UAVs Log Over 250,000 Hours This Year
One of the coolest things about umanned drones, besides the fact that if it goes down, there is no pilot and crew to worry about, is that it flies in the face of all those Moms and dads who told their kids that playing video games would lead them nowhere.
Haha…Did you know that a guy can sit in a room in Nevada, fly a Predator in the Middle East, hit multiple targets, and be home in time for dinner with the wife?
From a Wired article by Noah Shachtman:
How important are drone’s to today’s armed forces? In 2002, the U.S. military’s unmanned air force flew a total of 30,000 hours. Last year, that total rose to 160,000. In 2007, the number of robotic flight hours should peak at over 250,000 — an increase of more than 50% in just a year, according to a recent Defense Department presentation.
Remarkably, that figure doesn’t include the small, hand-launched drones which account for more than 80% of the military’s robo-plane fleet. Instead, it’s the bigger unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs — Global Hawks, Predators, and the like — that are flying all those hours.
And with more use comes more money. Spending on UAVs has gone from $400 million in 2002 to more than $2 billion next year to an expected $3.5 billion by fiscal year 2010.
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Hell yeah! best invention in a while..Its a spy plane with no human pilot, can stay airborne like 24 hours straight and can also blow shit up. couldnt ask for more
December 17th, 2007 at 11:44 amand when i say no human pilot of course i mean no human pilot in the cockpit
December 17th, 2007 at 11:44 amKurt;
December 17th, 2007 at 10:46 pmthe day of semi- and wholly-autonomous UAS’s is also almost upon us. Little mini-HALs in the skies.