In article caa4e8fe-7afd-4102-88ae-c432bde27500@
8g2000hse.googlegroups.com, says...
On Jun 27, 7:42*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
wrote:

:It looks like the P-8 is going to use expendable UAV's to look
:at surface targets too:
:
:http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs...plckController....
:
:Using expendable UAV's for routine missions like this could get
:expensive after awhile.
:

Apparently that costs less than the loss of airframe life from using
the airplane to do it, which is why it's being considered.

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *-- Charles Pinckney

I just spent 40 minutes responding to this post with an explanation of
what airborne ASW could do to really be part of the game and become a
serious threat to Submarines. It was really cool and relatively
inexpensive.
Then I realized what the hell I was doing and which side I favored so
I deleted the entire post.
I'm really glad I did, because while it would have been interesting to
see what some of you would have done with it, picking it apart and
playing with it, I know there are some very good S-T&E's here that
might have found a way to make it work. And that scared the hell out
of me.

It would probably have been an interesting discussion. As for making
it work---there might be people out there to do that. However, I
suspect that ONR is keeping a good number of them busy with similar
ideas. From my semi-insider point of view, there are more ideas
than engineers, scientists, and research dollars in the US now. That
balance may be different in China and Iran. They may have some
different set of ideas, funding and engineers. The ideas are
probably most easily exported from the US, so let's be a bit
stingy with those!


Mark Borgerson