MQ-9 "Reaper"

[ratfugel]

A quick and dirty attempt to portray the possible future of military aviation! The world’s first serious crewless bomber, capable of carrying 1.5 tons of very expensive munitions, controlled from a desk in Creech Airbase, Nevada and currently operating over Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight to keep us all safe in our beds. (Or so they tell us). All the drawings I found turned out be crap, so once again, it was back to the drawing board, using measurements freely available from the USAF sites. At $18M a throw , which compares quite favourably with the cost of say, an F16, it would appear that pilots (sorry, sensor operators) now have no need to fly, when they can sit comfortably in an air-conditioned comfy environment and bomb anything they fancy, before going off for coffee and doughnuts. (That’s assuming the natives have no radar!)
rat.

[JMSmith]

FOUL!

this is not an aeroplane, its a robot, a very beautifull done robot but a robot non the less

[ratfugel]

Touché John.

So I looked it up and LoL this is what I got:






aeroplane
n aeroplane [ˈeərəplein] (often abbreviated toplane American ˈairplane ) a machine for flying which is heavier than air and has wings.Ltd and Kielikone Oy.

At about three and a half tons and has wings I reckon it qualifies?

rat.

[JMSmith]

ok you win still a very nice profile

[Ugo Crisponi]

I like it! nice improvement in your tecnique!

[ratfugel]

Thanks a lot Ugo. I feel most encouraged, you are unquestionably the star in this game. Others come close, but they all lack your style.

rat.

[Otterkins2]

I have seen quite a few different types of these now and they are indeed frightening. It'd be interesting to see you do a series of these Rat. I think a few can be found on the General Dynamics site, but in reformatting I lost all my bookmarks too!

[ratfugel]

Thanks Otterkins. That's quite a thought. I'll have a look around. By the way, without trying to teach you how to suck eggs, I usually keep a copy of the whole computer every so often on an outside drive (using Acronis to do this). So if you have to reformat, then you simply reinstall Acronis first and get it all back at one go. That way, you don't lose everything at once.

rat.