Your tax dollars at work.
 

Pretty cool test jig with the X-47B. First flight schedule for December supposedly.

http://www.as.northropgrumman.com/pr...ts/lgm_100.jpg

Sweet!

Which end are we looking at?

*I asked the same question the first time I picked up my daughter's shih tzu

Judging by the visible nose gear cutout and the fact that we can see the four inlaids, I'd say we're looking at the front.

I wonder if that thing is available for parties?


Boeing's entry into the foray is the X-45:

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/x-45a.jpg

Now, is it just me, or does that look like something that the Canadian Air Force would use in South Park?

Keep playing those video games kids. Soon you'll get to use those skills to kill REAL people!

X47B render

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_cTaLGgz4Ru8/Rr..._coastline.jpg

X45

http://www.air-attack.com/MIL/_EXP/ucav/ucav_header.jpg

That was my thought when they started hanging ordinance on the Predator.

Thing is, this new generation of aircraft are designed around an autonomous mission. IOW, they don't even need a pilot on the ground pushing a joystick. You just load a mission profile, drop it into the catapult, and it goes off and kills the enemy all by itself, then returns to the carrier, lines up, and does a trap landing all without human input.

Who here wants to make a prediction on when we'll see the first robot vs. robot combat action?

I'd say around 8-10 years from now but its probably going to be much sooner.

Actually, something just occurred to me here. And the yung'uns probably won't understand.

http://news.hdreview.co.uk/wp-conten...tarfighter.jpg

http://datacore.sciflicks.com/the_la...r_large_01.jpg

http://cache.io9.com/assets/resource...fighter-sm.jpg

2023. No one will have anything to fight back for a while. First picture looks like the rear to me, unless the wings are swept forward... and the control surfaces are on the leading edge. Maybe it has fucked up reverse gear.

that is definitely the rear of the aircraft. note position of the control surfaces.

Yay!

I take it, then, that you remember what the real purpose of the arcade machine was?


Yeah, that's going to be the determining factor. China and Japan are probably both capable, but neither have maintained a really significant Air Force in recent decades, nor do they have a good reason to attack their #1 export market. If the USSR were still kicking I'd say that maybe their client states might end up with a few, but right now they're having a hard enough time keeping their sub fleet in service, much less building autonomous killing machines.




You may be right. I'd been going by the shape of the landing gear bay and what I took for the engine intake, however from some other pictures, the former actually appears to be the arresting hook compartment, and the latter is pretty much symmetrical to the exhaust outlet.

It does, however, have leading-edge control surfaces. They're called "inlaids."

Oh yeah, I forgot, isn't this ship based? I guess it would need an arrestor hook to be tucked away. I honestly haven't looked into this plane much. I'm usually an aviation nut, but this one just kind of slipped by me. Damn how far we have come since WWII. Thats one of the only good things about war, it drives technology double time. Hell, even for 25 years ago that thing looks like a space ship, something Jim Bob would describe seeing fly over his corn field.

hmmm. MY tax dollars is right: 47% of households owe no tax - and their ranks are growing - Sep. 30, 2009

I just paid for 6-new homes in Louisiana due to a loop-hole in the grant program that permits local governments to wipe their asses with tax money. Its par for the course.

Just more proof that the current system unfairly discriminates against lower-income families.

Wait...

What?

How does anybody wind up paying ZERO tax?

(and how the hell do 9% of households in the $75k-$100k bracket wind up with no federal income tax liability? That one I genuinely do not understand.)

maybe they're paying off 1980s era mortgages with 13% interest rates? that's a lot of tax deductibles.

Getting back on target (ironic since this is the BS section), my dad works for Insitu, a leading UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) manufacturer. The stuff he does is pretty cool, I'm trying to get a job there. Apparently their newest design has a new engine that keeps randomly stalling out midair. It's a carbureted RC engine apparently so not a lot of data logging. This is 2009 guys, let me put a MS in that thing. Anyways they don't have any ordiance on it yet. Key word, yet.

That would be a cool solution! And to know that you would be helping the troops, AND getting paid... Win + Win =MFWin.

Man, we are totally screwed when Skynet goes global...

I was talking to a guy the other day that works for Grumman. He is on the globalhawk program. It's a UAV, which I knew, but I didn't know that it is autonomous. It flies without data links to a ground based pilot.
They load a mission profile, and it flies it. He says it's been hard to test in the US because it can't respond to ATC commands ("globalhawk, please descend to 23,000 for traffic...").
They have spiral straight up from the airport until they are way above flight patterns, and do the same on the return.
It is equipped to carry missiles, and make autonomous fire decisions. Amazing.