Quickie
Colonel
If you slow the video down to 0.25 times, you can actually see a dark spot (the bomb itself of course) (at video time 0:22 secs) coming from the top and landed about 1.5 feet from the truck's left door.
Chinese UAV/UCAV development
- Thread starter AssassinsMace
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If you slow the video down to 0.25 times, you can actually see a dark spot (the bomb itself of course) (at video time 0:22 secs) coming from the top and landed about 1.5 feet from the truck's left door.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
The Iraqis are obviously having great fun and success with their new Chinese drones.
I am looking forwards to videos of them engaging moving targets with them, as I believe the CH4 is capable of that as was shown during documentaries on its development.
Anyone have any cost estimates for AR1 missiles? Compared to Hellfire or Brimstone? I am sure these strikes are costing the Iraqis a fraction of the price as it would have using western missiles, but it would be good to have comparative numbers to illustrate the difference.
I think munitions cost especially will be a primary factor for anyone looking into armed drones for actual operational use as opposed to just for lolz. Even the super rich gulf states cannot totally ignore costs, especially operating costs.
I often find the similarities between armed drones and personal printers striking (if you will excuse the pun). The hardware costs a fair bit, but it's the cartriages/munitions that will account for the lion share of the life cost of owning said printer/drone. As such, anyone who has bought or shopped for a personal printer would pay massive attention to the cartriage costs, probably even above and beyond that if the technical specifications of the printer itself, since they all tend to be extremely similar anyways, with any marginal differences hardly ever likely to make any noticeable difference.
If they are not already, the Chinese drone sales teams should be hammering this point home in addition to showing off the technical capabilities of them drones themselves.
As I said before, China could easily build on its drone sales success to break into other high tech fields it was previously frozen out of by the co-ordinated smear campaign of western defence analysts and journalists who are often in the pocket of western and Russian arms manufacturers who see Chinese arms as a massive emergent threat.
Just notice how all the 'you need real combat experience to test and prove a weapons system' arguments have magically all dissapeared now that Chinese drones have operational success under their belts.
Now the goal posts have, through miraculous co-incidence I'm sure changed, with no attempt to analyse the operational effectiveness of Chinese drones (since the videos show pretty good results), other than to cite a few alledged crashes, and instead everyone is hammering on about the supposed technical 'inferiority' of Chinese drones, without providing a single shred of evidence or even any serious logical arguments to justify this. But still it has become accepted 'truth'.
But I digress, the point is, now that nations and militaries have had first hand operational experience with Chinese drones, and the impression is positive (and to some extent, western smearing might have inadvertently helped by setting a low expectation that was smashed, which will leave a stronger impression compared to something doing as you would expect), they will more inclined to give Chinese arms a shot rather than dismiss them out of hand because of the impression they had from all the bad press.
One area in particular that might benefit most directly from China's drone export success would be satellites, especially as China makes larger and longer ranged drones available for export.
Without satellite support, even the biggest and longest ranged drones are limited by line of sight to ground stations and signal strength/interference.
Buying a Chinese communications satellite to unlock the full potential of your new drone fleet is going to be mightily tempting. Especially for Saudi Arabia and it's Gulf buddies, who have wider regional ambitions.
If China plays its cards right, it could potentially corner the super lucrative Gulf drone market to the extent that they won't even be interested in western drones even if all the export hurdles were totally removed.
I actually think the western drone makers should tred a lot more carefully then they current are with respects to pushing for drone sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Let's say they do get the US government to bend over backwards to clear export hurdles. Would the US really be prepared to giving them OTH operational capacity as well? If the answer is 'unlikely', they may be better off not lifting the export restrictions.
Losing sales opportunities because of export restrictions, while frustrating, still allows their paid PR guys in the western press to sing the praises of western kit and extol its superiority to 'inferior Chinese knock-offs'.
However, if the US did bend over backwards to removed export restrictions, and the Saudis bought a batch of US drones, and then went back to buying more Chinese drones because of both the operational costs difference and because China is offering to give them OTH operational capacity while the US drones are limited to LOS range of ground stations. Well, let's just say it's going to be a hell of a lot harder to spin and sell the 'superiority' line, and it would be incredibly easy for other buyers to look at that and take away the idea that Chinese drones are either on par or even better, otherwise why else would 'cost is of no concern' Saudi Arabia be going back to Chinese drones after all the US export restrictions have been lifted and after having operated Chinese drones alongside the best the west has to offer?
As the saying goes, beware what you wish for.
I am looking forwards to videos of them engaging moving targets with them, as I believe the CH4 is capable of that as was shown during documentaries on its development.
Anyone have any cost estimates for AR1 missiles? Compared to Hellfire or Brimstone? I am sure these strikes are costing the Iraqis a fraction of the price as it would have using western missiles, but it would be good to have comparative numbers to illustrate the difference.
I think munitions cost especially will be a primary factor for anyone looking into armed drones for actual operational use as opposed to just for lolz. Even the super rich gulf states cannot totally ignore costs, especially operating costs.
I often find the similarities between armed drones and personal printers striking (if you will excuse the pun). The hardware costs a fair bit, but it's the cartriages/munitions that will account for the lion share of the life cost of owning said printer/drone. As such, anyone who has bought or shopped for a personal printer would pay massive attention to the cartriage costs, probably even above and beyond that if the technical specifications of the printer itself, since they all tend to be extremely similar anyways, with any marginal differences hardly ever likely to make any noticeable difference.
If they are not already, the Chinese drone sales teams should be hammering this point home in addition to showing off the technical capabilities of them drones themselves.
As I said before, China could easily build on its drone sales success to break into other high tech fields it was previously frozen out of by the co-ordinated smear campaign of western defence analysts and journalists who are often in the pocket of western and Russian arms manufacturers who see Chinese arms as a massive emergent threat.
Just notice how all the 'you need real combat experience to test and prove a weapons system' arguments have magically all dissapeared now that Chinese drones have operational success under their belts.
Now the goal posts have, through miraculous co-incidence I'm sure
changed, with no attempt to analyse the operational effectiveness of Chinese drones (since the videos show pretty good results), other than to cite a few alledged crashes, and instead everyone is hammering on about the supposed technical 'inferiority' of Chinese drones, without providing a single shred of evidence or even any serious logical arguments to justify this. But still it has become accepted 'truth'.But I digress, the point is, now that nations and militaries have had first hand operational experience with Chinese drones, and the impression is positive (and to some extent, western smearing might have inadvertently helped by setting a low expectation that was smashed, which will leave a stronger impression compared to something doing as you would expect), they will more inclined to give Chinese arms a shot rather than dismiss them out of hand because of the impression they had from all the bad press.
One area in particular that might benefit most directly from China's drone export success would be satellites, especially as China makes larger and longer ranged drones available for export.
Without satellite support, even the biggest and longest ranged drones are limited by line of sight to ground stations and signal strength/interference.
Buying a Chinese communications satellite to unlock the full potential of your new drone fleet is going to be mightily tempting. Especially for Saudi Arabia and it's Gulf buddies, who have wider regional ambitions.
If China plays its cards right, it could potentially corner the super lucrative Gulf drone market to the extent that they won't even be interested in western drones even if all the export hurdles were totally removed.
I actually think the western drone makers should tred a lot more carefully then they current are with respects to pushing for drone sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Let's say they do get the US government to bend over backwards to clear export hurdles. Would the US really be prepared to giving them OTH operational capacity as well? If the answer is 'unlikely', they may be better off not lifting the export restrictions.
Losing sales opportunities because of export restrictions, while frustrating, still allows their paid PR guys in the western press to sing the praises of western kit and extol its superiority to 'inferior Chinese knock-offs'.
However, if the US did bend over backwards to removed export restrictions, and the Saudis bought a batch of US drones, and then went back to buying more Chinese drones because of both the operational costs difference and because China is offering to give them OTH operational capacity while the US drones are limited to LOS range of ground stations. Well, let's just say it's going to be a hell of a lot harder to spin and sell the 'superiority' line, and it would be incredibly easy for other buyers to look at that and take away the idea that Chinese drones are either on par or even better, otherwise why else would 'cost is of no concern' Saudi Arabia be going back to Chinese drones after all the US export restrictions have been lifted and after having operated Chinese drones alongside the best the west has to offer?
As the saying goes, beware what you wish for.
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
I believe I heard during one of the Gulf wars that a Hellfire runs around $40,000 per.
That's about a year's salary for the average U.S. family back then!
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
A quick search seems to indicate that in 2015 dollars, a single unit of Hellfire is $99,600 USD.
Either way, those missiles are hellishly (hehe) expensive.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
That looks like predator gun camera footage. Note the different target rectacule, and better night vision contrast compared to earlier known CH4 gun camera videos.
What I was far less impressed with was how the gunner had to manually lead a moving target. That meant it was far more down to gunner skill to hit moving targets rather than it being an inherent, built-in capability of the drone itself.
From what I remember of the test footage, the Chinese CH serious drones seemed to have a built-in ability to engage a moving target, where you just kept the crosshairs centred on the moving target, rather than having to eyeball how far to lead it manually.
Quickie
Colonel
The hit at 2:38 seems to be quite a bit off from the target point, about l0 feet away. One can actually see the bomb with the video slow down to 0.25 times.
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