How is it able to fly such long distance, without running out of fuel?
Drones for war = one way trip? It won’t be capable to return from a long journey right?
In: Engineering
Without room required for a pilot, a drone can be lighter and more aerodynamic. It also does not require the same level of redundancy. Long range drones also are designed with slow efficient engines that primarily travel at their most efficient speed. When people are involved, you want to limit the time they have to be in the air and specifically the amount of time over risky areas so they fly much faster than their most efficient speed. All of this contributes to a drone being a much more efficient vehicle that can go long distances and spend significant time loitering over a risky area.
They don’t have small fuel tanks. MQ-9 can hold 3600p of fuel across 7 bladders in the airframe, which is roughly 540 gallons of JAA.
I have a home made drone (s1100 flying wing) that has a range of about 200km on a 4000mah battery. It’s range is massively affected by wind but on a still day it will comfortably cruise at 100kph for 2 hours on that battery.
This is all generic off the shelf bits, nothing special at all.
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