This was the Aquiline, it was powered by a two-stroke chainsaw motor and had to land by being caught in a net.
>>65211267Here it is in color hung upside down.
>>65211279 Why did china fail at invading Vietnam twice?
>>65211267There was also the way lesser known project Axillary which I think was just one guy making his own drone prototype to save on cost.
>>65211433
>>65211267Was that net attached to a C-130?
>>65211267It's a 1 for 1 inspiration of the drones in the Terminator movies...
>>65211267In other words China has once again come in at least half a century behind.
>>65211433>>65211472Smaller RPVs like Aquiline were recovered with a ground-staked net. Many of these types of small drones, ground-launched and -recovered were tested and trialed during the late 1960s and through 1970s by U.S., Canada, Australia and West Germany; look through Jane's All The World's Aircraft reference of those years for dozens of examples.Axillary was from a company called Melpar, Inc. that a couple years later was absorbed into LTV Electrosystems aka E-Systems (that had several small drone projects), look up the E-Systems E-45 and E-55.During the 1960s and 1970s they were named RPVs (Remotely Piloted Vehicles). >>65211534Teledyne Ryan had the AQM-91 Firefly. It was a design extension of the company's own Model 147 Lightning Bug (AQM-34) RPV series, specifically the high-altitude 147B / G / H variants (the latter H designation was AQM-34N). The (company designation) Model 154 Firefly had a brand new engine: the General Electric YJ97-GE-3 of 4,000 lb thrust, much more powerful than the Teledyne-Continental J69 used in the 147 Lightning Bug and Firebee drones. The YJ97 was optimized for high altitude flight at 70,000 feet. The Model 154 Firefly was given the Air Force project designation AQM-91 Compass Arrow. It was designed to perform overflight missions of communist China, as the Model 147B / G / H / SK RPVs had done, but at much higher altitude and with a stealth airframe that had a flat undersurface, and the engine mounted atop fuselage. Radar absorbent materials similiar to Lockheed's A-12 and D-21 were used in the airframe construction and along leading edges. LIke the 147 series RPVs, Model 154 Firefly did not have landing gear: designed to be launched by DC-130 and recovered by the MARS (mid-air retrieval system) CH-3E recovery helicopter.Compass Arrow was canceled in July 1971, as was Lockheed's D-21 program when United States overflight reconnaissance of China was stopped by the Nixon administration.
>>65211267>>65211697The issue is not the airframe. What makes modern drones deadly are the avionics, remote link and control and increasingly, AI. All these can only be achieved today due to shrinking the electronics, CPU and also huge leaps in battery tech not available in the 60s. A single cheaply made ukie drone has more processing power than a 60s mainframe that takes up an entire building.
>>65212260>issue? The OP posted a topic. About an old RPV project of a U.S. government contractor, half a century ago.>muh processing power DERRRRP / batteryObviously, aviation electronics are far more capable today than they were half a century ago. Satellite guidance also now exists. >what makes deadly(You) have zero notion or idea what you're talking about, here in OP historical topic. Many combat drones were designed + used half a century ago; for actual combat/direct target attack purposes, was more frequent back then to use *guided missiles* for those missions. Now with the recent advances in (+ lower manufacturing cost of) electronics miniaturization and satellite/other guidance and nav, the lines between 'drone' and 'missile' have become more blurred than back in the RPV days.Also the U.S. RPV programs were substantially defunded and down-scaled after the 1974 end of Vietnam war. It was only in the 1990s and later that the United States began funding combat UAV programs (MQ-1, RQ-4 etc.) again with an entirely new approach and new electronics developments.The southeast Asia era U.S. combat drones such as Model 147 had been substantially funded during 1962-1973 by National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in combination with the Air Force support. Picrel is a TAC multi-mission RPV under development when the Indochina war-era was terminated. Teledyne Ryan continued developing and attempting to sell this system on their own after gov funding ran out, but it and related electronic warfare and tactical strike RPVs were abandoned by late 1970s: imagine however, from fifty years ago how much more advanced those weapon technologies might ? have been rn if such funding, development continued.(for example) Study all the way to bottom of this page, external references at endhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Model_147>Erhard, Thomas P. Air Force UAVs: The Secret History. 2010, Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies [available free as online PDF]
>>65211270Why did they hang it upside down?
