US draws up plans for nuclear drones

I did a search on this and didn't find anything, but thought it was a good article for you all take a gander at.

From the article:

American scientists have drawn up plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered drones capable of flying over remote regions of the world for months on end without refuelling.

www.guardian.co.uk...

The Sandia-Northrop Grumman team looked at numerous different power systems for large- and medium-sized drones before settling on a nuclear solution. Northrop Grumman is known to have patented a drone equipped with a helium-cooled nuclear reactor as long ago as 1986, and has previously worked on nuclear projects with the US air force research laboratory. Designs for nuclear-powered aircraft are known to go back as far as the 1950s.

I've known about nuclear research on aircraft for decades, but never thought that would go the drone route since they have a tendancy to become dirt darts quite often.

Off to work for now.

Nuclear drones - why the hell not??

Gawd. Is this government hell bent on destruction?

Oh wonderful.. Brilliant... What bad idea will they come up with next?? So NEXT time Iran bags a billion dollar drone from the U.S., they can count top grade nuclear material as part of the bonus.


Isn't there something seriously wrong with flying drones powered by nuclear material over nations to insure they aren't doing anything that requires the use of nuclear material?

The world is still well on it's way down the road to total madness. I'm finding it amusing to watch the traffic go racing by.

Originally posted by TDawgRex

I've known about nuclear research on aircraft for decades, but never thought that would go the drone route since they have a tendancy to become dirt darts quite often.

hmm... maybe that's the plan.
SHOOT DOWN OUR DRONE AND GET NUKEZORD!!!11!

Wow. Once again I am caused to question the sanity of those at the helm. My initial concern isn't so much as "what happens when these things fall into the wrong hands?" more like "what happens when these things fall?"
Jeez THINK HARDER PEOPLE!

I feel like i'm living in a 90's video game where the malevolent evil force continues to grow, and now the unassuming character from the woods must begin his quest to find the president of evil and remove him.

right?

They wont just be nuclear powered though. They will be completely unmanned smart drones making there own decisions on weather to engage a target or not.

We already got the X-47B

The X-47B will be the first unmanned jet aircraft to take off and land aboard an aircraft carrier. With a 62-foot wingspan and length of 38 feet, the X-47B is about 87 percent the size of the F/A-18C aircraft currently operating aboard Navy aircraft carriers.

Self aware smart drones which can stay in flight for months and engage targets without a human telling them to do so!

Skynet anybody???

Yeah remember that time when Iran supposedly captured a US drone, wouldn't it be interesting if the next time something like that happened it had a nuclear warhead on it.

reply to post by RandalFlagg
This may sound crazy but a few years ago when I was in and out of California trucking on a weekly basis I saw something like that one afternoon crossing Hwy 58 between Bakersfield and Barstow. The thing is..... is there one larger than that but smaller than the B-2?

The one I saw I'd just assumed as a B-2 doing touch and go landings at Edwards until it got very close (Hwy 58 runs along the north end of Edwards Air Force Base) and I realized..it was too small and just didn't look quite right to have been the real deal. It definitely wasn't as small as that or the one Iran got if the two aren't the same plane or variants. Any ideas what falls between for size and would have been flying touch/go landings at Edwards a few years back?

These drones can never go wrong because you can hire a so called expert to say it was safe to build 6 nuke reactors on a fault line and we all know how that ended.

Iran is not allowed a single nuke, the jews are allowed hundreds to defend a little bit of stolen sand and can tell the UN and the AIEA to piss off and now we have the criminal puppets thinking about using drones and you can bet when one goes wrong they will say it was terrorists that brought it down.

Time Russia and China took control and did a little preemptive strike and saves us all from these banker puppets that are killing us anyway with GMO food.

We the people are not in control anymore and need to take control back and that will include the use of force and a lot of blood and doing nothing is no longer a real option because the system is past repair.

Originally posted by Master_007
[Snip]
We the people are not in control anymore and need to take control back and that will include the use of force and a lot of blood and doing nothing is no longer a real option because the system is past repair.

I think it was a illusion that we were ever in control.

Although I agree with most of what you posted...It will take a full all out revolution in order to take back the freedoms & rights of the people...short of a complete benevolent alien takeover of the evil elite of course

These new nuclear touted drones not only represent extended flight times from days to months but as other members have stated,this could be used almost like a trojan horse-esque weapon if one were ever capture ex:Iran :capturing" of the U.S. drone a bit back.

"Wanna capture one of our drones eh? better think real long and hard about capturing one of these nuclear driven & armed models"

I don't see a reason for making now nuclear drones. There are drones that operate with normal hydrocarbon fuel and operate for months. Nuclear is dangerous.

Well shoot... I was kinda hoping that ATS of all places to mention it would have someone who knew what the larger version of the flying wing drone was. Hmm.. Well, one of these days what I saw taking off and landing will be captured by a nation like Iran or one will crash in a public way and we'll know then I guess. Of course I'm still waiting for that with the Aurora and Phoenix aircraft but it's been over a decade and no joy there. So..perhaps we won't know. ?

Either way... Nukes on atmospheric flying craft of *A N Y * kind is so totally absurd and criminally stupid as to demand firing the fool that really brings it up as a serious thing. Spacecraft? That makes sense..if they can make launching a nuclear reactor safe for the period it's in the atmosphere....but that seems a hit and miss thing too.

Lets just keep nuclear power on the ground for now. Fukushima shows we can't even handle THAT much at the moment. This damn sure isn't the time to take the idea to the next level and fly it over people's heads. We already have a couple planes that do this and if THEY ever crash...nuke waste will be the last thing anyone on Earth is thinking about. Bad enough those exist.....lets have no new ones.

How does the OP, nor anyone replying, do the slightest bit of research. This was an idea submitted by a scientist, it was never approved, and will not be approved.

Nothing wrong with ideas, for every successful idea there are many, like this one, that are never developed.

Originally posted by AlbinoMonkey
Yeah remember that time when Iran supposedly captured a US drone, wouldn't it be interesting if the next time something like that happened it had a nuclear warhead on it.

To make it even more interesting, what if they allowed Iran to capture a drone that had a faulty nuclear reactor so that when they tried to reverse engineer it they would be unsuccessful.

Oh wait, they already tried something like that...

In his book State of War, author and intelligence correspondent for The New York Times, James Risen claims that the CIA chose a defected Russian nuclear scientist to provide deliberately flawed nuclear warhead blueprints to Iranian officials in February 2000. Operation Merlin backfired when the nervous Russian scientist noticed the flaws and pointed them out to the Iranians, hoping to enhance his credibility and to protect himself against retaliation by the Iranians, while still advancing what he thought was the CIA plan to use him as a double agent inside Iran. Instead, the book alleges, Operation Merlin may have accelerated Iran's nuclear program by providing useful information, once the flaws were identified, and the plans compared with other sources, such as those presumed to have been provided to the Iranians by A. Q. Khan.

en.wikipedia.org...

Whoopsies