Yeah, and programs like Replicator and chinese sorceries are looking at dramatically improving additive manufacturing tech to greater efficiency, scalability and cost reduction practices.
The prime benefit is cost. Electricity is alot more accessible than fossil fuel. Batteries can directly power electronics so the smart bits aboard a drone dont need their own power storages, which free up alot of space.
No idea but lord Google told me this:
Plastic should be cheap, no? We are looking at sub-10k missiles here, any semblance of durability should go out of the window.
If hobbyists can print drones for cheap from plastic, I couldn't see how our junkyard cruise missile here should be any different. And with electrical parts that dont move much ( only the propeller shaft and blade are main sources of vibration, as opposed to the whole pulsejet assembly. And I've seen magnets-based power generator that is static throughout!).
A battery pack to power a drone the size of a V-1 should easily hit that level of endurance imo.
Allways a question of what you print. But yeah for most Things its relativ cheap but getting good machines isn't cheap either.
Allways a question of requierments. Tought for something like a V1 there could be Problems without modifications as it was never designed with sutch materials (which can go in both ways good or bad).
As long as the goal is to carry more warhead for a longer range then no. Also the need of an M270 or Himars is limiting just like the whole GPS problem we see in ukraine but this also applies to the pulsjet weapon.
Not that limiting.
Funny, the USAF just dropped a $24mil contract to install Home-on-GPS-Jamming chips into JDAM tailkits and SDBs.
But the rest don't have that many
I mean you don't really need mutch except a Launch rail, a rocket motor and your pulsjet if we do it as simple as possible (and effectiv). But yeah it ain't cheap, nor small nor light
I know. Im still hopping for it to go onto GLSDB
Because a Pulsjet need compressed air which it doesn’t suck in without starting it. So either you got some compressed air on the vehicle or you get it from an outside source like a catapult or rocket motor
Well your right after looking into it again but it wont work allways as you need to be able to create the compressed air onboard because of the valves but that only works for the valved ones. The efficiency is also Bad compared to just shooting some compressed air into it.
The thing is most pulsjets and propeller are just slow which makes this effectiv to shoot down(even if its only used for the more slower drones with handguns). Compared to Kalibr or storm shadow which just go mutch mutch faster ~2-4 the speed of the smaller drones. Pulsjets may sit inbetween given the design of it.
Still mutch shorter than the 8.32m of V1
At that point one could build a mutch more optimised design given the needed capabilitys.
A Shahed 136 has a maximum speed of 185km/h, A V1 which a Spitfire could only catch pulling out of a dive (let that sink in for a moment) had a maximum speed of 640km/h, and a Storm Shadow missile about 1100km/h. So if a Shahed 136 is a viable weapon system then a pulsejet cruise missile with a bigger payload and faster is also viable.
Yes but you have a match smaller mass of vehicle per volume/weight of the muntion. The whole point of shahed 131/6 and harpy is that they are small (its size and RCS), have a large range and are cheap but are hard to destroy without good air defense (atleast some kind of guidance for example). Now this V1 pulsjet would lose its size and range advantage for payload and maybe costs. This doesn't makes it really better now if that thing could go some 1300km it would change a lot.
It is in many ways important how the big and heavy missile is.
Yes you would upscale it to the needed size but my point is about the design capabilitys which as far as i know exceeds all others right now which want.
It is important the moment you want to fly longer than an hour because you want to hit something in the enemy land way behind the Front which ukraine wants to do because there many important things are like production sites.
Wrong math. The comparison isn't "cost of interceptor(s) needed versus cost of incoming."
For the initial interception, yes. However over time - no it is the correct math. Look at the US Navy involved with Operation Prosperity Guardian, specifically USS Carney. I can't find the source anymore but I remember seeing they fired over 70 missiles during their deployment. Lets say they only used SM-2 missiles - at 2.1 million per unit that comes out to $147 million in missiles expended for defense. In total they may have protected over $1 billion in assets I'm not going to dispute that.
At some point, the cost and availability of the explosives in the warhead becomes your limiting factor in terms of mass production.
I don't believe that any pulse jet can go supersonic, and any simple ramjet needs to be supersonic to start running.
