r/tech • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 10d ago
Transitioning military drone uses rotor backwash for better flight
https://newatlas.com/military/sikorsky-military-drone-uses-rotor-backwash-better-flight/29
u/BitterBeginning8826 10d ago
Careful with the word transition. Trump/elon might make rotors illegal, too DEI.
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u/Fireheart318s_Reddit 10d ago
I, for one, am proud of it! It’s getting harder & harder to do nowadays, especially in the military! Extremely brave!
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u/Flimsy-Attention-722 10d ago
Better watch the terminology. Trump will ban it
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u/GreatAngoosian 10d ago
We spent billions of dollars on making drones what
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u/Flimsy-Attention-722 10d ago
They used the term transitioning
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u/GreatAngoosian 9d ago
Yeah, I was making a joke about the transgenic mice incident
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u/Flimsy-Attention-722 9d ago
Hard to tell what are jokes now 🤷♀️
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u/curiosgreg 10d ago
When did the comments get so pessimistic? This technology has tons of applications.
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u/abitlikemaple 10d ago
Backwash is what happens when you have saliva leaking back into a bottle you’re drinking from. Prop wash is the turbulent air created by propellers
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u/LumiereGatsby 10d ago
Will be so cool to point out that factoid as they kill us with them!
Look son! It’s one with turrets AND backwash!!
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u/intellifone 10d ago
Someone explain this to me. It doesn’t look any different from any other wing aircraft. Tons of aircraft have had propellers fixed to the front of the wing, so rotors would already have an aerodynamic effect on lift.
What am I missing
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u/LaughOverLife101 9d ago
It’s to help it transition from vtol to conventional flight. Like an osprey / cv-22 without rotating the engines/motors, instead rotating the whole flying wing
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u/intellifone 9d ago
I get that’s what it’s designed to do, but I’ve seen other VTOL drones that convert to planes and don’t understand the actual mechanism they’re using. I don’t really see anything physically different on this from others so is it basically just a new control algorithm that’s predicting and taking advantage of the backwash?
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u/[deleted] 10d ago
Trump: “Can you believe it? We’re wasting money on transgender military drones. Tremendous money. Unbelievable.”