-How are you going to ensure that someone in the area won't hijack your signal with a stronger one and control it?

The Predators and Reapers send and receive encrypted data for control and sensor feeds. The signal from your handheld joystick/controller can easily be replaced with a stronger one locally by the enemy.

-How are you going to transmit the video feed to a ground station for analysts and operators to work on?

You said you put a camera on it. How do you check what's going on? Land the thing first? That's unlikely to be effective, considering people don't wait hours on end standing at an IED after they've placed it there.

I don;t think TechnoFreakFace literally suggests using his plane in war, but rather a small and light system with a camera used only for reconnaissance that would be cheap. Using a plastic plane with the electronics and software to use encrypted data, satellite uplink, and real time video streaming would make this a very effective platform.

However, since the Predator and Reaper can fly at such high altitudes, there is little risk of them being shot down. If we can develop a better training program to avoid planes being accidentally crashed, I say buy as many as we can get, and don't settle for a smaller platform without missle capabilities, no matter how cheap they may be.

Original unmanned recon planes came out into the spotlight in the early 1980's. Think Beirut, Lebanon timeframes. The Israelis took an off the shelf RC plane that used a gas Weed-Eater sized motor (.90 range) and added a live feed video camera. It was cheap and worked brilliantly at the time. In the US, the unmanned programs started small as well but the usual "Scope-creep" turned them into what we have today. If you can do X, then why can't we also do Y for a few bucks more...
The Army and Marines are still fielding some very small, cheap RC planes made out of foam used to look forward and over hills and such. The variety of planes out there is huge really.

Seems pretty cool, despite all the above comments. You know that they've probably already thought of all the glitches and impracticalities and will take care of them.

TechnoFreakFace: What you have there is a version of Desert Hawk; small, short range, cheap and easy to use. The guys are already using it. Don't stop developing it though, look at rpenri's comments above and see what you come up with - you never know what you might be able to provide.

It isn't clear from the article whether $15m was for 2 sensors or each sensor was $15m - I suspect it is $15m for both. Either way, the cost is not that great for what you're getting. WAAS at this level of fidelity is exactly what the guys need in theatre at the moment.

There is already a small, hand-launched mini-surveillance plane that is made of snap-together plastic and capable of being used by troops in the field. It can be carried by one person in a backpack and is controlled by a laptop and stylus. Saw this several times on cable TV's Military Channel.

well yes the point is cheapness...but for a greater range it could be a modular with atachable extra batteries...for lifting power add extra cheap engines (modular also) to customize for every mission
"dont put all your Hellfire missles in the same basket as your 15million dollar sensors and cameras" as my grandmama used to always say
The increased risk come from it being bigger, for it would be quickly spotted by radar while my long distance modular would surely be mistakened for a bird because of its size
sooo put Hellfire missles on a seperate vessel than your sensors and thus decrease detectability, and if one was to be shot down it would not be nearly be as devastating as if it held ALL of the equipment in one craft
the more EXPENDABLE the better...twas said in the article it goes 10s of thousands of feet. Why? So not to be shot down? the higher up you go the costlier and bigger the sensors sooo the greater the chance to be detected by radar!! Im sure that a low flying vehicle could reduce bulk and cost enourmously while making itself a smaller target. It isnt like some terrorists are going to RPG some small thingy in the sky... theyll miss it anyways the size difference would make up for any strategic shortcomings

you know, I will keep developing it pete,

I will quote Musicman24286
"I don;t think TechnoFreakFace literally suggests using his plane in war, but rather a small and light system with a camera used only for reconnaissance that would be cheap. Using a plastic plane with the electronics and software to use encrypted data, satellite uplink, and real time video streaming would make this a very effective platform."
Good summary although they could also be targeting drones for the actual Hellfire missle planes
(less weight on the "missle carrier itself")

rpenri, you say they would take control of it with a stronger signal...first its encrypted and so who would really bother taking a LONG time decoding it if you have dozens of these at the war zone and hundreds more ready to deploy! (with different encryptions) also, encryption codes could be changed evry now and then to....

bear with me here there is a good lesson in the following (although highly nerdy):
I also remember reading a sci-fi, machines infest a planet and evolution occurs pretty much. what the explorers have to face is the sole survivor of this evolution proces, a cm by cm by cm metal triangles that produce a small electromagnetic charge seperately...but together... :O (nerdy)...
trillions of them were nearby...to collect some samples they send out this tank, "hells maiden" since they already had some problems with these triangles to say the least,the tank had everything a sci-fi enthusiast would want, omnidirectional antimatter beam projector (very nerdy) and two meter thick "I cant remember what its called armor" in short...it was crushed, it desroyed millions, billions of these bots, reduced a mountain range to radoactive pool of meted rock but was beaten by the EXPENDABLE masses...

Being sure and being right are not the same thing, being sure and being wrong always leads to differing degrees of both disappointment and tragedy.

The thinking behind this was to be able to record the comings and goings, using thermal imaging, the thermal signatures on the ground over a wide area day or night, all weather, 24 hours a day. Let’s use Bagdad as an example. An armored truck is robbed, the thieves get away with millions of dollars and the guessing game starts. Who robbed it? Where did they come from and where did they go? Your guess is as good as mine. We just don’t know all the answers. But by recording everything that’s happened on the ground in thermal you can roll back the footage. Date, time and location are known, now you can see the “who done it’s” where did they come from and where did they go.

Not just being sure but being right.

Next example. In the middle of the night one of your soldiers are grabbed and dragged off, date time and location are known; an intelligence officer passes the pointer over one of the thermal images and high lights it. Next the intelligence officer clicks on the track mode and the computer finds their current location, now the commander on the ground has actionable intelligence.

There are many more examples and at 15 million a copy this is more of a deal of then you’ll find anywhere else.

This is the deference between apples and watermelons, the model plane with a camera is all ready in use, it’s a breakaway device, the wings come off upon impact with the ground. (Already in use.) It comes nowhere close to the combat fighting capability of these UAV’s, and the force multiplying effect it brings to the moderating day battlefield is just second to none, your nowhere near being in the same league, Here’s a link to the pentagonchannel.mil/ copy and past “Pentagon Briefing 23 July 2009”
It’s the top left hand one.

Kind regards.

but.....why does it fly so high up, I understand the reasoning about it not being shot down BUT if its size was cut drasticaly by removal of those powerful engines, It theoreticaly be so small that it would be immposible to shoot down by missle anyway...or even detected by radar, and shouldering a rifle at it would be a waste of ammo...

you're one of those guys that just don't get it. a kid and his toy.

go away son you bother me.

JR Peck
August 28th, 2009 at 2:22 pm · Reply
The first comment on the article page is priceless. Guy wants to know why his home made remote control airplane isn’t as good as a Reaper.