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Did you hear a strange noise passing overhead last weekend? Maybe glimpse a UFO? If so, no need to don a tinfoil hat quite yet — Saturday evening saw the first flight of a stealth drone in Europe (but sadly it wasn’t made in Britain).
The drone that took to the skies is a collaboration project between France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland and Greece (so no language difficulties there, then), and rather catchingly named nEUROn. Though it’s just a prototype that’s unlikely to ever see production, it is still a fully-functioning, flying, all-singing all-bombing aircraft. The idea is that it’s a technology demonstrator, and the lessons learned by making it will help the smorgasbord of countries behind it make a production version at some point in the future.
Though it looks kinda cool, I can’t help but think that it doesn’t quite drip with pure, unbridled menace in the same way that the British stealth-drone-prototype does. Still, it’s flying, and ours isn’t, so I guess they win. For now. [The Aviationist]
Image credit: Dassault Aviation
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Not quite sure it’ll be capable of bombing quite yet (unless it’s photo-bombing
), but still frustrating that we’ve been beaten to the mark.
Well this one still needs humans to tell it what to do, Taranis (AKA Flying Robot of Death) is controlled by an AI and can Identify targets and kill them without humans to tell it too, plus its designed for high stealth so we won’t even be able to find it.
And it can connects to the Skynet satellite system.
Also this is a EU one is a UAV whilst we are developing a UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle), Taranis can fire on other air vehicles.
Not quite – nEUROn is autonomous also, albeit I don’t know just how much work Dassault have put into the target identification & prosecution systems, and it is designed with the intent of carrying a couple of Paveway IVs (or whatever the 500lb weapon of choice is by the time it enters service)
Suffice to say that Taranis would certainly give nEUROn a run for its money, if nothing else in name alone: The aircraft itself is named for the Celtic god of Thunder, and the body overseeing the project is, in true British style, named SUAVE.
Exactly what performance and capability have been baked into Taranis, I couldn’t say, but as they’re performing regular assessments of the control software in flight, I think we’re more than a little ahead of Dassault, even if they have got theirs to fly a circuit first!
I bet pilots aren’t happy.
Which ones?
The ones that when these Drones become so good they’ll be our fighter Jets.
There’s enough time before that happens that eventually we just won’t be training as many fighter pilots. Typhoon and F35 are planned to be in service for the next 30-40 years.
Don’t they still need pilots? Just not in the cockpit.
Nope – It’s the US Predator and Reaper drones that need the pilots sat in Nevada.