They parachute deliver blood, but they will use a different technique for consumers.
From their website:
> Lowering from the body of the Platform 2 Zip, this little droid uses onboard perception to leave packages exactly where they're supposed to go, whether that's a doorstep or patio table.
While that is true for Platform 2 drones, from reading this article [1] it seems the ruling currently only applies to Platform 1 drones (ie. the specs I was referencing). Although it does seem like the Platform 2 drones would be more of what you’d imagine for drones dropping consumer packages in the US. And that article goes on to state that this ruling seems like a jumping off point for securing further exemptions (ie for the Platform 2).
With these specs, I wonder if some countries military wouldn't be willing to offer them more money than they could ever make with deliveries... (At least on a per-drone basis)
Spend 5-10 minutes on twitter watching drone footage out of the Ukrainian war, both sides are getting a lot of work done with less accurate, smaller payloads.
The traditional M18A1 Claymore mine weighs about 1.6 kg total and has optimal effect to 50m in a 60 degree arc (potentially lethal to 250m I think - Ed: "moderately effective up to a range of 100m ... fragments can travel up to 250m").
Most of the time if you've decided to go the 'air superiority' route, then you're in a traditional war. So I feel that the cost-value factors will still favor dropping larger ordinance from much larger drones.
Have you watched any of the drone footage from Ukraine? They are dropping hand grenades and modified mortar shells into tanks from drones. Mortar shells have about 500g of HE. Highly effective.
I guess I was thinking about it from the point of view of a large industrial power fighting its equal.
Ukraine vs Russia seems more asymmetric. For instance, Russia can be an existential threat to Ukraine, but the positions can not be easily reversed since Russia has nuclear weapons. While they wouldn't want to deploy them, they'd rather do that than lose Moscow.
Asymmetric warfare makes use of a great number of things, which wouldn't be very cost-effective in a battle of equals. For instance all the insurgents that use IEDs to harass checkpoints, would probably rather use factory made air-craft delivered ordinance.
> I guess I was thinking about it from the point of view of a large industrial power fighting its equal
Human-in-the-loop ethical concerns aside: a highly industrial power can fully automate the entire process and massively scale up from individual-pilot controlled prosumer drones.
Imagine a high-altitude loitering spotter-drone that autonomously identifies any tanks with open hatches and tasks smaller multirotor drones to precisely drop small munitions. You may take out an entire tank battalion for less than the cost of a couple of traditional air-to-surface missile without putting your personnel in harm's way. Future wars will be horrifying for infantry and ground vehicles.
And yet Ukraine is stopped by old school mine fields... Well, slowed down considerably. It is almost as if everything is a trafe off with benefits and downsides.
Drones work until drone-specific AA is developed, and then it will be the same race we see between tanks and anti-tank weapons.
The drones don’t interact with the the mine fields, and in fact, are extra useful in this in this situation as they can fly over them. I’m not sure I see the trade off here.
Well, a drone doesn't help ypu a tiny bit it getting across the mine field. Without that, well, your counter-offensive stalls, drones or not.
And for now, anti-drone AA is difficult. But not unsolvable. Jamming, small caliber radar controlled AA guns. Point defense weapons can shoot down cruise missiles and even artillery shells. Applying the same principle at slower drones isn't that hard.
Your demands are completely unreasonable, a weapon platform can be extremely effective in its role and not win a war outright. Yeah drones aren't magically solving the problem of minefields, so what?
My point was exactly that: no weapon system is a silver bullet, including drones. And just because something is old doesn't make it less useful.
And I didn't make any demands, not sure how you woupd read that into my answers to a thread started with "dropping stuff from drones is an attack that cannot be countered". People didn't learn anything it seems, first tanks were obsolete, until Ukraine wanted every single one of them. Then modern AA made fighters and helicopters obsolete, only to be replaced by drones as the latest shit. Those arguments are just cheerleading whatever is en vogue and hyped.
Tanks being obsolete is… not clear. Tanks vs. western anti tank missiles and drones dropping grenades does feel like a terrible ROI but they are still useful. Russia doesn’t have these things at the same level of efficacy so tanks are perhaps more valuable for Ukraine to have.
Helicopters and fighters are in the same boat. They’re useful, but vulnerable and expensive. The thing about drones is they cost $200 to take out weapons that cost up to millions of dollars.
Drones are immensely helpful in getting across minefields. Being able to attack enemy positions across the field prevents them from being able to safely attack sappers trying to remove the mines.
It is much harder to stop a small drone attacking a mobile position than it is to establish a large AA battery that defends against missiles. Missile AA is for protected largely stationary high strategic value targets. Drone AA has to be for small tactical level targets on the go. Way harder.
It’s not an ultimate weapon. I don’t know why you judge it as if someone said it was. It’s just that small drones can be extremely effective against personnel and light armored vehicles. That’s why both sides have to use them.
This doesn't negate the comment that you are responding to at all. Drones have been most effective in defensive operations, often in concert with mine fields.
Offensive is much more difficult, as it needs to be coordinated with ground forces that can be impeded by mine fields. It is also easier for prepared defense lines to stop drones than it is for an offensive operation in the open to defend against them.
However this FAA approval is apparently for the Gen1 fixed wing plane (which is quieter than a drone anyway). Their Gen2 "drone" design is barely audible.
I'm pretty sure Uber is now profitable. Not surprising considering the absurd prices they now charge for delivery. (probably not absurd w.r.t actual cost, but very very far away from the prices that they were charging when they started Uber eats)
Standard brick weights about 2 kg (4 pounds). Plus the drone itself probably another 2 lbs. Imagine getting bonked by a malfunctioning 6 lbs. drone at 200 mph.
This device though doesn't have the density of a brick, and it is aerodynamic: failure modes wouldn't be an uncontrolled freefall, it would be a stable glide.
You could fail-safe this by adding parachute pyrotechnics which require an active command signal to not deploy: that way the worst case total electrical failure of a drone would immediately deploy chutes to slow it down.
This seems like a much more acceptable control then the failure mode of a car: which weighs 2 tons and contrary to popular belief only stays on roads by convention.
That's already more or less a solved problem with consumer drones: outside a catastrophic mechanical failure like a wing shattering or the motherboars spontaneously dying, the failure state is that the drone either returns to its starting location using GPS, or hovers and waits for manual control until its battery is almost out and then slowly descends while beeping loudly.
The current version of the drones used here and mentioned by the FAA is a fixed wing design though, it’s only the second version that has the ability to hover. A loss of power at low altitude is going to mean it crashes into something. Reading through the links in the article there’s a lot of mention of their Detect & Avoidance system so presumably it can somewhat safely steer through the airspace.
I assume given the 5m radius for drops they’re going to be operating in places that mostly have low density though. I’d also assume that they’d plan flight paths to be as safe as possible.
> That's already more or less a solved problem with consumer drones
The words of a man who's never experienced rapid, unexpected, uncontrollable "drone flyaway". And yes, I have a modern, very capable drone and I'm not a complete idiot. Sometimes they just go... crazy.
Luckily, I have not, nor do I want to. Using these cool inventions to kill people seems like a waste. The amount of resources wasted on wars is a shame. Solving problems like the energy transition to renewables would be so much easier with the kind of budget that literally gets blown up because one man with a tiny ego wants to hurt another man with a tiny ego.
This attitude won't help you stop wars from happening, though. You can hope it won't happen, know it's a waste and still expect any technology to be evaluated for usefullnes in warfare, be it trade, cyberspace or plain old kinetic conflicts. Thinking otherwise is irrational.
- Cruises at 80-120m and 60mph
- Max payload of 1.8kg
- 50 mile max delivery distance (although it can fly 190 mile on a single charge)
- Payload dropped by parachute from 25-30m into a 5m diameter landing zone.
More details on Wikipedia[1] and the Zipline site[2]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_comp...
[2] https://www.flyzipline.com/technology