Feral Jundi

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Aviation: Drone Archer Weapons– The MBDA TiGER Tactical Grenade Extended Range

     This weapon sounds very cool, and it is a real life version of exactly what I was talking about in my ‘drone archer’ post.  With a UAV like this, you could give a platoon or squad some very interesting options on the battlefield.

     The first one that came to my mind, was the idea of taking advantage of these small little engagements with the enemy.  If you can keep an enemy machine gunner or whomever busy with return fire, you could have two or three drone archers flying TiGERs right on top of the guy in order to solve that problem.  Better yet, you could use these TiGERs up to two miles away and solve problems from strategically positioned drone archers with access to a ‘quiver team’ (truck load of TiGERs and support crew). These crews could also fly TiGERs up to the front line to feed the drone archers plenty of arrows to use.

     What I really liked though, was the guidance systems. Supposedly it has GPS guidance, and you can use the camera in the nose for more precise targeting or last minute changes to an attack.  That is crucial, because if your target is running or tries to fool the drone archer, the TiGER could be stopped last minute and then flown back up for another attempt at a kamikazi attack. With precision guidance and a ‘top down attack’ with a small one pound warhead, I would also say that collateral damage is minimized to the extreme.  That would make this a good COIN weapon. And hey, it still has a camera which makes it a standard UAV as well.

     Swarming these things is another option that would take some figuring out. If the company created a bunch of practice TiGERs, then military units could experiment in exercises about how best to use these things.  I really think some radical platoon and squad level tactics could evolve from the use of such a weapon. It is also cool that the company is putting some ‘elephant chisel’ mechanisms on the TiGER and I would be very interested if the feeds are encrypted or not.

     Finally, I would not be surprised if MBDA has a mobile application to integrate this drone with an iPhone or similar device. Tactical Life did mention that laptops or handhelds are being considered. That would put this weapon on the PMC 2.0 list. –Matt

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TiGER Tactical Grenade Extended Range. Photo by Tactical Life.

TiGER Tactical Grenade Extended Range 

TiGER is a small, man-portable, hand-launched, extended-range weapon designed for a rapid response employment to protect deployed troops.

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Friday, March 12, 2010

Aviation: Drone Archer Weapons– The Hexacopter

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Aviation: Resupply By Robot? UAV Competition Heats Up

     This is cool.  When I was fighting forest fires back in the day, I worked on a couple fires where they used the K-max. It’s a funky helicopter, and that would be very interesting to see that aircraft as a UAV for resupply.

     I really think this concept is one that could revolutionize the way we do business out there in the war. I could see a unit’s drone archers using these things to transport people and gear into strategic positions in the mountains, as well as using these things to transport wounded off of the battlefield. Having an on call aircraft that a unit could control to do all sorts of crazy cool things, would be an extremely valuable tool on the battlefield.  My only advice to the developers is to think ‘Ak 47’ of the sky, when it comes to making it durable and dependable.  The feeds to control the thing must be dependable and encrypted as well, because I would hate for these machines to be captured by the enemy.

   The other point I wanted to make with this craft is that it should always fly with support drones.  That way, the main supply drone could keep flying, and the support ‘killer drones’ could work on enemy emplacements.  Swarms of these things could instantly focus on whatever needs attention, all to support the mother craft so it can reach it’s destination.  Of course everything should have a human interface, and have an elephant chisel in order to kill it.  Mechanisms must be in place to insure there will be no blue on blue incidents, once we get into the business of resupply by UAV. –Matt

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K-Max being controlled by a drone archer.

Resupply by Robot? UAV Competition Heats Up

By Jack Mann

March 3rd, 2010

Resupplying combat troops in Afghanistan is a dangerous, slow and increasingly expensive undertaking.  Moving a truck filled with supplies 50 miles could require as many as 100 Marines, most of them to provide security, and take about 24 hours, according to DefenseNews.

Of course, it’s a lot faster to deliver supplies by helicopter, but that costs almost $10,000 per hour and puts airmen and helicopters at risk.  Airdrops by fixed-wing aircraft are safer, but much less accurate and just as expensive.

What’s a soldier to do? Employ UAVs, say Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Sikorsky.

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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Technology: Israeli Robots Remake Battlefield

“We’re trying to get to unmanned vehicles everywhere on the battlefield for each platoon in the field,” says Lt. Col. Oren Berebbi, head of the Israel Defense Forces’ technology branch. “We can do more and more missions without putting a soldier at risk.”

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    Hmmmm. A UAV per platoon huh?  Sounds like drone archer material if you ask me, and it is usually the Israelis that push the envelope on this stuff. I also posted a small deal on Scout Helicopter pilots being replaced by UAV’s for really dangerous missions.  You know, the ones where they try to draw fire in order to locate the enemy. The Hummingbird, Fire Scout, or even the AH 6X Little Bird UAV would all be good choices for such a mission. –Matt

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Israeli Robots Remake Battlefield

Nation Forges Ahead in Deploying Unmanned Military Vehicles by Air, Sea and Land

January 12, 2010

By CHARLES LEVINSON

TEL AVIV, Israel – Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare.

Sixty years of near-constant war, a low tolerance for enduring casualties in conflict, and its high-tech industry have long made Israel one of the world’s leading innovators of military robotics.

“We’re trying to get to unmanned vehicles everywhere on the battlefield for each platoon in the field,” says Lt. Col. Oren Berebbi, head of the Israel Defense Forces’ technology branch. “We can do more and more missions without putting a soldier at risk.”

In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel’s military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel’s leading weapons manufacturers.

“We are moving into the robotic era,” says Mr. Katz.

Over 40 countries have military-robotics programs today. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world is betting big on the role of aerial drones: Even Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite guerrilla force in Lebanon, flew four Iranian-made drones against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it had just a handful of drones. Today, U.S. forces have around 7,000 unmanned vehicles in the air and an additional 12,000 on the ground, used for tasks including reconnaissance, airstrikes and bomb disposal.

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Monday, January 11, 2010

Cool Stuff: Potential Drone Archer Weapon Or Augmented Reality Video Game?

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