There are a number. The MQ-8 Fire Scout
went into USN service in 2009. There are a number of similar designs as well, all of which serve in a similar role for other nations.
They're not common, because small combat drones are generally light and can be recovered with net arrangements, which robs a lot of the utility of VTOL craft. You're more likely to see them aboard ship than on land, where even an easy-to-set-up launch ramp might still be more space than the ship has.
The US Coast Guard is currently working on a heavy tiltrotor drone called Eagle Eye, and the Marines and USN have expressed an interest as well.
And for the flyboys among us: What level of g-force is required to outright kill someone? (Assuming no g-suit or other method of compensation.)
edited 2nd Apr '14 7:19:16 PM by Night
Nous restons ici.That depends a lot on how long the acceleration lasts. In 2003, for example, Kenny Bräck was in a race car crash and experienced 214 g's, but survived and made a full recovery after 18 months. This was the largest recorded g-force a human has ever survived, but since it was a crash, the force presumably only lasted a very short time. Other drivers have survived crashes of about 100 g's (again, very short duration) without serious injuries.
On the other hand, when testing aircraft harnesses in the fifties, John Stapp once sustained a deceleration of 25 g's for 1.1 seconds on a rocket sled and a peak deceleration of about 45 g's, the most a human has voluntarily experienced. The force burst the capillaries in his eyes, filling them with blood, but his vision returned to more-or-less normal the next day. However, he had slight vision problems the rest of his life.
Are we assuming a tight, constant twenty-second turn? Aerodynamic questions aside (as I assume this isn't in a typical modern-day jet, which would probably if you reefed it into a high-g turn for twenty seconds straight), my question would be one of control. After all, the person would probably lose consciousness first, at which point the aircraft wouldn't be sustaining the turn.
But, assuming that G-LOC doesn't cause the craft to slacken on the turn, there's a "citation needed" remark on the Other Wiki that 15gs for a minute can lead to death for an untrained person. Then again, however, 4 to 6 g can cause loss of consciousness in most people; if the turn is sustained even after they're unconscious, I suspect brain damage and death may follow.
EDIT: actually. 10g for 60s
is calculated to be enough to cause death. Incidentally, I may have found the most disturbing concept for a roller coaster that I've ever come across.
edited 3rd Apr '14 12:39:20 AM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.The craft in question has a rather extreme amount of supermaneuverability, so it's not necessarily a single continuous maneuver but it is a continuous level of force.
In the situation in question the pilot is hooked into an onboard computer, and as a result of psychological factors and malfunctions the computer has effectively overwhelmed them and they're just providing the control inputs for the computer's assumed best course of action. The protagonists aren't properly armed to deal with the situation and their best solution is to break the link between the computer and the pilot via forcing a maneuver that would disable the pilot sufficiently to do so. They've already attempted something that should have caused G-LOC and it failed.
I may just go with a negative-G effort instead at this point.
Nous restons ici.Yep, and they're older than you might think they are - for example, the DASH was a helicopter drone used in Vietnam for recon and target designation. There was even I believe a (prototype?) version intended for the Army!
@G forces:
It's important to keep in mind that the human body can actually withstand extreme g forces as long as they are only exerted for extremely short periods of time. It's when a high g load is sustained that things tend to go pear shaped very fast. However, this is not an inviolable rule.
The body is more susceptible to negative gs than positive ones - so an extremely violent bunt or other such maneuver would be more likely to induce G-LOC.
edited 3rd Apr '14 2:54:45 PM by Flanker66
Locking you up on radar since '09Could you use a rifle (more specifically, an air gun like the Giradoni Air Rifle
) as a club? If not, could one create an air gun with using it as a club in mind, or would the result be bad/inefficient/etc.?
Are there any sources for Blade Below the Shoulder fighting styles? I've managed to find one book which supposedly has info on Katars
thanks to The Other Wiki's cites, but I'd like to have a few (or two, at the very least).
Lastly, the Apache revolver
. Was that a real, effective, thing? It seems ripe for Awesome, but Impractical.
It definitely wouldn't be good for the gun, but sure, you can use an air rifle to hit someone over the head. The arm-blade fighting style was never really fully developed, as I understand: the flexibility of the wrist is necessary in just about all kinds of swordsmanship—the katar was gripped instead of attached to the forearm; for reasons pointed out on the trope page, there are all kinds of problems associated attaching a blade to your forearm.
As for the last on the Apache revolver, yes in gangland wars. It's not practical compared to an actual weapon, but it's more easily concealable. As a bonus, it'd be the time period's equivalent of gangster swag today—any old oik can get himself a revolver, but something like that would have to be custom-made.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.A wrist-blade or forearm-blade style is going to be relatively weak in technique, as the mechanics make it more difficult to parry and attack than with the hand, and you can't put as much weight into or behind a blow.
The only really effective version you could develop would be kind of Wolverine-esque claws, which would be used for raking strikes in offense and to tangle an opponent's weapon in defense. Using a single blade just gives you a more difficult to manage sword.
edited 7th Apr '14 6:28:49 PM by Night
Nous restons ici.So I'm writing a Game Of Thrones fic; what would be a more realistic weapon in this situation? The group is traveling, finds a hidden cache/tomb of weapons, and after the fighters get their weapons of choice, the protagonist pretty much picks the easiest weapon she can train with because they need every hand they can get. I don't just want her to get a dagger because she already a basic knife that she gave to the noblewoman for self-defense; plus the tomb is the heart of a huge-ass Celtic hoard, and easily-carried or easily-found stuff would have been looted long beforehand anyway.
I know bows would be right out, so spears, blunt weapons, or shorter swords might be relatively fine to learn on the go, but the character is very short due to malnutrition as a child. Hand weapons would put her at risk since even an average-height fighter has potential for killing her in one or two hits, while blunt weapons tend to be heavy AND would put her at risk. Spears and other pole-arms seem like the main choice to pick due to longer reach and how you can throw suitable spears, but there's probably something I'm missing.
Also, the weapon (or its cutting edge) will be made out of either obsidian or bronze,. Information about those materials is much appreciated.
Well, you're right, given her physical frailty the least difficult thing for her to learn how to do is become one person in a spear and shield wall. That pretty much just takes courage and discipline more than anything else.
edited 10th Apr '14 1:16:09 PM by demarquis
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.![]()
Obsidian, nasty as cutting power but fairly difficult to make into a proper blade. Aztecs just used shards in nice shapes with cloth wrapped around them for daggers. Or tied shards to a stick and swung it around.
Bronze is bronze, it works, it's cheap, bit easy to dent and break compared to say iron.
edited 10th Apr '14 1:17:36 PM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?Obsidian is comparable to glass: it can make for surgical-sharp blades, but the blades will shatter and chip easily. The main thing with bronze is that it is quite difficult to work compared to iron, making it more expensive. (The transition from bronze to iron happened partly because iron was less labor-intensive to work, though more labor-intensive to smelt until the development of high-heat forging processes, if I remember right.)
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.I've tried asking elsewhere, but have failed to get a consistent, satisfactory answer. What would the difference be between a modern soldier fighting with a kukri (specifically, a US Force Recon Marine that cross-trained with the SAS) as opposed to fighting with a normal combat knife?
Me and my friend's collaborative webcomic: Forged MenKukris handle, as I understand, somewhere between a shortsword and a hatchet—they're rather bigger than a standard knife. So instead of thrust-oriented knife fighting, think more slash-and-chop oriented machete fighting.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.It's not just the size. It's the shape and the balance and the weight. A kukri uses a completely different style. The concave curve in the shape of the sharp side of the blade makes it a chopping weapon; a straight blade or one with a "belly" (a bit of a convex shape to the cutting edge) can be used to slash, stab, or chop. In the hands of someone who's trained intensely with a straight blade but not with a kukri, it would be only about as useful a a hatchet to them.
Neither the Marines nor the SAS routinely train with kukris. If you want him competent with it, he'll need to have trained with one of the Ghurka regiments, or learned the style unofficially.
edited 13th Apr '14 9:31:05 PM by Madrugada
The SAS train regularly with the Gurkhas, as far as I am aware. That's how he picked it up.
My understanding is that it's more accurately put that some members of the SAS may act as trainers for specific units of the Ghurka Brigade.
SAS candidates do have a 4-week "Combat Survival" course they must pass, involving evading a Hunter team which may be made up of Ghurkas. But in that case, the Ghurkas aren't acting as trainers, they're acting as opponents. They're trying to break the candidate, not teach him knife skills.
So an SAS member may have learned some kukri technique while acting as a trainer, but it would be unofficial. He's very unlikely to have learned any while in Combat Survival.
Since it's not going to be a given that an SAS member would know how to use a kukri, making your character a US Marine who trained with the SAS makes it even less likely that he would have learned in any official channel, since there's no reason for a US Marine to need to know how to use a kukri — the odds that he's ever going to have access to one is slim.
There is, however, an easy way around this: Make his training unofficial — knifework is something he enjoys learning, so when he met someone who knew kukri technique, he asked to learn it. Just don't make it through official channels.
edited 14th Apr '14 7:39:27 AM by Madrugada
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. "Damn, that was really awesome. Can you teach me how to handle that?"
The guy is supposed to be a specialist in close-quarters combat, so he would probably want to know anyway. This is also happening before a fictional war that the US was involved in in South America, so I'm not clinging to real-world paradigms too much.
edited 14th Apr '14 8:02:05 AM by Ninjaxenomorph
Me and my friend's collaborative webcomic: Forged Men

Do unmanned helicopter drones exist in the military? If not, is there any particular reason they don't, or has there just not been a need for them?