... Aaaand that's a fifth Brit Army Watchkeeper drone to crash in Wales A British Army Watchkeeper drone has crashed near Aberporth, taking the number of crashes involving the unmanned aircraft to five. Local reports indicated that the unmanned surveillance aeroplane, which is controlled remotely from the ground, crashed in a lane near West Wales Airport at 5pm yesterday. The Cambrian News …
So, does it save money on the project if we keep on crashing them?
I very much doubt that. The contract will probably have either a "take or pay" structure that means the payments to Thales and their fellow bunglers are guaranteed regardless of losses (because lord forbid they should lose out if a few were shot down). Or they'll have a "loss of profit" clause if the volume of work declines from that expected, in which case we save a tiny bit, but they make as much money overall.
MoD Procurement is a name associated with deep and abiding incompetence, and with a long and distinguished history of failure. Their amateurish buyers will be no match for the well structured, professional, experienced and heavily incentivised teams of lawyers and technical sales people doing the selling.
The way to "sew up the pocket" would be to cast MoD Abbey Wood into some other dimension of time and space.
As a Yank I don't see what you Brits are complaining about. Any US programme of this type would easily cost 10-50 times as much.
And let's look at the results. For that billion swords (over twelve years), roughly 10% of the drones have suffered unscheduled dis-assembly and are lost. The rest are presumably still flying around. Okay, their actual combat experience is quite limited, but they do appear to be simple surveillance drones and are basically meant to surveil locally, methinks. ;-/
If you are a government setting up the kernel of a huge future fleet of Eyes in the Sky, using a new tech, you will expect teething issues and new models that fix problems encountered in early rounds. A new tech with a ten percent attrition rate over twelve years is not that ugly, and is in fact barely adequate for acquiring decent failure data!
I'd have guessed at a considerably higher failure rate myself...
Knowing a bit about this stuff.
The chances are the 5 lost where all experimental platforms and are sacrificial test beds. (but still funded by MOD)
The other 49 are probably mothballed somewhere or not even delivered yet.
Anyway I hope thats what is happening else its a cock up. and Thales will have a lot to explain to parliament.
"using a new tech"
Remote controlled aircraft date back to the 19th century (yes, seriously), and have been in routine military use since at least WW2. Even this specific model dates back to 1998. It's a regular small plane with long-established design and parts. Whatever clever parts may exist in the electronics (it seems to be utterly standard radar and visible/infra-red optics, but being military they're keeping the full details quiet), the ability to stay in the air should be utterly trivial - this is not some groundbreaking design pushing the limits of new tech, it's about as bog standard and well established as it's possible for an aircraft to get.
huge future fleet of Eyes in the Sky
<Song>
I am the eye in the sky, looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules, dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
</Song>
Somehow, seems appropriate.
[Wanders off searching for that Cask of Amontillado at the Fall of the House of Usher]
Alan Parsons was lamenting the invasion of privacy, I think Muse convey the brutal reality better....
Killed by drones
My mother, my father
My sister and my brother
My son and my daughter
Killed by drones
Our lives between your fingers and thumb
Can you feel anything at all?
Are you dead inside?
Now you can kill from the safety of your home with drones
@PaulW81
Could you go redo basic sarcasm/silliness?
Do you really think there are people that stupid in the world or especially on the register forums?
Try this one if low brow sarcasm isn't your thing.
What do you get when you cross a mosquito with a mountain climber?
Nothing. You can't cross a vector and a scalar.
Thales will replace the ones they crashed free of charge.
* "sure they won't"
Of course they will. Just as soon as the Government pays out the termination fee for the dead ones - a sum that just happens to match the cost of delivering a new one..
I could do this stuff for a living - or at least I could if I got rid of my morals and ethics..
(And who wouldn't want to get rid of Ethics - apart from Bluewater of course)
The answer is simple. What are Thales fairly good at? Trains. Cut the wings off, fit two bogies, the new Watchkeeper Railway Drone. No more unexpected descents into terrain. No need for some foreign global positioning system. No need, in fact, for abroad at all. Just what Mrs. May secretly wants.
West Wales is the manufacturers centre of operations, and currently where most of the flying takes place as the Army don't feel it's ready for service use and Thales are trying to get to a position where they do. So it's more like development flying rather than training.
The Army's main base for it is Boscombe Down as it's conveniently near Salisbury Plain, although they did a lot of training in Ascension Island on the grounds if something went wrong you'd be really unlucky to hit anything.
"although they did a lot of training in Ascension Island "
Bad. The last thing we need is drones being tested near albatrosses. Apart from the fact that albatrosses are beautiful and harmless, they have extended airborne duration, rarely crash, and new ones are generated free of charge to the taxpayer. Someone might draw comparisons.
> the local council was considering whether to approve a "major facelift" at the airport, which is about 144km (90 miles) northwest of Cardiff.
> It has been the main base for Watchkeeper drones for a number of years,
I would suggest that a part of that facelift would be the words
LAND HERE
painted in large friendly letters on the tarmac.
I would suggest that a part of that facelift would be the words
LAND HERE
painted in large friendly letters on the tarmac.
In English *and* Welsh. Assuming that they don't use Google Translate to do it - in which case the Welsh version would probably end up meaning "This is land"..
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