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Guardian: US Developing New Nuclear Drones

Guardian: US Developing New Nuclear Drones
folder_openInternational News access_time11 years ago
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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 refueling.

The British "Guardian" newspaper reported Wednesday that "the blueprints for new drones have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories - the US government's principal nuclear research and development agency - and defense contractor Northrop Grumman."

"The drones were designed to increase flying time from days to months while making more power available for operating equipment," a project summary published by Sandia stated.

However, said Chris Coles of Drone Wars UK, which campaigns against the increasing use of drones for both military and civilian purposes, unveiled that the project is of pretty terrifying prospect."
Guardian: US Developing New Nuclear Drones"Drones are much less safe than other aircraft and tend to crash a lot. There is a major push by this industry to increase the use of drones and both the public and government are struggling to keep up with the implications," he said.
The highly sensitive research into what is termed "ultra-persistence technologies" set out to solve three problems associated with drones: "insufficient hang time over a potential target; lack of power for running sophisticated surveillance and weapons systems, and lack of communications capacity."
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.

The research team found that "the nuclear drones were able to provide far more surveillance time and intelligence information per mission compared to other technologies, and also to reduce the considerable costs of support systems - eliminating the need, for example, for forward bases and fuel supplies in remote and possibly hostile areas."

Sandia confirmed that the project had been completed: "Sandia is often asked to look at a wide range of solutions to the toughest technical challenges. The research on this topic was highly theoretical and very conceptual. The work only resulted in a preliminary feasibility study and no hardware was ever built or tested."

A research summary also stated that the results "were to be used in the next generation of unmanned air vehicles used for military and intelligence applications," where they "would have provided system performance unparalleled by other existing technologies."

It added that "none of the results will be used in the near-term or mid-term future, due to political constraints."

Source: Guardian, edited by moqawama.org

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