On Feb 8, 2008 1:53 AM, Samuel Penn <
sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The main advantage here is that UAVs have the potential to be
mass produced in a very short space of time. You can go from
a small number (and low expense) of UAVs in peacetime, to lots
of UAVs simply by throwing money at some factories.
No, it is nowhere that easy.
The cheapest way to build a small number of UAVs is to not build a factory and produce a small number of what could be called preproduction units. If you build the capability to mass produce them, a small number will be prohibitively expensive. An important question is what does the factory do between production runs?
If it sits idle, an embarassing amount of time and money will be spent determining which inactive machinery is actually dead, and/or training inexperienced people to run it. If it is used to produce something else, time is lost to retooling and dealing with the loss of non-UAV production (unless the factory puts out consumer goods between UAV runs, but that still causes diruptions). Part of the reason for district pork barreling is to keep enough production at an aircraft plant to prevent it from closing and having all of the machine tools exported to China (This is not exclusive to any particular industry, or country. I am watching the line next to mine at a suspension parts plant, in Canada, being packaged for delivery to a company owned subsidiary in China, as I work.).
Aircraft cruise speeds have not meaningfully increased since the XB-70, about 40 years ago. The problem with supercruise is that it only really pays off if you do it all the time
Against low-tech troops, the biplane (with modern electronics and engine) is much better than a Raptor as the target can shoot down neither and the biplane uses less fuel in the entire flight than the Raptor uses to leave the runway. The unit cost also heavily favors the biplane in situations where you can get away with using it.
Part of the problem in Iraq is that it is too expensive to fight the insurgents with american troops and no one else is willing to do it (besides Iran, but do we really want them to).