Switchblade Drones Wiki - Last week, the White House announced that 100 "tactical unmanned systems" would go to Ukraine. See how this flying weapon works.
The US Marine Corps launches the Switchblade 300 drone during training in September 2021 in California. US Marine Corps / Alexis Moradian
Switchblade Drones Wiki
Last week, on Wednesday, March 16, President Joe Biden announced that the United States would send $800 million in military aid to Ukraine to help the country as it fights a defensive war against the invading Russian military. Among the anti-tank, anti-aircraft and proxy weapons included in the aid package was a line for "100 tactical unmanned aerial systems." Later that day, it was confirmed that these systems were Switchblade drones, a type of piloted missile that can also be scout.
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The US aid package also includes 20 million rounds of ammunition, grenades and mortars, as well as 25,000 sets of body armor with matching helmets.
Switchblade is a flying camera robot with explosives inside. These all-electric machines are weapons that will help in finding or attacking nearby enemies, those not far away.
The Switchblades come in two sizes: the Switchblade 300 and the Switchblade 600. Both can be carried by one person, though the weight difference is significant — the 300 weighs just 5.5 pounds and can fit in a backpack. The 600 is heavier, with the projectile itself at 33 pounds and the components required to carry it much heavier.
'Kamikaze drones'#AFPGraphics factfile on US Switchblades, or "kamikaze drones", to be sent by US to Ukraine pic.tvitter.com/fzAov9ncrK — AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 18, 2022
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The Switchblade 300 can engage targets at a range of just over 6 miles and can fly for a total of 15 minutes. The 600 has a range of 25 miles or a flight time of 40 minutes. The Switchblade contains cameras and video from these sensors, as well as GPS information and image processing, used to guide the Switchblade. The Switchblade is also designed to receive targeting information from other drones, allowing it to track and find selected targets. This makes it one of the few weapons that can be directed at a target with targeting information provided by other drones.
Unlike other drones that are used only for reconnaissance, the Switchblade 300 carries a small explosive payload, the kind most likely to be used to hit people or unprotected weapons, such as a mortar launcher or an exposed machine gun. For the larger Switchblade 600, the payload is an "anti-armor warhead", making it useful against vehicles.
If the people operating the Switchblade see that it no longer has a target, it can retreat and then take over. The brochure for the Switchblade 600 boasts that the weapon offers a rechargeable battery.
The company that makes the Switchblade, AeroVironment, describes it as a "tactical missile system," hinting at the machine's strange dual roles. It is both a flying scout and a weapon. Officially, this category is called "round ammunition".
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Although they look like a very modern creation, there is historical context: The Kettering Bug, a 1918 unmanned aerial vehicle considered the forerunner of both drones and cruise missiles, flew briefly before an internal signal released its wings and dropped its explosive payload. ground.
Modern cruise missiles typically fly for a period of time, using sensors to seek out targets such as anti-aircraft missile locations and radar stations. Even with the Switchblade 600's full endurance, the drone can only fly for 40 minutes, and the Switchblade 300's short duration is barely enough to qualify it as a hovercraft.
When the missiles were first proposed and tested, they were usually called either "kamikaze drones" or "suicide missiles."
In his coverage a decade ago, he called the original Switchblades "Flying Killer Robots" and "Kamikaze Suicide Drones." All of these names indicate something important about the category: once one of these weapons is detonated, it cannot be reused or recovered.
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Like many drones, the Switchblade is controlled via point-to-point navigation, in which a human plots a route on a map and the robot, once launched, flies on its own.
"[Unlike] radio-controlled devices, the operator doesn't fly the plane, the operator just shows what he wants to see, what he wants the camera to show, and the onboard computer flies the plane to that point and keeps it on its target," said Steve Gitlin , director of marketing for AeroVironment, on The War Zone 2020 show. “We have similar capabilities in our tactical drone systems. You could lock onto a target and the aircraft will basically hold its position on that target, autonomously."
Other software on the Switchblade, such as feature and object recognition, likely aids its ability to find and track a target. That doesn't make it an autonomous weapon in the strictest sense, but it is a weapon with autonomous features that can change the way people use them.
Focusing on whether or not it fits the strict definition of an autonomous weapon is less important than understanding exactly how the Switchblades use what autonomous features they have. "That's why it's probably wiser to put aside definitional debates and focus on the new (as well as familiar) challenges and risks posed by the increasing autonomy of weapon systems," scholar Arthur Holland Michel recently wrote about drones and autonomous vehicles. war machines. "For example: Do operators have sufficient situational awareness to make a decision to use force?" Does the weapon provide sufficient control surface for human operators to exercise caution in the attack?'
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In combat, the short time of flight between launch and impact for the Switchblade, especially the Switchblade 300, means that the person firing the weapon acts in a similar way to someone firing an anti-aircraft missile at an aircraft, confident that their target is the missile system will hit what would should have guessed.
What's different about the Switchblade, compared to other missiles, is that the operator has the ability to stop the attack if something changes, such as a civilian entering the area or cameras detecting what the operator thought was a tank. school bus. That's different from something like a high-flying Reaper drone that fires missiles that can't turn.
The ability to perform this kind of control, to effectively cancel the launch of a missile already in the air, is one of the great promises of such weapons control systems. For this promise to come true, it takes a man, who fires the weapon in combat, to be able and willing to watch the video of the missile itself until it is finished.
Kelsey D. Atherton is a military technology journalist who has been a contributor to Popular Science since 2013. He covers unmanned robotics and other unmanned aerial vehicles, communications systems, nuclear enterprises, and the technologies involved in planning, conducting, and mitigating war. An unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), also known as a combat drone, colloquially abbreviated as unmanned aerial vehicle or battlefield UAV, is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance, and carries aerial munitions, such as which is like missiles, ATGMs and/or hard point bombs for drone strikes.
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As the operator controls the vehicle from a remote terminal, the equipment necessary for a human pilot is not required, resulting in a lighter weight and smaller size than a manned aircraft. Many countries have operational domestic UCAVs, and many others have introduced armed drones or are in the process of developing them.
One of the earliest explorations of the combat drone concept was by Lee DeForest, an early inventor of the radio, and U. A. Sanabria, television engineer. They formulated their idea in an article in the publication Popular Mechanics from 1940.
The modern military drone, as it is known today, was the brainchild of John Stewart Foster Jr., a nuclear physicist and former head of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (called the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory).
In 1971, Foster was a model airplane hobbyist and had the idea that this hobby could be applied to the manufacture of weapons.
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He drew up plans and by 1973 DARPA (Defse Advanced Research Projects Agency) had built two prototypes called 'Prairie' and 'Calera'. They were powered by a modified lawnmower and could stay in the air for two hours while carrying a 28-pound (13 kg) payload.
In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel used unarmed American Ryan Firebee drones to force Egypt to fire its anti-aircraft missile arsenal. This mission was completed without injury to the Israeli pilots, who soon took advantage of the depleted Egyptian forces. In the late 1970s and '80s, Israel developed the Scout and Pioneer, which replaced the transition to the lighter glider-type drone model used today. Israel has pioneered the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for real-time surveillance, electronic warfare and decoys.
The imagery and radar deception provided by these drones helped Israel completely neutralize the Syrian Air Force in Operation Mole Cricket 19 at the start of the 1982 Lebanon War, resulting in no pilots being shot down.
Impressed by Israel's success, the US quickly acquired numerous Hunter and Pioneer drones and systems
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