To "pedestrian": the US Army already did an open competition for who would be their official Small UAV, in 2005. The RQ-11 Raven won by a large margin. Cyberbug (and its manufacturer, Cyber Defense Systems) could not meet the requirements. Cheap doesn't matter if it cannot do the job! The military beats the living crap out of their SUAV systems and has high performance demands, neither of which the CyberBug can keep up with. However, there are probably other markets (non-military) where it might make a better showing.
I guess I'm not being skeptical enough- I just don't see the beef with the foiled shoe-bomb plot. The question seems to be "How can you have a hijacking with shoe bombs?" and the answer which occurs is that threatening to blow up an aircraft in flight would work pretty well. In fact, the 9-11 commission report states that one team of hijackers claimed to have a bomb on board. I shouldn't be surprised if other folks have brought some Semtex on a commercial flight and threatened to set it off if the crew didn't set a course for Beirut, but to be honest I'm too tired to bother.
Posted by: Trustbutverify at February 12, 2006 5:42 PM
Regarding drones for cops, CyberBug, compared to RQ-11 Raven, has less speed and operation time, but both have the same range, and are about the same weight (the lightest of Cyber Bug). The advantage of CyberBug against RQ-11 Raven is its price, an advantage when purchasing these in mass to provide to many soldiers as possible. Cyber Bug's basic unit is about $8500, and with options including some required parts, you could get it for about twenty-thousand, still less than the price tag of Raven. Cyber Bug has a wing that you may fold, allowing to make it compact enough to carry around in the back of the vehicle, which attracted me for this feature months ago. Cyber Bug is behind in speed and operation time, but the price is attracting worth use for the military as a mass production model of UAV to hand out to many soldiers as possible. I wonder if Pentagon has ever consider to provide this to troops in Iraq.
Posted by: pedestrian at February 9, 2006 11:14 PM
To "pedestrian": the US Army already did an open competition for who would be their official Small UAV, in 2005. The RQ-11 Raven won by a large margin. Cyberbug (and its manufacturer, Cyber Defense Systems) could not meet the requirements. Cheap doesn't matter if it cannot do the job! The military beats the living crap out of their SUAV systems and has high performance demands, neither of which the CyberBug can keep up with. However, there are probably other markets (non-military) where it might make a better showing.
Posted by: roadrage at May 21, 2006 3:30 AM