• Troy
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    8 months ago

    $41600 per drone? I mean, wow, these are not the cobbled together types.

    • remotelove
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      8 months ago

      The majority of the drones will be highly effective first-person view (FPV) drones. The package will also include 1,000 one-way attack drones, researched and developed in the U.K., as well as surveillance and maritime drones.

      The prices for the drones are not equal. I am guessing their maritime drones are the expensive bit because of their range and capabilities. This article from last September says they are about $250k a pop: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66373052

      Even just one Russian ship loss would offset the costs for all of the drones. (How many submarine conversions does Russia have now?)

      • Troy
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        8 months ago

        This is a fair take. Those marine drones are doing amazing work.

        Somewhere in a timeline with an alternative timeline in Imperial Japan, there’s a guy going “what if we didn’t have to put pilots in our flying bombs…”. And a bean counter is figuring out if that’ll save money.

        • remotelove
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          8 months ago

          That was actually being developed around that time, just not by the Japanese from what I am aware of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aphrodite

          Besides what is in that link, I believe there were several other similar things going on between the USAF(or equiv. I don’t think the USAF was formed at the time.) and the RAF.

      • Deebster@beehaw.org
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        8 months ago

        Those marine drones are five and a half metres long - so they’re like speedboats, not those little hovering ones or those enormous UAVs.