DailyDirt: Weapons In The Sky
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Completely autonomous drones that can decide who or what to strike are still many years away from becoming a reality, but the military has already developed various unmanned aircraft that it's been using primarily for gathering intelligence (rather than for attacking targets). Here are a few more examples of some of the high-tech flying weapons that exist today.- The $1.8 billion prototype Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator was recently launched into the air from a catapult. This marked the first-ever catapult launch of a drone from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. [url]
- The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, the most advanced stealth fighter jet in history, seems to have a problem with suffocating its pilots during normal flight. Since 2008, pilots would frequently and inexplicably suffer from what appeared to hypoxia -- in one case, a pilot hit a tree while landing and didn't even realize it. The cause of the problem was only recently identified as being due to a faulty valve on the pilots' life-support vest. You'd think that after spending almost $80 billion on these planes, it wouldn't have taken them almost five years to figure this out. [url]
- After 16 years and billions of dollars, the "Airborne Laser" project -- a 747 jumbo-jet equipped with a powerful laser that can shoot missiles out of the sky -- has finally been scrapped. Cost prohibitive and impractical, the Airborne Laser would likely have cost $92,000/hour to fly if it had worked. [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: autonomous, aviation, drones, f-22, lasers, pilots, planes, prototype aircraft, weapons
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
France..
There must be other countries making drones now....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
F-22
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Actually...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Actually...
I can also understand why Naval Aviators are hesitant to use the automated system. I personally think that the one who tested the auto-landing system for the UCAS-D has balls of steel to ride an F-18 onto the deck with his hands off the stick.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]