Fiber optic hexacopter with 41 km range and anti-tank shape charge warhead.
Fiber optic hexacopter with 41 km range and anti-tank shape charge warhead.
What does fiber optic mean in this context? Like a fiber optic cable attached to the drone for communicating with it?
Yup. Fiber optics can't feasibly be jammed. The drone is still powered by battery, but is controlled over a fiber that is spooled in the canister on the bottom.
I wonder how much 40km of fiber optic cable costs?
Less than a Javelin Missile.
SM fiber is dirt cheap, they don't need to wrap it in kevlar like you'd find in data centers ironically enough, it's just a strand or two of thinly jacketed single mode fiber.
Only has to survive the one flight, be light enough and long enough.
Cheap fiber is about $0.40/m.
It's like an air torpedo lol
This is pretty nice.
I wonder what they do to hide the origin of the cable. Probably move positions before using it.
Cable is pretty much invisible to the naked eye beyond a few meters, imagine a hair made from glass. Might be able to track it on foot by running it through your hands but that doesn't sound fun or safe for it's 40km range.
Definitely not something another fpv drone will be able to spot and follow.