Close-up video of Grumman's X-47 flying

[mojo]

The technology that must be in this....

uKEe3SHMtxg

[Justplain]

Obviously the US navy (and usaf) are on schedule to have an entire fleet of robot aircraft. I wonder how much payload these things can carry? They'll probably mount laser cannons when that tech is finally debugged.

Isnt it amusing/annoying how the public, and the white world military, see this kind of tech, thinking that its so advanced, when in the background the black ops have had antigravity spacecraft with plasma weapons for sixty years?

[mojo]

wonder if a person can be onboard? seems like a clear window on one side...

[chancy]

Hello Everyone:
Ok it flies! What's so special about this aircraft?
It has landing gear.
It has an engine and it has to land and take off the conventional way.
It has to fuel up.
I'm not seeing the high tech??
Maybe the video was just to let us see the aircraft fly, land and takeoff?
If this is the future then we are exactly where we were when drones came into the picture.
chancy

[indigopete]

I'm not seeing the high tech??

It's probably aerodynamically unstable for a start, which means that thing would never fly without a ton of software feeding back aerodynamic inputs to the control surfaces to keep it level. That gives it incredibly sharp manoeuvrability not possible in a stable design.

Then there's all the hybrid-automation to allow it to be flown remotely but safely - i.e. it lets a remote human fly it but keeps itself with in a safe flight envolope so that if the human does something stupid it gives itself a chance to not be destroyed.

It's also probably got a millimetre-precision worldwide terrain relief map welded into its "brain" so it knows where it is every second of the flight, kind of like a cruise missile.

Thats just the stuff we know about and can speculate on. It's the stuff that we don't thats likely to be more interesting. Maybe it can do right angled turns ;)

[DouglasDanger]

So what's special is it's brain, not its build ;)

[amor]

What about an equitable Life Human Balance sheet so that we can all live and work in a reasonable, planned, life which provides all of life's necessities in an unstrained manner. We would work to provide this for each other; our blood would not be vampired away by wasteful military toys and wars designed to support the Kings of Money in luxury.