Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Taranis
The UK Taranis is an unmanned stealth aircraft designed to have the capability to fend off attack, fly deep into enemy territory, deploy weapons or bring back intelligence. It's cost over £140m and flight trials are due in 2011. The wedge-shaped craft is about the size of a BAE Systems Hawk - around 12m long with a wingspan of 10m. Taranis has the ability to take off and fly a pre-programmed mission to as far away as another continent, as well as to identify targets and request permission to attack them, all without human intervention. Specific technological issues that the Taranis designers faced included positioning the craft’s power source within the middle of the body to help make it invisible to enemy sensors across the electromagnetic spectrum. Only British technology and skills were used in its creation, and the result is a craft that the team claims is unique outside of the US.
IMO: It sounds very cheap. And the increased cost is an overspend of about 15% which is pretty good. What more is needed?
IMO: It sounds very cheap. And the increased cost is an overspend of about 15% which is pretty good. What more is needed?
# posted by uv : 4:16 PM
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