Gremlins

Gremlins sound like a Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

Ummm what's bizarre is that link doesn't mention they probably were widely popularised by Roald Dahl.

Especially since they use pics in the article from his book?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gremlins

Certainly that's what I think of first, over the film. Especially when talking about aircraft.

In the book they were not bad luck demons, more mischievous. Roald Dahl was a fighter pilot.

There’s a Bugs Bunny animated cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series that depicts a Gremlin like the one you mentioned.

Falling Hare (1943)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZElJxTCIsJI

Perhaps they're using that to establish a goal line of sorts? There's also the matter of cost. Eventually diffuse wear and tear from the launches and retrievals is going to cause components to fail at a higher frequency. The scales of 'continue repairing' vs 'buy new one' are going to tip towards 'buy new one'. I'm sure the old one will still be useful for something as well -- perhaps as a target drone.

If they're expecting a 5% loss rate per mission, then there's no point making them last longer than 20 missions. You can also make things cheaper and more durable if they don't have to be designed to be disassembled.

This is the military, where stuff gets routinely destroyed in normal use. It's probably more cost-effective to engineer for a finite lifespan, because even if they were designed to last longer, they are unlikely to.

Honestly, to build for 20 uses means using no metal. Or maybe duct tape and tin foil at best.

In aviation, it’s going to be balsa wood, foam core ( ...and I guess some 3D printing with sparce infill, because darpa).

Basically flying garbage in times of war.

Oh boy! Can’t wait! Take me to the next Iraq!

> What is so different between '20 uses' and 'decades'?

Millions of dollars, that's what. The ability to save costs by designing a limited-use airframe that cuts a few corners compared to a long-lasting airframe and has much lower servicing costs due to its short lifespan, while still being combat-effective within those constraints. Kamikaze aircraft in Japan were much more shoddily built than contemporary conventional Japanese aircraft; they were single use!

> Something cheaper is needed.

And if you can get it below (or in the ballpark of) the costs of shooting it down, that's another huge win.

I just figured recovery could be sky hook or similar, have a cable out there that the drone snags and then it gets pulled in. I cannot imagine the hell of trying to fly in the turbulence behind a C130

> Recovery especially is rather implausible due to the complex aerodynamics and risk to the people on the mothership.

Why not recover the sUAs with a big UAV? You can do all sorts of crazy things re: vehicle design, if you don't need people inside.

For example, have each sUA just dive toward the UAV from above, decelerate to a zero/zero intercept, and cut propulsion, such that it goes ballistic falling past the loading bay; and then have the UAV target the sUA with a net out of its loading bay, catch it, and reel it in. Like a skyhook that assumes an uncooperative peer.

Or, have the sUAs throw themselves at random points on the the UAV's (very thick and solid and ferromagnetic) hull, and lock onto it magnetically, and then have the UAV pluck the sUAs off with external cranes and bring the sUAs into the loading bay. Like a monkey plucking ticks off of itself and eating them.

>You can't have something very small (small enough to fit a dozen in a C-130, so several metres in length at most) which has a powerful turbofan engine and significant range and excellent manoeuvrability and compact stowage.

Why can't you? Wouldn't it just be, essentially, a reusable Tomahawk cruise missile?

It you look at the picture in the article, UAV wings appear to be foldable, so many of them can be stored in smaller space.

> Recovery especially is rather implausible due to the complex aerodynamics and risk to the people on the mothership.

Fly straight up, cut engines, fall ballistic. Maybe even add a parachute. The US recovered spy satellite footage in the 60s this way, with payload falling from space and being caught in-flight. So it should be workable today as well.

Advertising, given huge income from arms sales. Also perhaps generating fear and awe.

During the Cold War we had two government bunkers that only a handful of people knew about in my country.

30 years after the Cold War when Russia opened their soviet archives, it turned out that they were never secret at all.

Programs like this won't stay secret anyway - somebody is going to see a test flight in the distance, or an employee at a contractor will leak.

Announcing it gives the military a chance to control the narrative. If a photographer snaps a test flight and it appears on Gizmodo with the headline "Military testing secret drone swarms to kill us all", there'll be a massive public outcry, a huge negative PR cycle, possible a Congressional inquiry, and in the course of doing damage control the military will have to reveal more secrets than if they just announced the project in the first place.

Americans are not shy about inventing details when they have none, and also have a tendency not to trust either their government or the press.

<Protoss noises intensify>

On the other hand, it's the military who have the money. Jet fighters and bombers came before jet airliners. So, maybe DOD's involvement will bring the Singularity closer.

It's easy for politicians to dispatch robots, no danger of service members being killed. Look at the proliferation of questionable targets and results that cruise missiles have given politicians when they need to make empty threats.

You can definitely argue that drones are a proliferation risk, and also risk conflict escalation. Because there is no pilot on board, A is willing to action riskier/provocative missions against B. B knows it is a drone, so it can shoot it down without loss of human life, and possibly analyse the fragments. A knows B will do this, so uses disposables to probe air defence capabilities. B sends its own drones to probe A's launch site/platform. Et cetera.

So it allows idiot governments to seriously escalate conflicts. I can totally see this in regional conflicts.

The disposable nature with low local expertise requirements might increase sales to poor countries too. While they might not be willing to risk their air superiority totems (MiGs of F-16s) in a border dispute, drones are qualitatively different.