UAV Roundup: Airborne LAN, RoboCopters, ScanEagle Hits 10k
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 26 of September , 2007 at 3:33 am
UAV Airborne LAN
Back in June we covered LANdroids over at OhGizmo; little expendable bots that wander around to create and optimize an insta-WiFi network. In an obvious (and awesome) extension of the concept, Danger Room is reporting that hand-held UAVs are being outfitted as airborne ethernet hubs. The primary use for the ad-hoc network will be controlling other UAVs that are out of easy transmission distance, with massive multiplayer Counterstrike games using up the rest of the bandwidth. The Army has so far ordered some 6,000 of AeroVironment’s Raven B UAVs, which unfortunately don’t seem to be available to fly circuits over my backyard to boost my weak router.
RoboCopters and ScanEagle after the jump.
RoboCopters
According to Defense News, the Fire Scout UAV attack chopper might be heading into active service early. Originally scheduled for a 2012 deployment along with the rest of the Future Combat System, the Army would like Fire Scout in active operation as early as next year. Here are the specs on this bad boy:
The 9-foot-tall MQ-8B has a 172-mile line of sight at its 20,000-foot ceiling. It has stub-like wings and a takeoff weight of 3,000 pounds, including up to 600 pounds of weapons and supplies. It is intended to do surveillance, fire weapons and land on unprepared ground. Its 10.7-megabits-per-second data link can transmit imagery to the mission payload operator. The MQ-8B’s weapon racks can carry the Hellfire anti-tank missile; the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon, a laser-guided 2.75-inch folding-fin rocket; and the GBU-44/B Viper Strike, a lightweight, laser-guided variant of Northrop Grumman’s 44-pound Brilliant Anti-armor Munition glide bomb.
[ Fire Scout ] VIA [ Danger Room ]
ScanEagle Hits 10k Flight Hours In Iraq
Boeing’s ScanEagle UAV has just reached a milestone 5,000 hours of airtime, providing surveillance and reconnaissance to the Australian Army operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. In total, the ScanEagle system has logged over 10,000 hours in Iraq, where it’s also being operated by the US Marines. The fully autonomous drone is launched from a catapult and recovered by hooking itself onto a line suspended from a pole on a flyby (a maneuver I’d like to see), which allows it to operate from virtually anywhere (at sea, for example). The drone itself is 1.2 meters long with a 3 meter wingspan, and features an internal payload bay, 15 hours of endurance at up to 16,000 feet, and a stabilized camera system. It’s also supposed to be “low cost,” but that’s according to Boeing, so I have no idea what it means.
[ ScanEagle ] VIA [ Space War ]
Category: Military
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