US Air Force Can Now Turn Small Planes Into Robots
There is a more important point. If you remove the pilot all together, than the entire plane becomes incredibly simple. One can manufacture a pilotless drone of the same size with the same effficienty as one can remodel an existing plane.
That wing is some 25 feet, end to end. It has a chord of three feet? I can build that with Dollar tree foam, if my load is less than 200 pounds. I can glue popsicle sticks together and spare the thing, plus I have dowels. With reduced weight, my prop drops down to a 20 inch in diameter. The hard part is building an engine firewall with Dollar Tree stuff.
The cost of the instruments, relative to foam, alone makes if cheaper to crash the lost drone when it gets lost. All that gets tossed. The entire cabin gone. The lost weight multiply through out the design, wheels and frame become lighter. Fuselage mass back to the tail reduced, less torque on the tail assembly, all the control mechanisms revert to light weight, low cost carbon rod. Given the same load, minus all the human stuff, also allows us to scale down the plane, just carry a small cargo hold.
The mechanical body of the drone can come in at less than 5 grand. If is a slow mover, it need about 10 HP motor to haul 300 lbs, is sort of a guess.
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