Given the back and forth re drones lately I thought this might be interesting reading for the Peanut Gallery. Yes, I'm going through stories at one site at the moment. I'll stop now with this one. http://breakingdefense.com/2015/05/chinas-not-so-scary-drone-army/ Bold added by me.
Production costs in China are usually 1/3 of the Western ones, even when advanced tech is involved. Then if they cut design costs copying from us ... I guess you should multiply by 4 the Chinese costs before of a comparison. Those drones are not that bad, they are not at the top, but ...
Personally, I am not a big fan of drones. Do not get me wrong, they definately have their uses. But they are not the "Air Combat Panacea" that many try to make them out to be. The biggest problem is that they have to have a secure and constant 2 way interface link with an operator. Interrupt that, and you then have nothing. And even nations like Iran have proven that they have that capability. Jam the hell out of all radio frequencies, and you have a pilotless drone either flying on it's last directed course, or returning to base having not done a damned thing. Or even worse, have an enemy gain control of that drone and now it can be turned around and aimed at you. None of these are problems in piloted aircraft. And China has really not done anything militarily in almost 40 years now. Their entire military is pretty much inexperienced and is only based on war games and decades old tactics and strategies. Not unlike in many ways the US military in 1990.
I was reading a DOD publication of a Rand Corp. study on armed UAV's being used in air to air combat. Where a fighter jock sees a threat or has to make a decision with in one second while sitting in the cockpit of a fighter, some airman sitting thousands of miles away with a little joy stick in his hand in control of the UAV, once that threat is seen by the UAV and a decision has to be made. it takes five seconds for the information being sent from the UAV to a satellite relayed to the airman who's in control of the UAV, he making that decision and then relaying the command back to the satellite to the UAV. Who's going to react quicker to a threat, a fighter pilot who has to make a decision in a fraction of a second knowing if he makes the wrong decision he's probably a dead fighter pilot or the airman sitting in a safe air conditioned building or trailer with a hot pizza sitting next to him and he knows if he makes the wrong decision, he's still alive. Five seconds is a lot of time. A manned fighter can do it in less than a second.
There is an "operational window" for drones, also in air to air combat. In this particular context, it's window, just a window. It's public [you can find it on the net] that in the stealth program NATO engineers are exploring an alternative path: to exploit human brain capabilities with technological aids. With such an equipment [with an increase reality system integrated] a human pilot can do well better than an Artificial Intelligence on a combat drone [there is no more a great necessity of a connection with a command center when Artificial Intelligences can pilot combat drone ...]. Humans still win ...
I ran across a short article on a Chinese company that makes drones; he's apparently sold 300,000-400,000 of them and his company is now worth $10 billion. Sorry, don't have a link; it was on an academic access site and I didn't bookmark it. I'll try and find the source later on. Didn't say how many were military or civilian, but it's not likely many were military bound. His competitors were a company in Berkeley, Ca. with 'Robotics' in its name and another company on the west coast I don't recall the name of at all.
