posted on May, 20 2018 @ 06:40 AM
a reply to:
penroc3
The entire notion of the Companion always made a ton of sense to me specifically because it's such a 70s/80s solution.
Though one wonders what sort of performance envelope it might have had. These drones are all piston designs with performance on par with a typical
smaller GA aircraft, which makes sense if they're being launched by infantry in a Vietnam-style situation at targets mere tens of miles away. It
makes a lot less sense as a day-one "door-kicker" solution like the F-117 was, where you'd almost certainly be using it on targets hundreds if not
thousands of miles away.
At the same time though, these designs are all loiterers, which makes sense as it would likely take at least some time to identify/designate targets,
so it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to suggest that the Companion might have also been designed to do it's fair share of loitering. And yet, as a
"day one" solution, it would still likely need to be able to get in and over targets before the F-117s did, even if the orders to do so came in
minutes or hours before it needed to be there.
Part of me wonders if the Companion wasn't something along the lines of a stealth EF-111 that could designate targets, too, not just in terms of
capabilities, but in terms of performance as well.