Air Support in a Backpack: The Switchblade
How about we start at the very beginning? AeroVironment was founded in 1971 by Paul MacCready. The company started off doing meteorological studies.
They first emerged into the public spotlight for building human-powered aircraft - winning a 50,000 pound Kremer prize in the process.
The 1979 Gossamer Albatross for instance would fly over the English Channel, pretty impressive. This won them their second Kremer prize and 100,000 pounds. Henry Kremer, the prize's sponsor, had thought it would take another two decades to achieve this, but it was achieved just a few years later.
The company adapted its design to use solar energy. The Solar Challenger was very light - just 200 pounds - and first flew in May 1980. It had no battery, a rather inefficient solar panel array, and a mere 2-horsepower engine.
MacReady and his team did it at the time as a publicity stunt to get the Reagan Administration to further support the solar energy field. But the company continues to build solar-powered aircraft designed to stay in the air for extended periods of time like its sunglider. ...
https://asianometry.substack.com/p/air-support-in-a-backpack-the-switchblade
This is an excellent long-form piece on the Switchblade drone and company behind it. The origin story is fascinating.
That largely confirms a view I'd previously formed that the principle beneficiaries of lightweighting materials and solar (or small-engine) aircraft + nav & comms capabilities will be in warfare and surveillance applications.
Also covered are the following generations of unpiloted aerial vehicle (UAV) "drone" aircraft, including the surveillance Pointer and Raven models, before Switchblade appeared.
A solar + battery styrofoam + balsa (or plastics or carbon-fibre composite) aircraft with cameras and transmission capabilities could loiter for weeks or months over a region transmitting close-range realtime imagery. Given comparable mission costs for manned aircraft (listed in the article) at $20k -- $40k/hour, it would be possible to "darken the skies" (or at least saturate regions of interest) at very low cost. Its construction materials and size would be all but invisible to tracking radar. A smaller number of response UAVs could address specific points of interest with a response of a few minutes to hours. All without putting pilots in harm's way.
The nature of ground (or surface naval) warfare will be profoundly changed. This is to bullets and shells what bullets and shells were to pikes.
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32267178
https://asianometry.substack.com/p/air-support-in-a-backpack-the-switchblade
#AeroVironment #SwitchbladeUAV #Switchblade300 #Switchblade600 #GossamerAlbatross #SolarChallenger #DroneWarefare #Ukraine #RussoUkraineWar
David Ruffner
Doc Edward Morbius ⭕