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A friend thought they were the same size as a basic toy drone… like frisbee size. And he was all, “how can something so small drop an explosive so powerful that can destroy a small house?”
facepalm bruh
There’s no banana, so we can’t be sure.
…and probably smaller too. https://www.cnet.com/science/heres-the-tiny-drone-the-us-army-just-purchased-for-soldiers/
[Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk)
General characteristics
* Crew: 0 onboard (3 remote: Launch and Recovery Element (LRE) pilot; Mission Control Element (MCE) pilot and sensor operator)
* Capacity: 3,000 lb (1,360 kg)
* Length: 47 ft 7 in (14.5 m)
* Wingspan: 130.9 ft (39.9 m)
* Height: 15.3 ft (4.7 m)
* Empty weight: 14,950 lb (6,781 kg)
* Gross weight: 32,250 lb (14,628 kg)
* Powerplant: 1 × Rolls-Royce F137-RR-100 turbofan engine, 7,600 lbf (34 kN) thrust
Performance
* Maximum speed: 391 mph (629 km/h, 340 kn)
* Cruise speed: 357 mph (570 km/h, 310 kn)
* Range: 14,200 mi (22,800 km, 12,300 nmi)
* Endurance: 34+ hours
* Service ceiling: 60,000 ft (18,000 m)
I think the OG Predator surveillance drone, that used a propeller, is about the size of a Cessna with longer wings.
We see these a lot over Syracuse, NY. They fly them out of Hancock iirc.
It’s like starbucks, you have Demi drones, Grande drones, and Trenta drones.
The Global Hawk is massive compared to the other drones.
Consider the fuselage of that aircraft to be about the size of a city bus, for scale.
Also smaller than you thought, more submerged than you thought, older than you realized, probably dumber, definitely smarter
So how long before we don’t need pilots for commercial airliners?
“Drone” just means it’s unmanned. It’s still fully fledged aircraft.
That makes sense. When I had heard about drones costing millions of dollars I was confused, because I had thought they were just small things
Needs to carry bombs big enough to take out an entire school or wedding
The Army have those tiny surveillance drones ‘bout the size of a bug.
Smallest drones? In Ukraine, they modified civilian drones to drop hand grenades and small armaments on bunkers and soldiers. I even posited on the r/Ukraine that if you could get a grenade or small armament down a ship’s exhaust pipe, you might be able to disable it.
I’m imagining it’s like a modern phone. Open it up and 2% of it is essentially magic. Processors and imaging and storage, crazy shit.
And the other 98% of it is just power storage for those functions that wouldn’t be needed at all of we could just plug it in.
Any insight from those smarter than me on why these would need to be so big?
Unless munitions are this large and can you carry that many on 1 relatively small jet engine like this one?
This is not a drone, it’s (UAS) Unmanned Aircraft System. Have seen something similar during my service in IDF ( Israeli Defense Forces)… those boys are big…
P.s.
In some articles they do refer to those systems as “drones”, however, this is incorrect.
That’s a Global Hawk. It’s designed to go up to 60,000 Ft and stay there for up to 30 hours. It can surveil vast swathes of territory.
There’s more than one type. Many are smaller.
4 billion dollars
“That’s not a moon…..”
How else would you expect them to be able to carry all the missles and shit that they have?
You’re probably thinking of the first generation predator drones. They were much smaller and more human scale. The design of US military drones haven’t changed much but they have gotten larger like this Global Hawk
It is actually being towed by a remote control car…
It’s full of missiles to target civilians.
Psh, I worked on those 15 years ago. They’re real uavs with 130ft wingspan. Their imaging is incredible.
I’m not American so can I ask those who are, would you rather have the world’s most impressive military or the world’s second most impressive military and free healthcare?
You can’t rain democracy, freedom, and Christianity down on brown people from a DJI drone.
Well it’s like $129m so it better be big
One of these takes off from Sicily almost every day, flies to The Black Sea and runs a racetrack pattern back and forth over water all day at between 50,000 and 60,000 feet. I assume it is keeping electronic eyes and ears out over Ukraine and Russia from just outside their airspace.
Flight name is usually FORTE then a number.
It’s not a secret mission because they leave the ADS-B transponder on and it is trackable on any ADSB website like FlightRadar24 or ADSBExchange.
They didn’t shrink down a plane to remove the pilot.
They removed the pilot to make room for more ***FREEDOM.***