Economic Advantages of a pilotless drone
Drones are extremely economically efficient, they are both safer and smaller than a piloted aircraft. A piloted aircraft must contain security functions that allow the pilot to: eject if needed, support them in high altitudes, and to provide a system that allows for the pilot to see the surrounding environment form inside his cockpit. For example:
- the cost an F-22 Raptor fighter jet is approximately $10.91 billion dollars, most of the craft is built to sustain a human being while in flight.
- However, the cost of an MQ-1B Predator drone is $20 million US dollars. A significantly lower cost than the large fighter jet.
Drone Costs of World War I
Drones of the past, were merely flying bombs that had to be primed and sent off a ship or a launch vehicle to it's intended target. While some of these were almost never used in actual combat, they did prove to be useful in pioneering the advancements of unmanned aerial warfare.
- One example of a unmanned aerial vehicle from the 1930s: RP-4 Radioplane, the "Dennymite"(pictured above), powered by a 6-hp engine with a 12-foot, 3-inch wingspan created by a World War I British pilot, Reginald Denny.
- During World War I, Germany was particularly interested in unmanned warfare, much more than other nations were. In fact, they tested a FL-7 "wire-guided motorboat" against a British warship, the HMS Erebus. The test was a success, it struck and damaged the vessel.
- Estimated costs were generally dependent of funding by the military or the government.
Costs of World War II and Cold War
After World War I, countries began to see the benefit of having unmanned vehicles in their arsenal.
- After their defeat in WWI, Germany wanted to prove that it was as strong as ever. Germany introduced the FX 1400 "Fritz", one of the first remotely piloted aerial drones to be flown. It was, in summary, a 3,000lb glide bomb that could be controlled through a radio interface, which the pilot would use to fly the bomb into a target too protected for manned aircraft to penetrate.
- The United Stated also began to investigate the use of UAVs: during the late 1940s, many projects were funded to begin to find ways on how to create an unmanned aircraft that could bomb where an unmanned mission would be too dangerous for manned aircraft.
Costs of the present and the future
According to the Air Force Doctrine Document 2-0, drones are generally less expensive then their manned counterparts. Their ability to stay in the air and "loiter" for extended periods of time makes drones very effective aircraft. This is also due to the fact that a drone: does not need to be refueled as often as a manned aircraft requires and does not require the safety measures necessary for manned aircraft.