Drone Upgrades Include Bigger Engines, Smaller Missiles
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 21 of April , 2009 at 12:41 am
With the utility and successes that UAVs have had in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, it’s no surprise that UAV weaponry, and UAVs themselves, are rapidly being upgraded to make them more powerful and more versatile. The UAV in the above picture is an Avenger, a heavy-duty upgrade of the now practically venerable Predator. The Avenger is bigger, three times faster than the Predator, can spend 20 hours at up to 60,000 feet, has a much stealthier design, and may be able to operate from an aircraft carrier.
Even as UAVs are getting fancier, their weapons are getting simpler, cheaper, and more efficient. “Spike” missiles are designed specifically for UAVs; they’re just 2 feet long and weigh a mere 2 kilograms each, and half of that is the warhead. The launcher weighs just slightly more, and each missile has a flameless, smokeless solid fuel engine that gives it a range of over 3 kilometers. Spikes use electro-optical sensors that can be locked onto a target, making the missiles fire-and-forget, or a laser targeting system can be fitted instead. Each Spike missile should cost only about $5000, making them dirt, dirt cheap… Hellfire air to ground missiles cost anywhere from 5 to 15 times as much, from what I’ve been able to dig up. Yes, Hellfire warheads are like 20 times more powerful, but sometimes (oftentimes, in anti-insurgent operations) a lot of that firepower just ends up being wasted.
VIA [ Danger Room ]
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Category: Military
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