Electric anti-aircraft interceptor drone breaks world air speed record at 434mph

yread

still 100 mph less than piston-powered airplane speed record. Or 150 less than Tu95. Drones should be able to go that fast too

somat

But why?? We have had rocket powered anti-aircraft interceptor drones that go at mach 3 since 1955.

close04

Speed is only part of the story, but probably the part that can sell the capability of drones today. How good are they at intercepting another maneuverable aircraft either autonomously or FPV? At what speed is the drone starting to be limited by the human pilot relying on a camera feed?

mattas

Not even close to the manhole cover speed record.

Teever

There are amateurs chasing the speed record using similar designs too: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=world%27s%20fas... Unit cost for a lot of these seems to be under ~$5K USD, not counting the value of engineering time. How do you counter a swarm of these things coming from all directions? This kind of weapon has interesting consequences for public speaking events by leaders. Or large industrial projects on the coast of Texas that use large tanks of compressed methane and LOX. This seems like the kind of thing that you can send in the mail to another country in a special box that can open up when it senses that it has arrived at a destination so the drone can fly off to get into position for an attack by hiding itself in some nook on the roof of some nearby industrial building. Put a small solar panel on it so that it can sit indefinitely, waiting for the signal to strike a target. Or put a dozen or so of them on an unmanned surface vehicle like the Ukrainians did and send them out to a juicy port target. The biggest threat that a weapon like this poses isn't just from the initial destructive capacity, it comes from the possible difficulty in attributing the source of the attack. How do you respond to this kind of weapon you don't know who used it against you?

jaggs

Did nobody read the article? It's quite clear. "Quantum Systems Group reckons it has broken the flight speed record for an electric drone."

blacklion

Interesting, that this form-factor was popularized by DIY builders. First one was dutch-built, sponsored by Red Bull after prototyping stage, to film Verstappen's full F1 lap (so semi-DIY, so to say), but then record was taken back and forth between two DIY builders — Ben Biggs in Australia and Luke Maximo and his father Latest record by Ben Biggs was 626kph (389mph). Latest record by Luke Maximo was 655kph (408mph).

JumpCrisscross

How does this compare with a conventional interceptor drone?

jmward01

The weapons use saddens me. Ignoring that, this is interesting for electric aviation as a whole. One of my arguments about electric aviation is that burning fuel for propulsion has a lot of challenges, especially at altitude. Pushing the speed envelope for electric will lead to more and more novel ways of pushing things and once they get efficient, fast and, very importantly, high altitude, the amount of power you need drops considerably. The argument against electric aviation is always that (pick your favorite fuel x) has 100x the energy per gram. This is an apples to bananas comparison for many reasons but at a high level if you need far less energy to cover the same distance then that argument goes away in a hurry. Electric propulsion with aircraft redesigns taking advantage of it has a chance to do that. I'm really looking forward to hitting FL1000 and getting to my destination in an hour using electric propulsion.... eventually.

nexus6

Russia has been moving to more use of jet drones, as Ukraine is having a lot of success with these interceptors. Hope they’ll innovate their way to a new inceptor for those, to protect their civilian infrastructure.

proee

Could this be scaled to a full size human rated aircraft?

_djo_

A bit disappointing that the article didn't mention that the record broken was previously held by the amateur team of Luke Bell and his father, from Cape Town.[0] That amateurs are still competitive with corporations all the way past the 650 km/h barrier is notable on several levels, not least in that it means that designs like these will likely proliferate quickly across the world. [0] https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/464800-fa...

lifestyleguru

Taking the advantage of the situation in Ukraine, juicing the desperate and cheap Ukrainian developers. Why in Europe we cannot have positive enforcement, constructive motivation followed by fair compensation? So sick of this bloody continent.