'The Grim Reaper' by ratfugel
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Description
A quick and dirty attempt to portray the possible future of military aviation! The world’s first serious crewless bomber, capable of carrying 1.5 tons of very expensive munitions, controlled from a desk in Creech Airbase, Nevada and currently operating over Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight to keep us all safe in our beds. (Or so they tell us). All the drawings I found turned out be crap, so once again, it was back to the drawing board, using measurements freely available from the USAF sites. At $18M a throw , which compares quite favourably with the cost of say, an F16, it would appear that pilots (sorry, sensor operators) now have no need to fly, when they can sit comfortably in an air-conditioned comfy environment and bomb anything they fancy, before going off for coffee and doughnuts. (That’s assuming the natives have no radar!)
Comments (8)
Seaview123
Interesting looking picture. Nice work.
chasfh
Cool, and very disturbing...
kjer_99
It's also part of the reason why the people we come to "save" end up hating us so intensely. No system is perfect and "collateral damage" will always be with us. Still, if you are the collateral damage--or your neighbors and loved ones--that is cold comfort. (No pun intended.)
alexcoppo
In addition to coffee and doughnuts, add also frequent chats with Air Force shrinks (e.g. see http://www.armedforces-int.com/news/2008/08/13/usafs-first-uav-fighter-wing-to-be-formed-report.asp). W.r.t. to "collateral damages": each of them has relatives who, after having buried their deads, enlist with the nearest anti-american force in order to exact revenge on whom murdered their loved ones, so, at the end of the day, you have more enemies than you had in the morning. Bye...
Penters
Well I suppose there is no reason why the UAV's can't be scaled up to F15 or even B2 size..as for "collateral damage" or to give it it's real name Killing the wrong people, it's obviously not a good idea, but mistakes or negligence will always happen especially in war. Good commanders may only minimise the risk. Good design by the way
debbielove
Indeed! Things to come...... The RAF has large Remote controlled plane (Reaper's) that spy and drop ordinance on unsuspecting folks now! Just entering service - same or similar to USAF models... Great render. Rob.
Osper
Nice model.
proteus2
Cool image -------------- -As some instructor said years ago,"behind a smart bomb strike,is always a "dumb"spec.ops team buried in the badlands for days." -And as R.E.Heinlein says, until you have a robot that can do the dirty work for you,you'll be needing humans. The pilots era,friends is far from over P