Aquila Origin Story

[subplotkudzu]

In a an article on the history of Unmanned Surveillance Drones in Newsweek (June 9th issue) I found this bit
"The Army plunged into procurement hell, developing a drone with so many bells and whistles that it barely got off the ground. Ill conceived from the start, the Aquila needed hundreds of tons of backup equipment, which required an hour to set up or take down. Crashing every 20 hours or so, its costs climbing to $3 million a copy, the Aquila was canceled in 1987 after burning through $1 billion."

 

To me, this just screams "origin story". I can just picture the developers of the Aquila Drone adding more and more things in comic book fashion.

 

"Do you know what this needs? Infra-red."

"Yeah! We can get some IR capability in there, but it has to be able to switch between that and UV and regular light."

"Oh, of course. And we'd get a better idea of the area if it could detect sound too."

"Locating other planes, you mean?"

"Plus hearing stuff on the ground. We'l have to make it smarter so it can filter out the wheat from the chaff in the incoming sound streams however."

"Smarter is good. And then maybe it could direct itself if under attack, rather than wait for a new response!"

"Defense capability, sure! And maybe some jamming system, and some other defensive measures."

"What about those heat beams the DARPA guys are working on? That would clear out an enemy anti-aircraft installation!"

 

LATER
 

"No, it would be much more effective in gathering data if it could pass for human. Make those waldoes look more like arms, and get the joint articulation on the legs right."

"But it still has to be able to blend in the sky, so we have to pit on  the liquid crystal skin so it can change color."

"What if radio contact gets cut out in a conversation? How will we control it?"

"We'll have to upgrade the intelligence programming again to give it full language compatibles I guess…."  

 

LATER STILL
 

"This is it, the Aquila Mark 9: it's a totally humaniform robot with flight, senor suite, independent action level AI, camouflage, flares, radar jamming and an IR heat beam!"

"Our budget's been cut."

"Can't we turn him on at least ONCE?"

 

Your call as to whether he's a hero or a villain….

 

Comments

Re: Unfortunately...

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

As Cambias mentioned a few days ago, "put some tailfins on those tailfins!"

Re: Unfortunately...

[(Anonymous)]

A tradition which is entering its third century in American military procurement, by the way. Back when the Continental Congress was authorizing the construction of a Navy, they didn't want the sailor-boys getting carried away, so they specifically allocated money to build frigates -- for patrol, antipiracy, etc. -- rather than ships of the line.

The Navy said "Yes, sir" and laid down the Constitution, a "frigate" the size of a fourth-rate ship of the line.

Flash forward a century: the Royal Navy just launched the HMS Dreadnought, making all existing battleships obsolete. The USN wants to build some, but inland Congressmen are dubious. Finally Congress approves the construction of "coast-defense battleships" to guard against invasion.

The Navy said, "Yes, sir" and laid down the South Carolina class, which were perfectly good blue-water dreadnoughts. The justification was that the best way to defend the coast is to keep the enemy from getting anywhere near it.

Cambias

Re: Unfortunately...

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I dunno - I see those as separate cases as they produced viable ships, just not what the congress had, ya'know, told them to build.

In contrast the "shove in one more gizmo" style produces things that just plain don't work. But they _would_ work in a comic book universe, once someone makes them look more like giant human-form robots.

Any order worth following...

[panzerschrek.livejournal.com]

... is worth exceeding.

I can't really argue with the Navy's logic in those particular cases.

But there is a difference between exceeding one's orders and delivering a working product and, say, Christie's "flying tank" or the Sgt. York, which, to be fair, was more of a "frankenbeast" of existing technology kit-bashed together under the theory that it would be cheaper than actually making something that works (wrong on both counts -- it wasn't cheaper and it didn't work...).

Every so often, the opposite theory tries to creep in -- building something that actually does it's job, no more, no less. The F-5 Tigershark (?) was built under this theory, but proved insufficiently "gosh, wow!" or technologically sexy for the PTB to actually buy.