US Air Force plans nuclear drones

www.redorbit.com...

well the regular normal drones i guess arent enough for us now we want to make them nuclear powered so they never have to land or refuel.......skynet is almost here
NEW SCIENTIST -- The US Air Force is examining the feasibility of a nuclear-powered version of an unmanned aircraft. The USAF hopes that such a vehicle will be able to "loiter" in the air for months without refuelling, striking at will when a target comes into its sights.

But the idea is bound to raise serious concerns about the wisdom of flying radioactive material in a combat aircraft. If shot down, for instance, would an anti-aircraft gunner in effect be detonating a dirty bomb? It raises political questions, too.

To have Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) almost constantly flying over a region would amount to a new form of military intimidation, especially if they were armed, says Ian Bellamy, an arms control expert at Lancaster University in Britain.


so for this i have to say kinda frankly scares me what uf they crash or go hawyire of us soil that has happend allready and there only soloution is to shoot them down......so what happens when we have to shoot down a flying nuclear reactor that thinks for its self im normaly all for what ever toys we use to keep us safe but this seems like a very bad idea.....although the navy problay does like the ability to kamakazi a nuclear powered drone into that half sized carrier china built.....

io9.com... and this one wants to make them smart and able to talk to each other and learn from text...but those are satelites and arent built yet

The AFRL now has other ideas, though. Instead of a conventional fission reactor, it is focusing on a type of power generator called a quantum nucleonic reactor. This obtains energy by using X-rays to encourage particles in the nuclei of radioactive hafnium-178 to jump down several energy levels, liberating energy in the form of gamma rays. A nuclear UAV would generate thrust by using the energy of these gamma rays to produce a jet of heated air. thats from the original source has any one heard of this type of reactor b4 as it was new to me

so what happens when one of these nuke drones gets sky jacked by hackers...?
Remote controlled nuke?

From article:

US Air Force plans nuclear drones

Posted on: Wednesday, 19 February 2003, 06:00 CST

reply to post by mb2591


thats one of my major concerns it just seems a like a horrible idea

reply to post by Ferris.Bueller.II


i know its from a while ago but i just found out about it today but it doe make you wonder what we have done to this tech in the years since the article......i wonder if thats what were gonna start useing to replace our other drones in the theaters of war were in now so that if they shoot one down instant fall out and badness for the locals insidious realy

reply to post by KilrathiLG


Just wanted to let people know the age of the article you posted. A while back we had a thread with a 15 year old article, and people were reacting as if it was current news because the OP 'forgot' to mention the date the article was written.

My personal opinion is if the Air Force were going to act on their research, we probably would've seen something in the 8 years since this article was written.

I think we're actually living in 1950. This isn't the first time the USAF tried a nuclear-powered aircraft, that dubious honour goes to the immense Convair X-6 bomber, theoretically capable of staying airborne for weeks.
en.wikipedia.org...

Notice the smaller plane. That's a B-50, a variant of the B-29 Superfortress.