Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works Is Cooking Up A Revolution In Drone Technology

autonomous sword

" their getting smarter now..."

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
If they want to impress me, they need to build an ARMORED UAV airframe around an Avenger cannon that has VSTOL capability or a Pion beam cannon. THEN I would be duly impressed

Lol, the new unmanned A10 huh?

That's what it sounds like, but with major upgrades.

Helicopter pads or short runways, avenger cannon. Armor!!!

I am not familiar with the pion beam cannon, what is that.

Imagine an A10 with VTOL like on GI Joe, its already a beast.

With VTOL, it would be a monster.

Now add same thing but new air frame modern armor possible stealth probably faster speed....

That sounds like a pretty bad bird.

I LOVE LockHeed Martin! They are the future of technology, if only they can use it for the good, and I believe that they can and will. There will be a turning point soon, you will see.

a reply to: johnwick

It's a type of theoretical energy weapon I heard about on this forum.
YES it IS what I and my fellow front line guys need
We would call it a "butcher Bird"

a reply to: johnwick

Right now almost none. There are no A2A UAVs flying. They're all long endurance ISR platforms.

I've seen a couple bad ass multi-modal designs that should make the war in the Pacific interesting to watch.

This comment always seems to spring to mind regarding autonomous technologies:

" So long as men meet in battle, there will be bloodshed.
Bloodshed will ever keep up barbarous passion. To break this fierce spirit, a radical departure must be made, an entirely
new principle must be introduced, something that never existed before in warfare•a principle which will forcibly,
unavoidably, turn the battle into a mere spectacle, a play, a contest without loss of blood. To bring on this result men must
be dispensed with: machine must fight machine. But how accomplish that which seems impossible? The answer is simple
enough: produce a machine capable of acting as though it were part of a human being•no mere mechanical contrivance,
comprising levers, screws, wheels, clutches, and nothing more, but a machine embodying a higher principle, which will
enable it to per form its duties as though it had intelligence, experience, judgment, a mind!

Taken from:
www.bibliotecapleyades.net... asinghumanenergy.pdf

Oh and just for the record, they're not drones dammit.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Oh and just for the record, they're not drones dammit.

Aye, they have feelings too! Time to call them "Intelligent partially manned aerial vehicles" IPMAV

a reply to: grey580

Hypothetically - ....[cough, cough]

There is technology that is used in a few of our satellites that has recently been transferred to those responsible for the drones.

It is a severely "cut-down" version of what exists in the satellites as the drones don't have the computing power on board due to size restrictions of the drone.

It does not control the drone,. Rather, it "steps up" and takes over when there is an event that requires a very quick decision - i.e. it would take too long for those controlling it to understand the situation, have 2 or 3 people figure out what to do and then send those commands to the drone.

In those cases it acts. And so far so good.

Is it AI? Yes....but it is more of an idiot savant. The tech in our sats is far, far more sophisticated.

You gotta love the NRO.... www.nro.gov

They hide in plain sight.

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
a reply to: johnwick

It's a type of theoretical energy weapon I heard about on this forum.
YES it IS what I and my fellow front line guys need
We would call it a "butcher Bird"

Pion laser i think is in Ace combat series of games. Instant on target point and click bam hit. Projected ion cannon. LEts just say it slags airplanes in seconds.

a reply to: yuppa

Wonder how tanks would fare?

a reply to: cavtrooper7

Pions & Kaons are interesting. Some Pion & Kaon Mesons occasionally break down in odd ways unlike many other particles and violate CP symmetry in turn giving off small amounts of Anti matter. Thinking tanks would be toast.

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
a reply to: yuppa

Wonder how tanks would fare?

one word answer... "puddle"

And then stick this puppy on
The argus camera
And this is the tech they let you see!

Zaphod yes the sentinel operated out of Kandahar saw it 3 times on night flights, always very quiet
Had a capability visit to the containers and hangars but wasn't alowed in the eastern most one at that time, the beast was sleeping my guess

A few posters have mentioned directed energy weapons, zaph you may know more than myself on this but essentially most drones have a direct energy weapon contained in the optics. The IR laser has been shown to pre detonate IED' and have "potential weapon applications" And that's from a pilot ....with the addition of " but we can't use these systems in this role due to certain conventions" with that grin we give each other
But meh ....who knows maybe just a jockey talking bull?

a reply to: AlphaPred

There's at least one more that operated in that region, possibly two that are still hiding. I have a pretty good idea of the planform of one, but haven't seen anything to exactly match it.

I've heard a few things they can not do with targeting lasers that made me wonder.

a reply to: AlphaPred

I love Monty Python.

a reply to: AlphaPred

I worked on a video compression project for the Australian DSTO which was to compress the feed from the Star Saffire III through a datalink to the guys on the ground.

Imagine the data required to send 3.21 gigs watts of live stream! On top of what folk on this thread are saying about UAV bandwith.

I wonder if a step change in data transfer is on the cards?

Also, with the compression project, we leaned heavily on essentially home brew computer programmers, at the time, H.264 and other compression tools were all open source, probably designed by file sharers to move large software over small pipes, the bleeding edge was not military. I wonder if mobile phone, Internet, media compiles, space companies or military are at the bleeding edge of data transfer?

originally posted by: antar
I LOVE LockHeed Martin! They are the future of technology, if only they can use it for the good, and I believe that they can and will. There will be a turning point soon, you will see.

Lockheed has not made one plane right in how long? The SR-71 was the only thing they made lately that was great. Every plane since has had major problems and very very ridiculous fixes. Don't even get me started on the F-35. It uses its fuel to cool the electronics and Computers on it. So if it sits on a hot runway like say Florida, it will overheat, kill the electronics and computers just before it catches on fire!! Lockheed's solution, paint the fuel trucks white so the fuel is cooler before it goes in the plane LMAO!!!!

The dam plane will not even survive in the mid-east AT ALL.

Every plane that Northrop or Grumman has built, has been known world over as a great plane and just a pure bad ass. No major issues and or ridiculous fixes that will keep the planes from doing what they are advertised to do.

Having said that, the Raptor is a good plane that can be great if Lockheed would stop being so greedy and just fix all the systems that are not up to par in a quick manner, not fix one little thing by fiscal year 2017.

The only fighter that Lockheed has had success with in the last 50 years was the F-16 but that took almost a decade to get right and it was not even their baby, It was a General Dynamics designed aircraft. They had some great planes in WW2 and built the F-104 but that is about it.

Northrop Grumman has built so many great planes its a pain to list them all. 43 aircraft in service today alone by the U.S.. Just a few of the Great planes are the F-14 Tomcat, The A-10 warthog, The Beautiful Nation killer B-2 Bomber, The EF-111 Raven. Countless UAVs that are stealth and actually work. The new RQ-180 and The Navy's new X-47B, Global Hawk, MQ-4C Triton, A6 Intruder, EA-6 Prowler, F-11 Tiger, The Navy Hellcat and Avenger bomber from WW2 and The F9F Panther being the first swept wing jet fighter for the U.S. Navy. There is also many other current utility aircraft as well as the E-8 JSTARS.

a reply to: Patriotsrevenge

Northrop didn't build the E-8, they installed the systems on it. The X-47 is a technology demonstrator. The B-2 in 2012 had a 51.3% mission capable rate, which hasn't come up much since then. It was 56.9% in 2014.

What problems with the F-22?