UK reveals footage of 'top secret' drone [video]

bbc.co.uk

20 points·thomc··8 comments

This isn't actually all that secret. It's been published for over 4 years before it even managed a test flight.

Having worked in that sector, the interesting shit is always what you haven't heard about.

The challenge for UAV going forward is to operate autonomously. Stealth is useless if its communications with a satellite are obvious, and almost all drones are useless if GPS is jammed. I haven't found any information indicating that the Taranis solves these problems.

There are two communication lanes here - let's call them uplink (UAV to satellite) and downlink (satellite to UAV). For the uplink, the UAV can use a highly-directional antenna that is virtually undetectable and unjammable to anyone on the ground.

Solving this for the downlink is harder. Blanketing a large area (100km * 100km) or using highly-directional signal could work. Dead-reckoning with "mission plans" would also help.

I wouldn't really expect BBC to get into technical details, especially given that security-through-obscurity would work for at least the first mission.

Google says this article about it is December 2006. http://defense-update.com/products/t/taranis-ucav.htm

It looks a lot like the one the US Navy has created for carrier-based operations - are they sharing technologies like the NSA and GCHQ?

The purpose of this program (the Defence Industrial Strategy) was for the UK to be able to develop these drones independently, but there may have been some technology transfer. The French and German governments did the same with the nEUROn.

I bet it is also capable of launching precision air strikes in /friendly/ territory...

What do we do to make sure these tools are not turned on us?

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