Chinese MALE, HALE (and rotary, small, suicide) UAV/UCAV thread
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
This does not pass the smell test. First of all, Jiutian cannot reach the space (太空).
Even if the aircraft, or should I say spacecraft, could get that high, what kind of missiles or projectiles can hit targets on the ground from 100km above within 1.3 seconds? At that speed, the missile would be able to escape the gravity of the Sun. This should have been a common sense for Mr. He as a fellow of IAA. If he was talking about A2A missiles, yeah, that 1.3 seconds means nothing without telling the range. But Jiutian is not for A2A missions as we know.
And, .
you can ignore large part of it and just concentrate on the expected first flight time. That's probably the most relevant information here.
PeoplesPoster
Junior Member
Fire suppression from the sky.
all for drones, but a 30 round mag isn't going to be doing much fire suppression. explosives seem to be most effective with drones, either dropped or as a suicide drone.
While explosives are certainly effective as widely demonstrated in Ukraine, I wouldn't entirely discount this configuration with small arms and limited ammunition for anti-personnel capability. An airborne platform provides a very different tactical dynamic and changes the calculus regarding what can be considered sufficient ammunition. Being able to maneuver in another dimension -- above and around cover -- and making highly targeted precision fires would use much less ammunition than typical ground-based high-volume suppression fires. It is in the truest sense a higher-dimensional strike a la The Three Body Problem.
I would even go as far as to argue that without any ammunition, such a platform can achieve some amount of "suppression". Going by the book, the goal of suppression is to restrict enemy activity and degrade their capabilities. It's plausible that the mere presence of a drone, known presumably to be capable of firing, would make any opposing infantry reluctant to move out of cover to maneuver at all, especially if they do not have sufficient anti-drone capabilities. Any demonstration of firing ability only serves to drive home this effect.
With a 30 round magazine, a drone like this can loiter and maintain suppression operations for much, much longer, compared to a one-and-done explosive-carrying drone. The psychological impact of the presumed possibility of the drone firing at you would arguably do more for suppression than the actual firing itself.
Not to mention the attrition component - imagine hearing the whirring of drone propellers buzzing about in the dead of night when everything is pitch black. No one could get any rest like that, and you wouldn't even know where to begin to look as an infantryman. Your typical night vision goggles with maybe 45º FOV aren't going to help very much against a small, fast-moving hexacopter (or multiple!). That kind of constant harassment will attrit an insufficiently equipped force, with next to zero risk on the behalf of the operators.
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lcloo
Major
These drones have limited flight time as there are battery powered. They would be lucky if they can spot their target and fire off all the bullets in the magazine before their battery energy drained out.
Also a drone team usually have miltiple drones, they just need to send up second drone while the first drone flew back either their battary is drained or they ran out of ammo. And when the scond drone need to go back to re-armed or recharged, the first drone would be up in the air with new battery and a new magazine of bullets. This is a single drone operation.
And if they deploy the drones win swarm, 30 rounds bullets is hardly a problem.