> Your prices and payloads are way off. A few grand ($3k-$6k) gets you 20 lbs of payload easily (and more if you need it), from multiple manufacturers.[1] $10k seems to get you like 40 lbs or more.
Actually, my numbers aren’t off (and the companies aren’t lying in their marketing directly), it’s simply a misunderstanding over the units of scale.
For purposes of discussion, I’m going to focus on the payload numbers used in the link you provided, not manufacturer spec sheets as they vary a lot in terminology. I also own three of the drones listed in that link too, so what I’m saying isn’t hypothetical assumptions, but real world experience.
Let’s also use the DJI S1000 (but I’m happy to break it down for others too) for this discussion. The article claims a payload capacity of 7kg. This is actually a bit off flat out as the max takeoff weight is 11kg and the drone in question weighs 4.4kg. So our number is actually 6.6kg for payload. The biggest disconnect though is that the 4.4kg is just the airframe / motors / props / mcu, it doesn’t include the batteries (biggest impact) or some other needed electronics. Unlike with your average consumer drone, batteries are something you have wide control over in size, weight, and capacity. That said, unless you want to only fly a very short distance (think short walking range), you are still stuck with a heavy pack. On the low end, expect about 2kg, on the high end 3kg. That puts us under 4kg of payload now. If we want to see where it’s going (allowing us to be further away from this hypothetical bomb) or have more telemetry, we are going to be getting closer to the 3kg payload mark. Now let’s talk about price. These big drones are money pits. Sure, you see those $3-6k price tags advertised, but the part you don’t realize until you get into the field is that’s not a “flight ready” price. You are going to need batteries, radios, battery chargers, etc etc to actually be able to fly. For these big drones, you’ll spend >$500 just for one flight’s worth of batteries if done right. Shockingly, for a good battery charger, you’ll spend nearly a grand. For an appropriate radio, $500. You want remote video too? That’s another $1-2k, not including a gyro or camera. Heck, I spent pretty close to $1000 just on the carrying case for my S1000. Yes, a terrorist would likely cut a lot of corners, but it’s still going to be a lot more than the base sticker price you see advertised and my number of $10k is a fair median point for what it’d really cost on these bigger drones. Could you do it cheaper, yes, but my numbers are still in the right ballpark.
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I agree with your later point to another person, I don’t think this venue is encouraging a healthy discussion. You come off as someone intelligent, just not personally experienced in this field. As such, I’d be more than happy to continue the discussion offline. Shoot me an email if interested, info in my profile.
> it doesn’t include the batteries (biggest impact)
I suspected this (it wasn't spelled out, but became likely as I was researching). That said, I think it's somewhat mitigated by the fact long flights wouldn't really be necessary. Enough battery to fly the route and perform the end action, with some sufficient overhead (an additional 50-100% capacity?) would possibly be sufficient. A few minutes of flight time likely gets you quite far.
That said, it also works towards my point of specific areas that are tracked may be sufficient. If it's hard to fly a drone from miles away to avoid launch site detection and still have a delivery payload large enough to be useful, that's beneficial in itself.
> my number of $10k is a fair median point for what it’d really cost on these bigger drones.
Fair enough. I agree that actual deployment is probably either an additional $5k-$10 or some multiple of the base price, depending on how some items scale.
It leaves the question open as to whether the larger drones could still be useful though. Being able to fly a bomb up to a corner office in some building and detonate it, or quickly drop down to a motorcade someone has entered, might be a good return on investment even at $30 or more, depending on the target.
> just not personally experienced in this field
That's correct, and it's why I value your input on this, since you seem to have a lot of experience with the actual drone portion.
I don't mind being proven wrong, or shown evidence I'm wrong or off in calculations. I do mind just being told in wrong without new number or without specific objections provided as to my methodology, since I went through the effort to provide them in the first place. As such, I appreciate you providing some real numbers to specific models for this discussion.
> I’d be more than happy to continue the discussion offline.
I appreciate the offer (I really do!), but I'm worn out by this discussion at this point.
Additionally, I doubt we'll make much headway on the actual tracking system part of the discussion, there's too many variables, and too much variation in our different ideas of what those variables entail. As those variables stack and the differences multiply, the expected end values diverge too wildly.
Since I think neither of us have enough hard data to reduce enough of those variables to fairly static values without quite a bit of research on each (such as how many priority targets are there, how the military treats this topic, current state of the art video tracking techniques, the effect of weather on video tracking, etc, and truthfully that's a lot to invest in an internet discussion), it seems unlikely to be all that fruitful. :/
Actually, my numbers aren’t off (and the companies aren’t lying in their marketing directly), it’s simply a misunderstanding over the units of scale.
For purposes of discussion, I’m going to focus on the payload numbers used in the link you provided, not manufacturer spec sheets as they vary a lot in terminology. I also own three of the drones listed in that link too, so what I’m saying isn’t hypothetical assumptions, but real world experience.
Let’s also use the DJI S1000 (but I’m happy to break it down for others too) for this discussion. The article claims a payload capacity of 7kg. This is actually a bit off flat out as the max takeoff weight is 11kg and the drone in question weighs 4.4kg. So our number is actually 6.6kg for payload. The biggest disconnect though is that the 4.4kg is just the airframe / motors / props / mcu, it doesn’t include the batteries (biggest impact) or some other needed electronics. Unlike with your average consumer drone, batteries are something you have wide control over in size, weight, and capacity. That said, unless you want to only fly a very short distance (think short walking range), you are still stuck with a heavy pack. On the low end, expect about 2kg, on the high end 3kg. That puts us under 4kg of payload now. If we want to see where it’s going (allowing us to be further away from this hypothetical bomb) or have more telemetry, we are going to be getting closer to the 3kg payload mark. Now let’s talk about price. These big drones are money pits. Sure, you see those $3-6k price tags advertised, but the part you don’t realize until you get into the field is that’s not a “flight ready” price. You are going to need batteries, radios, battery chargers, etc etc to actually be able to fly. For these big drones, you’ll spend >$500 just for one flight’s worth of batteries if done right. Shockingly, for a good battery charger, you’ll spend nearly a grand. For an appropriate radio, $500. You want remote video too? That’s another $1-2k, not including a gyro or camera. Heck, I spent pretty close to $1000 just on the carrying case for my S1000. Yes, a terrorist would likely cut a lot of corners, but it’s still going to be a lot more than the base sticker price you see advertised and my number of $10k is a fair median point for what it’d really cost on these bigger drones. Could you do it cheaper, yes, but my numbers are still in the right ballpark.
—
I agree with your later point to another person, I don’t think this venue is encouraging a healthy discussion. You come off as someone intelligent, just not personally experienced in this field. As such, I’d be more than happy to continue the discussion offline. Shoot me an email if interested, info in my profile.
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