IT MAY look like a model plane, but the aircraft in the hands of these soldiers is playing a vital role in fighting the Taliban.
The £400,000 polystyrene Desert Hawk drone is thrown into the air and flown over enemy positions to provide front-line soldiers with an eye in the sky over Afghanistan.
Click to read article
£400,000 does not buy allot these days.
That must be some special polystyrene. Jesus.
Very special polystyrene. After all, data links, stabilised camera and control systems don’t cost much.
American polystyrene, courtesy of our not very poor friends in Lockheed Martin. Development from 2002, in service in the US since 2003. Of course the “system” includes 6 air vehicles, not just one.
UK initial acquisition costs were £1.8M (but I do not know if more has been spent). It may sound expensive, but £1.8M is not in the grand scheme of things too much for the sort of capability if offers.
£5.2million less than that shower of shit springer that lasted weeks in the stan!!
I think the figure of £400k a piece is questionable. The super soaraway Sun has them down as £40k. Either price could be the wrong one though.
The MoD have been using them for several years. This MoD new piece from 2006. An article from defencemanagement.com in autumn 2009 puts the cost at $13.8million for 144 drones and 18 ground stations.
£400k aint bad.
It aint great, a WiFi dongle, a webcam and a toy plane would bno doubt have been a fair bit cheaper.
But this will fly 12 hours a day for months, for the cost of 1 hrs Tornado flight.
Desert Hawk – we called it the Desert Chicken.
Very very useful, when they could get it to take off, or land it inside the FOB. The Det at the start of the tour couldn’t get it to take off very easily, the next lot, always a smooth take off and always a smooth, gentle landing, right outside the FOB.
But when it was up that thing really made a big difference to our situational awareness.
Oh the stories and videos I have of the Chicken Hawk. They managed to fly one into an ANA soldier up on an ISO (I mentioned an ISO) making a mobile phone call.
Didn’t the USA drop them in favour of Ravens? Now everybody is using either the RQ-11 Raven or Elbit Skylark. Even we are borrowing Ravens in Afghanistan so is this just a case of us having bought too early and now we’re stuck with them or am I missing something?
I’d love to see the breakdown for the datalinks, Camera and control systems.
Bearing in mind that for £10,000 you can buy a HD camera that would be considered adequate for TV work.
So production of a worthy polystyrene small UAV is beyond the capability of British engineers.
@ Brian:
Maybe the polytyrene was 3d-printed by laser, instead of hand-carved by a bloke called Fred in a shed in the West Midlands. That could account for some of the price (though Fred’s don’t come cheap – just think of the price of a pint of Mild nowadays!)
Actually, looking at it again, I think LM have pinched the design of the Wot 4 by Chris Foss http://www.chrisfoss.co.uk/#/wot-4/4538950500. Nice plane, easy to fly, pants in high winds – but then anything that light will be! Just had a thought – maybe we should be using a scale model Spitfire like this http://www.stevewebb.co.uk/index.php?pid=HZPKZ5780&area=Aircraft for front line ISTAR? with a webcam on it Terry Taliban may wonder if it’s a model, close up; or the real thing, far away. Just like in the Father Ted sketch with the cows!
Chicken Hawk has a better camera than HD. Also. It can see in the dark. Woooooooooo…
I think the current one is Mk 4 or thereabouts, its taken a few interations to get this far, it seems its not as simple as it might seem. A key feature is to have the imagery in front of a coy, etc, commander out and about. It seems on the likely side that this sort of capability will last after current operations, the reorganistion of UAVs into composite batteries each operating multiple types is a hint. The micro UAVs hitherto operated by the C-IED guys seem to be moving in as well.