"Jose" wrote in message
...
The RFP for the southern border project specified UAV's with 12 hour
endurance, synthetic aperture radar and a laser illuminator as well as
a FLIR system, light amplification cameras, comm relay for ground
agents, a mode S transponder and a pile of other stuff. You have a
182 and a crew that can do that?


Sounds like politics to me. Defense industry at it's best. There's big
bucks in this stuff and no one wants to give that up for a bunch of bush
pilots out in the desert. You're talking about $10 million or more for a
UAV with all that stuff on board. Just think about how many C-182s (or
whatever) you could run for that amount of cash. I wouldn't need 1 C-182 to
fly 12 hours. I could have 6 of them flying 2 hours each. (or whatever).

I'm not fighting China here folks, most of that stuff is fancy overkill.
(what about the tunnel found in California, none of that stuff would have
found that)

A pilot and spotter with a pair of bino's during the day and NVGs at night
would work just fine. A beefed up laser pointer would work just as well
from 1-2000' feet. Comm relay for ground agents? Comm on, they've all got
cell phones. Transponder, gee that's tough.