Thursday - December 15, 2011

Blurring The Line

As the military scrambles to deal with a U.S. spy drone lost in Iran, it was revealed that the U.S. Air Force has bought a cutting edge, jet-powered stealth drone—and plans its immediate deployment in Afghanistan.

But the brand new drone—an armed model from General Atomics designed for strike as well as reconnaissance—was ordered months ago, well before the crash of the stealthy Lockheed-made RQ-170 Sentinel that remains in Iran, the USAF said in a statement to aviation website FlightGlobal.

“This aircraft will be used as a test asset and will provide a significantly increased weapons and sensors payload capacity on an aircraft that will be able to fly to targets much more rapidly than the MQ-9 [Reaper] UAS,” the USAF said.

Developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the Avenger—also known as the Predator C—is the upgraded successor to the Predator and Reaper drones with significantly greater firepower, speed and sensor capabilities.

It also has an internal weapons bay and is capable of carrying 2,000-pound missiles.

December 15, 2011: The U.S. Air Force recently announced that they were sending an Avenger UAV to Afghanistan. This jet powered aircraft was initially known as “Predator C” and took its first flight in early 2009. The air force has been working on buying an Avenger and getting it to Afghanistan for the last five months.

Development of the Avenger began nearly a decade ago. The first flight was supposed to have been four years ago, but there were technical problems that kept coming up. Apparently it was worth the wait, as the U.S. Navy was impressed and particularly interested in using Avenger to replace the soon-to-be-retired EA-6Bs in their most dangerous attack missions. The air force likes the ability to arm Avenger with a smart bomb, including the 900 kg (2,000 pound) GBU-34 penetrator version.

Avenger is 13.2 meters (41 feet) long, with a 20.1 meter (66 foot) wingspan and built to be stealthy. The V shaped tail and smooth lines of the swept wing aircraft will make it difficult to detect by radar. There is a humpbacked structure on top of the aircraft, for the engine air intake. There is an internal bomb bay to hold about a ton of weapons, or additional fuel to provide another two hours of flying time (in addition to the standard 20 hours endurance). Avenger appears to be a larger, jet powered version of the five ton Reaper (Predator B). The 4,800 pound thrust engine is designed to minimize the heat signature that sensors can pick up. Total payload is 1.36 tons (3,000 pounds) and total weight of the aircraft is nine tons. Cruising speed is 740 kilometers an hour [460mph]. Each Avenger costs about $15 million.

These drones keep right on growing in size, power, speed, capability, and cost. This latest one - latest that we’re being told about, at any rate - is the size of a jet fighter, flies faster than any WWII era fighter plane, and has a a considerable ordnance load. 3,000 pounds is a whole lot of Hellfire missiles - more than 2 dozen, including mounting racks and wiring. Plus it can stay up in the sky all day and all night.

Think this is big? There is another one waiting in the wings that’s several times larger. The Global Hawk looks very much like an Avenger C, but it has the wingspan of a 737-900. A “spy drone” the size of an airliner! That one can fly at 500mph at twice the altitude of a commercial jet, and go from coast to coast more than 5 times on one tank of fuel.  This is not a paper daydream; the Global Hawk exists and is already flying. The thing has already flown non-stop from California to Australia; it can stay up for more than 30 hours at a time. God only knows what kind of bomb load that one could carry. Cost? 10 times more than you’ll ever earn in your entire lifetime, but what’s money to the military? The sky’s the limit, and these drones can fly really, really up there. $40 million each, plus as much in avionics gear as you can dream of; easily another $40 million per drone.

I’m starting to wonder if we even need an Air Force any longer. Or pilots. Maybe all the Blue Shirts will be replaced by legions of video game junkies sitting in darkened rooms somewhere, plugged in to their consoles and joysticks. They’ll get all the big jobs, the spooky stuff and the alpha strikes, and actual human pilots will be relegated to flying cheap little propjet planes for mop-up missions. Is this a good thing or not? I’m not really sure. Is “no risk warfare” the drone wave of the future? We’re not the only country doing drones. Everybody is, even Turkey. We will start seeing anti-drone drones soon? Mega-drones and micro-drones? Is this a whole new way for the militarys of the world to waste money, another “dreadnought race” up high in the sky?

The Avenger, unlike the larger Global Hawk, can operate from carriers. The Avenger uses landing gear from the F-5, [Vietnam era fighter plane] an aircraft of the same weight class. The naval version is now called the Sea Avenger.

The Avenger is expected to deliver about 85 percent of the performance of the Global Hawk, at less than half the price. To compete with this, there is a “Global Hawk Lite” in development. The Avenger is designed to fly high (up to 20,000 meters/60,000 feet) and cross oceans. Until 2009, the Avenger didn’t, officially, exist, and was a “black” (secret) program.

How soon before the local police have them? That’s the new, post-911 rather militarized police, mind you. Your neighborhood cops with their assault weapons, body armor, and armored vehicles. The guys portrayed on all the TV cop dramas as having instant access to all your personal data and to every security camera in the country, of which there has been an infinite proliferation thereof. The Border Patrol is using drones already, and they are probably armed ones. The answer to that How soon question is quite frightening, because the answer is “it’s already happening”, for crimes as major as 6 stolen cows. There’s a humorous YouTube video out there somewhere, showing a road with a No Speeding sign ... some car zooms by and drone pops up and blasts him. Aside from the use of excessive force, that isn’t really all that far fetched at this point.

No risk warfare is a kind of ultimate power, and we all know what happens when you give someone ultimate power. Especially if they were already pretty damn corrupt to begin with, or at least traveled in a world where such levels of corruption were very commonplace.

Have we gone too far?

Posted by Drew458     on 12/15/2011 at 12:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Military •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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