>The DefendTex Drone-40 - The round is fired from the launcher in order to get it aloft. To attain flight mode, it deploys four helicopter-style rotors to stabilize, move, and provide lift for loiter.
>It offers 12 minutes of flight time and/or 20 minutes of loiter time. Cruising speed is 20 m/s and range at optimum speed is in excess of 10km.
>Payloads include camera, anti-armor, fuel-air, HE/frag, diversionary, smoke, counter-UAS,
>With these mixed of payload types, Drone-40 can be used individually, paired, or as a swarm, to a variety of effects. For example, a team could launch one or more ISR configured munitions along with a swarm of anti-armor payloads and loiter over an ambush spot, waiting for a vehicle column. With Multi-Round Simultaneous Impact mode, multiple effects can be achieved at once, depending on the types of payloads delivered.
Modern arms have this obsession with making everything be fired out of a launcher of some kind. They've all forgotten that humans have this object-throwing-thing called an arm.
Zachary Gray
But the arms contractors can't charge the military $75,000 for an arm the troops come with as part of their stock build. It's all about that cheddar, user.
Luke Butler
Have you seen the footage or read the reports about grenade qualifying recently? New recruits can't throw for shit.
Adrian Ward
I'd need to see it in action but it's a cool concept, cant imagine its cost effective though
Ayden Lee
I dont understand how it will slow down enough to not break the propellers off when deployed.
Xavier Lewis
if it deployed at the apex of the lauching arc it could probably withstand it. those quad copters can be pretty fucking durable.
Gabriel Cooper
Less propellant too, I would imagine. It has 12 minutes of flight time under its own propellant, you just need to lob it to get some quick altitude and cover some ground in the general direction. As the other user said, it probably has sensors for when it hits the apex.
Then you let it loiter a bit and catch the enemy as they try to relocate or otherwise expose themselves, or you just drop it right behind them if they dont come out from cover.
Hudson Long
>A drone of the same size carried in the same bag could do a better job Biggest problem with conventional drones with a payload of explosives is the weight and the reduced climb rate. Deploying a little quad copter drone conventionally will give your positon away for sure as the drone climbs the first 50 feet straight up for all the world to see. Drones can be built to climb fast but they are loud as fuck due to the high RPM needed.
A launched drone gets fast elevation and only uses its own power for course correction or loitering, not altitude gain.
Cooper Rogers
The question I have is does it just drop on the target or does it reverse thrust into a powered dive bomb? Can it turn corners or get through windows? I mean up, loiter, look and bomb is great and all but this thing has potential. Can it remote detonate or is it a standard 40 fuse? Imagine a vehicle mounted battery throwing up a swarm over an area allowing ground troops to call in shots on the fly never packing the weight or give up position. Its like personal CAS... nice.
Easton Harris
Why does the military buy shit like this when they are still using ARs that have been in service for over a decade?
Ethan White
>I'd need to see it in action but it's a cool concept, cant imagine its cost effective though They have used JDAMs and A-10s on lone gunmen. They take fire from a tree line or a building and don't mess around worrying what it costs to end the thread.
Robert Jones
Dual fuel launches are cool as fuck. It would be stupid as shit to make it climb on electric power when you can just launch it into position and have loiter from there
Grayson Cruz
Imagine a whole Mk 19 belt of these
Isaac Taylor
cannot be used in a 203 or mk19 as the projectile/case is too long. requires m320.
Jeremiah Davis
Because it’s easier to train a couple guy per platoon than everyone in the entire army to use the new equipment.
Grayson Price
>Drones can be built to climb fast but they are loud as fuck due to the high RPM needed. Still not as loud as this stupid thing, so what's your point?
Lincoln Adams
Kill all white men
The good ones get turned into girls
Hail Lenin
Ian Bennett
ineffective, impractical weaponry that will do nothing but try to scam the taxpayer into buying some million dollar contract for shit the military will never find a use for
Jeremiah Gray
How much does it cost? If it’s cheap, marvelous. If it isn’t, then it’s not worth it. Ambushing a vehicle column the old fashioned way works too.
Austin Russell
>Still not as loud as this stupid thing This is a 40mm thump, something routinely heard on every single battlefield in the past half century of warfare. It will go unnoticed in a firefight. The drone will be up in the air far from you when its motors start up.
On the other hand, your conventional hand held drone with a bomb strapped to it will be seen from a mile radius as it struggles to take flight. "hey did you see that drone fly straight up from behind that tree over there on the next hill"?
Obviously longer range drones are very effective and less risk to the operator, and can bomb shit far more effectively, but we are talking drones to be deployed in a fire fight here.
>12 minutes of flight time and/or 20 minutes of loiter time That's not an and/or, you can't use them like that, wtf. Either [you fly for 12 minutes and you loiter for 20], OR [you fly for 12 minutes or loiter for 20 minutes] for a maximum of 32 minutes in the first case
Chase Howard
>All this for the low low price of $375,000 per round! *proudly brought to you by the patriots at General Dynamics and ATK.
Jace Jackson
Because women are driving the average down
Noah Peterson
For recon it might make sense, all other versions are pointless trash made to milk the taxpayer. Just load a fucking grenade.
Hudson Jones
I can see the value of a grenade that you can fire 5 minutes early and will just hang out in the air until the target shows itself But again where's the advantage compared to the thing just taking off as normal? I can't imagine the efficiency gains you get from not having to design the thing to be fired from a mortar tube wouldn't outweigh the energy you lose getting to altitude.
Ryan Sullivan
>Flying bombs with 12 minute flight times Great. >Putting them in 40mm no doubt Jacks up the price, makes them gimmicky to deploy, and adds zero functionality
What is the advantage of launching a drone from your gun, as opposed to launching it the regular drone way.
Christopher Green
>But again where's the advantage compared to the thing just taking off as normal? If you're close enough for a firefight, there's a good chance you can see and shoot down an enemy drone which is taking off from ground level. You aren't going to be easily shooting down a 40mm grenade.
Luis Butler
Do you know how much energy it takes for a rotorcraft drone to fly 10 km? These things are incredibly inefficient. Also, a rotorcraft has to work harder the higher the altitude. The opposite is true for fixed wing jet drones. Electric quad rotors sweet spot are stationary in thick air. Getting them in that spot uses all the juice. This thing makes sense and wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve run trials and proven its efficacy
Looks like they are running off-the-shelf for just about everything. Should be cheap and easy to knock out in large numbers.
Eli Hall
>a team could launch one or more ISR configured munitions along with a swarm of anti-armor payloads and loiter over an ambush spot, waiting for a vehicle column.
what if they launch them and then the convoy takes longer than expected to approach? then they run low on battery, now you have to what? fire them off? or tell them to return somehow?
Infantry are gonna love this. Dump it in your launcher, choonk it to altitude jiffy quick because launcher, then guide in from cover. You can even network the things to go together like some kind of Skynet death weapon Aussie drop bear of boom.
Gabriel Ward
Similar remote munitions have self-destructive options, and/or disarm if they run out of power before being used.
Liam Jones
>go through Basic >nearly kill yourself every PT test until you get to your first base >waiver >waiver >waiver >eventually, your luck runs out and you stop getting issued waivers for ingrown toenails or shin splints >fail test >you can fail like 4 times, taking about a year to get kicked out >all the while, continuing to gain weight
Anybody you see like that is on their way out. Max waste size is like 40" in the air force before you get outright PT fails unless you get a bullshit waiver.
Adam Smith
Yeah, I find it hard to believe the improved range from making it 40mm launchable would outweigh the required tradeoffs. Some foldable version of pic related would be cheaper and simple.
But maybe theyve done the calculations and the tradeoffs aren't as significant as Im assuming. Sure hope so because the idea is cool as fuck.
It's some perverse fusion of technologic eras to launch armed drones with atlatls.
Joseph Ward
Grenade qualification was a requirement for graduating basic training similar to rifle qualification but so many females cannot throw a grenade 10 meters or pul the pin in the required time that it is an ungraded event now.
Sebastian Peterson
I guarantee as soon as anyone starts manufacturing purpose built 40mm drones in a developed nation the rate of usage by terrorists and insurgents in third world shitholes against soft civilian targets is going to go through the fucking roof, literally.
They're already making their own, once we've perfected a cost effective solution that's readily mass produced it'll quickly find it's hands into the wrong hands.
Connor Jones
>40 mikemikes
No they've been dropping soda cans filled with HMTD with tissue paper fin stabilization. They're a bit harder to make if you want to reliably hit what you're aiming at and not some random person standing 40 feet away.
Jayden Perez
Not the other user, but these sure as shit aren't soda cans filled with HMTD.
all the more impressive innit? drones are for recce and dropping cheap shit ordenance on shitheads. using what amounts to miniature hovering smart rockets is probably a bit too techy, expensive and impractical at this point still. if it can't all be DIY with cheap chink shit it's not practical at this point, even if it's a version made by/for Raytheon for the .mil - or maybe especially then....
>soda cans filled with HMTD.
I wonder for how good a hollow charge the bottom of these makes....
