Down voting because the article doesn’t show any of the designs without (I imagine) watching a video and the site steals your back navigation on mobile to take you to another page.
Actually yes I too couldnt see any pictures on my phone nor get any real info. In my case I couldn’t spot a video either. Just lots and lots of ads. Very low info clickbait, which is a shame because I would appreciate an actual article on this subject :(
A booster drone lifts the operational drone to flight height and speed, releases it, and then immediately returns. And then either the same, or a dedicated landing drone, catches the aircraft and lands it.
So things like the ScanEagle [1], have existed for 20 years. That catapult launcher works a treat, and they have hooks on the wings so you land them by flying into a cord and then the drone just slides down onto the ground.
That is a lot more complicated for something that isn’t needed. These VTOL are for medium drones that currently operate from fields or ships. But not for full sized aircraft which are going to take off from runways. Which would be easier to work like F-35B.
There is advantage to take off vertically close to troops. I’ve been following V-BAT which is tail lander, and competing to replace recon drone that takes off from field. And only needs a couple people to operate.
"There is advantage to take off vertically close to troops"
Of course, it just seems you could launch them vertically, in two stages, so the drone itself is unencumbered by VTOL requirements, and such a system could potentially scale to manned craft.
The problem is that the launch drone is bigger than the drone. And it uses all the same technologies, the motors, the propellers. And the launch drone has to be able to move forward to give the plane drone enough velocity. Just replace the plane drone with some weapons or fuel, and you have a VTOL drone.
The size is important too, instead of having a small drone, you have a small drone and bigger drone. You have to transport the bigger drone, when the whole point was to use a small drone.
It would make sense to have a launch system. The ScanEagle uses launcher and pole to capture it on landing. Or drones that launch from runways with rockets, and then get caught by nets. But the VTOL designs mean that you don't need to any of that infrastructure. You pay a penalty in weight and maybe increased size, but that isn't a problem for these drones where flexibility is more important.
The launch drone(s) only need enough energy for take-off, not the entire mission, and I'm thinking more like a small swarm of launch drones, not a single 'carrier' behemoth.
But as you say, maybe it makes less sense for these kinds of drone.
The idea comes from thinking about aircraft carriers. A carrier with 50-odd planes is $100B+ crown-jewel target, and in an age of drone swarms, massed smart missiles, etc, it must have a fairly short half-life. An alternative might be to launch single planes from small boats with 'virtual runways'. Pure speculation and thought-experiment of course.
Its still the good old artisanal paradigm, we shove it in the pipeline, a subcontractor builds them for a few millions each to spec then we repeat that on failure to perform.
Meanwhile other military only have "standards", you buy of the shelve components, add standardized interfaces and can iterrate and produce ridiculous fast. Drone does not fly or bombs otherwise? Change it, even automated build it, fly it, while darpa hasn't started reading reports on equipment failures.
Glue a off the shelf drone to a off the shelf missile as payload. It comes down to standards again. Replace slow to dev and produce expensive systems with frankensteined, good enough cheap systems.
Stack several drones on top of some old outdated longrange system, have one float a starlink connections for the others. Still cheaper, faster in the field and similar effective compared to those artisanal systems.
Its not only build the best system for the lowest price, but build the best system the others can not copy and deteriorate the glibal strategic situation.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 60.6 ms ] threadThey could consider 2-stage launch/landing?
A booster drone lifts the operational drone to flight height and speed, releases it, and then immediately returns. And then either the same, or a dedicated landing drone, catches the aircraft and lands it.
Kind of a virtual runway.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Insitu_ScanEagle
There is advantage to take off vertically close to troops. I’ve been following V-BAT which is tail lander, and competing to replace recon drone that takes off from field. And only needs a couple people to operate.
Of course, it just seems you could launch them vertically, in two stages, so the drone itself is unencumbered by VTOL requirements, and such a system could potentially scale to manned craft.
The size is important too, instead of having a small drone, you have a small drone and bigger drone. You have to transport the bigger drone, when the whole point was to use a small drone.
It would make sense to have a launch system. The ScanEagle uses launcher and pole to capture it on landing. Or drones that launch from runways with rockets, and then get caught by nets. But the VTOL designs mean that you don't need to any of that infrastructure. You pay a penalty in weight and maybe increased size, but that isn't a problem for these drones where flexibility is more important.
But as you say, maybe it makes less sense for these kinds of drone.
The idea comes from thinking about aircraft carriers. A carrier with 50-odd planes is $100B+ crown-jewel target, and in an age of drone swarms, massed smart missiles, etc, it must have a fairly short half-life. An alternative might be to launch single planes from small boats with 'virtual runways'. Pure speculation and thought-experiment of course.
At last, a reason to deploy a trebuchet.
Meanwhile other military only have "standards", you buy of the shelve components, add standardized interfaces and can iterrate and produce ridiculous fast. Drone does not fly or bombs otherwise? Change it, even automated build it, fly it, while darpa hasn't started reading reports on equipment failures.
Stack several drones on top of some old outdated longrange system, have one float a starlink connections for the others. Still cheaper, faster in the field and similar effective compared to those artisanal systems.