UAV's and TFR's along the Mexico boarder

On 15 Jan 2006 04:57:18 -0500, Chris Colohan
wrote in ::

Larry -- instead of arguing vague costs and such, can you put numbers on any of this?

You claim that a fleet of Cessnas is cheaper than the UAVs, by an
order of magnitude.

Actually, several orders of magnitude.

What are you basing this on? I am curious how
you arrived at your conclusion.

It's a matter of common sense. It takes only one or two people to
operate a Cessna C-182, not SEVEN like it does to operate a UAV.

(I am acutally interested in how much
these UAVs really cost -- your "several million dollars" figure sounds
quite high to me.

Then, perhaps you should do some research:

http://www.uavforum.com/library/librarian.htm
Q: What does a UAV cost to buy? to operate?

A: UAVs flying today range in price from $1000 to $14 million. [For
comparison, manned aircraft range in price from $20,000 to $500
million.] Examples: The developmental version of the Air
Force/Teledyne Ryan RQ-4/Global Hawk costs nearly $14 million with
payload, the Air Force/General Atomics RQ-1/Predator $3.3 million with
payload, the Navy/PUI RQ-2/Pioneer just over $900,000 with payload.
Tactical size UAVs are commercially available in the $250,000 range
with payload, the Aerosonde Robotic Aircraft's Atlantic-crossing
Aerosonde runs $35,000, and MLB offers mini (not micro) UAVs for
around $1000 per aircraft. It is a common mistake to focus on the
price of the individual aircraft and confuse it for the price of the
UAV system, which includes its ground control station and shelter,
launching mechanism, and typically three or more additional aircraft.
These can make the price of an UAV system two to ten times the price
of its individual aircraft. Once bought and deployed, operating costs
are reportedly (Aviation Week & Space Technology, 22 Jun 98, p.23) in
the hundreds of dollars an hour for Predator and tactical size UAVs.
[For comparison, commercial helicopters cost $600-800 an hour and a
Boeing 747 airliner some $7400 an hour.]


$10 million unit flyaway price:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_r...1474.chap3.pdf
http://www.dtic.mil/descriptivesum/Y...y/0305204N.pdf
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_r...1473.chap2.pdf
....


Larry Dighera writes:
Regardless, the expensive high-tech equipment installed on the UAV is
not necessary to locate people illegally entering the US as is born
out by the current successful use of video camera equipped model
aircraft.

Why use model aircraft, when we have seen the successful use of
cowboys on horses?

First, I'm not suggesting actually using model aircraft for border
surveillance. Rather, I am pointing out that cheap, low-tech
solutions are currently working, and contrasting that with the
obviously dangerous and costly overkill of employing UAVs domestically
for this mission.

This argument holds no weight unless you can state:

That is not the argument I am making.