DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Dramatic shift in Pentagon's thinking to align themselves with what I said

**LottiFurmann** · 02-02-2010, 07:41 AM

1.) If I had to guess it is about a year, and of course the production line has a capacity.

If it's the aircraft of the future, surely they can confidently increase capacity in the knowledge that it will be used in the future.

2.) It sounded like they said OVER a theater by 10, which means increasing available assets so that there is the ability to have ten more in the air at any one time. That means far more than ten in total as you will always have some being used for training or down for maintinence of whatever. Ah, OK, that makes sense. I was thinking of just the extra 10 without factoring in those extra numbers.

Adding 10-20 airfames the size of a Predator in three years from a brand new requirment on top of a what was already being procured is actually very fast by any standard. I still have a problem with this. You're talking about manufacturing 3-7 machines extra per year - that still seems incredibly slow IMO for a tech that saves US lives during a sort of quasi war footing! I know it's not a WWII production line, and that these are advanced bits of kit, but this seems more akin to a cottage industry...

Which is my point really. They've had 8 years to realise what a ****ing good idea UAVs are and yet they're still ordering them on a practically individual basis!

02-02-2010, 07:41 AM	#16
LottiFurmann Join Date Jan 2008 Posts 4,494 Senior Member	1.) If I had to guess it is about a year, and of course the production line has a capacity. If it's the aircraft of the future, surely they can confidently increase capacity in the knowledge that it will be used in the future. 2.) It sounded like they said OVER a theater by 10, which means increasing available assets so that there is the ability to have ten more in the air at any one time. That means far more than ten in total as you will always have some being used for training or down for maintinence of whatever. Ah, OK, that makes sense. I was thinking of just the extra 10 without factoring in those extra numbers. Adding 10-20 airfames the size of a Predator in three years from a brand new requirment on top of a what was already being procured is actually very fast by any standard. I still have a problem with this. You're talking about manufacturing 3-7 machines extra per year - that still seems incredibly slow IMO for a tech that saves US lives during a sort of quasi war footing! I know it's not a WWII production line, and that these are advanced bits of kit, but this seems more akin to a cottage industry... Which is my point really. They've had 8 years to realise what a ****ing good idea UAVs are and yet they're still ordering them on a practically individual basis!
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