posted on September 22, 2001 08:00:23 AM
These things fly so low and slow you could just about get one with a lucky rock.
The Israelis are way ahead of us on these. They have them that hover on ducted fans for hours and can peek in windows with TV cameras. They paint the bottom blue and hang a little flood light pointing up at the bottom. The drone has a photocell to see how bright the sky is and changes the light so it bllends in exactly with the sky. It can be a couple hundred feet up and you can't see it looking for it from the ground.
posted on September 22, 2001 08:33:45 AM
Since TVs are illegal in Afghanistan I'll bet
that they try and extradite who ever was watching
the monitor for "crimes against ignorance."
My drone plane story was in Desert Storm when
Iraqi soldiers were coming out of their fox
holes to surrender to them when they flew by.
posted on September 22, 2001 08:42:52 AM
They know the orbits of the spy sats and try to move between passes - but of course you can't predict these. And they have better look sideways abilities. Also when you find something you can make it loiter - something again you can't do wit a sat. Also they unnerve the enemy because they know they are being watched.
Next stage is to arm them - then you have a fighter/bomber with no risk to a pilot and a piloted plane can only turn about 9 G's before the pilot breaks - not so with these. They have not admitted having any such armed planes operational at present.
