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| Marines and their drones. | |
| 2004-02-22 | |
| February 2, 2004: The U.S. Marine Corps is returning to Iraq with as many Dragon Eye mini-UAVs as they can get their hands on. The five pound aircraft is launched with a large rubber band (Does it also drive the propellor?) and transmits pictures back to a laptop computer, which also contains the software that controls the aircraft. With a 45 inch wingspan, the battery powered Dragon Eye can stay in the air for about an hour and can fly up to ten kilometers from the operator. Only one Dragon Eye went to Iraq last year, and it was out of action after a week when the laptop that controlled it broke. But for that one week, the Dragon Eye performed well, and continued to do so when the marines returned to the United States.
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| Posted by:Evert Visser |
| #8 I've seen the Dragon Eye featured on History Channel's 'Mail Call' and Tech TV's 'Future Fighting Machines'. A cheap, realiable, user friendly system made to augment ground troops, Super Cobras and LOACHes. I doubt that the Marines will ever become 'too dependent' upon Dragon Eye. It's a tool. To used wisely. And well. |
| Posted by: Jack Deth 2004-2-23 12:00:41 AM |
| #7 Certification is expensive and at one time Linux companies didn't have that kind of money. Now IBM and HP are investing billions of dollars in Linux. Some of that money has probably gone into certications. For Windows being certified either they certified it for definitely light duty or someone had his palm greased. Let's remember what happenned when the US Navy tried to have one of its ships controlled by Windows: it had to be towed to the nearest harbour. |
| Posted by: JFM 2004-2-22 2:02:17 PM |
| #6 Actually, Microsoft doesn't support the imagery collection program. It's a self-built operating system and GUI that's unique to the program itself. If you COULD get a deep look at the inner workings, you just MIGHT find bits and pieces of Unix/Linux code, but that would just be accidental, wouldn't it? The original software was written in the late 1970s for a totally different system, but it's goine through umpty-gillion changes to what it is today. It's extremely stable, and designed for only one purpose: to display, interpret, and report using those little mosquito drones. My last boss before I retired is running one program for the Air Force. It's not perfect, but it works, and no "blue screens of death". |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-2-22 2:01:20 PM |
| #5 Bzzzt! Linux is not certified for U.S. Government use. Guess which OS is? |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2004-2-22 12:05:28 PM |
| #4 Some articles I have read make me suspect that a fair share/most of US army tools for battlefield supervision are built on top of Linux not MS Windows. So much for virusses. It is possible/probable they use the SELinux contributions from the NSA who serious curtials the amount of damage an attacker can do, even if he were able to gain root privileges. The SELinux parts will be standard in Linux 2.6. Notice that the above refers to the US Army. I don't know what the Marines are using. |
| Posted by: JFM 2004-2-22 11:55:42 AM |
| #3 Wonder how many knots they put in that sucker. Are these rubber bands available to the public? Yes, my kids wonder why I buy them so many cheap balsa aircraft. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-2-22 10:25:39 AM |
| #2 The flipside of the UAV issue is that commanders have tended to become dependent on them. In the event of UAV unavailibility (bad weather, mechanical problems, the latest MS-Windows worm infecting the laptop), commanders become reluctant to act. And who can blame them, really? "Captain, you knew your UAV assets were unavailible, and yet elected to go forward with the raid anyway? Not promotable!" and so on. |
| Posted by: gromky 2004-2-22 9:30:01 AM |
| #1 Gotta love those jarheads, wouldn't suprise me to find out that they're trying to improvise a little "stinger" for it. |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2004-2-22 8:42:14 AM |