#Drones #UAVs #A10 #AerospaceEngineering #MilitaryTech
Hey there! 😊 Let’s dive into an interesting question: why are most drones and UAVs shaped more like the A-10 rather than sleek fighter jets? Here are some key points to consider:
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Purpose Over Aesthetics: Drones are usually designed for specific roles like surveillance, reconnaissance, or close-air support. Their shape often prioritizes functionality over looking cool! 🔍✈️
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Stability and Payload: Much like the A-10, many drones are built for stability and the ability to carry heavier payloads. The A-10’s unique design allows it to handle tough flying conditions while carrying heavy weapons, and similarly, drones need that stability for their missions.
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Low-Speed Operations: While fighter jets are designed for speed and agility, many drones operate at slower speeds. A design similar to the A-10 helps them stay stable and effective, especially during tasks like monitoring or delivering supplies.
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Cost Efficiency: Often, drones are more cost-effective to produce and maintain compared to high-performance fighters. The simpler design helps keep costs down while still achieving the mission objectives! 💰
- Stealth and Adaptability: Some drone designs focus on being less noticeable. While not all are stealthy, their shapes may contribute to minimizing radar signatures, which is crucial for certain missions.
So, when you look at drones, think about their mission needs and how their designs reflect that, much like the A-10.
What do you think? Have you ever worked with or flown a drone? Share your experiences or tips! 🚁
Let’s chat about it!
The design of any aircraft depends on the mission the aircraft is intended to perform. Up to this point, military uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) have been used largely as surveillance or the equivalent of bombers (meaning they launch missiles from potentially miles away).
In both of these roles, the most valuable trait is endurance. You want your UAS to be able to loiter over an area for many hours or potentially even more than a day, because you want to photograph what’s going on there, or because you want to be able to launch a missile once your target gets within range. Of course you can’t possibly know when exactly your target will get there so you need to be able to get to the rough location and then wait.
These drones aren’t shaped like an A-10, because an A-10 isn’t designed for high aerodynamic efficiency, but I agree with you that they do look more like an A-10 than they look like an F-22. And that is because the mission profile is more similar to an A-10 than an F-22 (although it’s not very similar to an A-10 either). A-10s are ground attack aircraft. They don’t engage in dogfights. They don’t need to be highly maneuverable. What they need to do is fly to their target and shoot their gigantic autocannon. This is more similar to the typical use of a military UAS, which is basically fly to their target and shoot their missile. But the drones are much more aerodynamically efficient — more like gliders. They have very long wingspans relative to their weight, and that allows them to fly around for literally a day or more. That’s not something an A-10 can do.
they dont need the maneuverability of a fighter jet; they need to be able to stay in the air for long(er) periods of time without stopping/landing.
the design of most drones/uav maximize fuel usage and payload capabilities……..carry a few missles or camera equipment and stay airborne in the combat zone for several hours uninterrupted
Because these drones are for ground support or reconnaissance, which favor long loiter time over speed and maneuverability. This shape of airframe is optimized for that.
Drones with more of a fighter role (like the [X-47B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B)) look much more like fighter aircrafts. They don’t have to carry a pilot and are used somewhat differently so they aren’t a perfect match, but the shape is much closer.
They aren’t meant to go very fast, and need to be able to loiter over an area for a long period of time.
That’s it in a nutshell. The faster something goes, the more drag it creates and therefore needs to better balance the wing surface area with drag reduction (this is why the F-14, F-111 and B-1 all have “variable geometry” wings, or wings that can close up closer to the body). The slower it goes, the more wing surface it needs to stay aloft.
So for things like the A-10, which need to slow down enough to be a worthwhile close-air support aircraft, it needs big, rectangular wings to keep it in the air at slower speeds (also because the weapons it carries are *damn* heavy). For UAVs, you want them to hang around on stations for as long as possible so you can keep your “eye in the sky,” so you slow the engine down and put big wings on the bird so it can go slower and stay in the air longer.
How airplanes look has a lot to do with how fast they intend to fly.
Look at passenger jets, military transport aircraft, old propeller fighters, A10 and other subsonic aircraft. The wings are quite long and sick out at close to 90 degree from the body. The wings are not wide compared to their length
Airplanes that fly faster than the speed of sound has shorter wings that are wider compared to the length. The are quite swept back
The lift a wing provides depends on the speed and so do the drag. To fly supersonics you what wing that provides enough lift but not to much drag at supersonic speed. The result are wings that are swept back and are not to long and are the most efficient at supersonic speed. They will be less efficient at subsonic speed.
Most drones are not designed to fly fast, the design goal is longer duration and require subsonic speeds. So the wings on most of them look like subsonic aircraft
There are drones designed to fly fast, they look more like fighter jets. the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21) was built in the 1960s and retired in 1971 it was supersonic.
The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIC_WZ-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIC_WZ-8) is a Chinese super or even hypersonic drone that look closer to a fighter,
I think most answers are wrong.
Fighters are fighter shaped because they are intended to go supersonic. Not just maneuverable. these are called swept back wings.
A 10 is A10 shaped (straight-wing) because it is simple to build and provides a better lift (compared to drag) at low speeds.
A-10 is a ground attack aircraft so it needs to fly low and relatively slow, lot of UAVs the public is familiar with are designed for endurance so they’re designed to fly slow for long periods of time. Since they are both designed to operate at relatively low speeds they have some similarities in their general silhouettes.
More surface area means more lift, more lift means less fuel, less fuel means more flight time. One of the reasons the A-10 has the wing shape it has is so it can go a lot slower than a fighter jet. The A-10 stall speed (the minimum speed to keep it in the air) is around 110-120 knots (140MPH) while the stall of a F-16 is around 200knots (230MPH) slower means more time on station
My main confusion was based on the fact that everybody always says that we reached the pinnacle in facts of engineering and performance.
Every plane is now mostly impossible to handle by a human alone because of the extreme design. So we need a computer to continuously fly the plane while the pilot just decides where it goes and we cannot go further because human bodies cannot withstand those acceleration.
So in my pov the solution was “ehy if we can remotely fly the slow one, we can just make an UAV fighter that can be even faster”
The “stealth” drones fly at night.
The conventional drones are more concerned about low cost and long “loiter” range.
If they are seen and the enemy expends an expensive anti-aircraft missile at it, its a win/win situation.
I was going to say that the premise is wrong, drones aren’t shaped lke fighter jets or A10s, they bear no resemblance at all, but then after looking at the other replies, I realized that the OP isn’t referring to small quad-copter drones, which is the first thing that comes to mind when I see the word “drone”.
ELI5 answer to the intended question:
* Fighter jets are designed to fly fast as well as engage in combat. That isn’t what drones are used for.
* Rather than resembling an A10, a drone might be said to resemble a U2 instead. An A10 is basically a tank killer, but it is also good at delivering other weapons. A U2’s mission is purely surveillance.
* A drone, also, is intended to deliver weapons against a target, like an A10. A drone also conducts surveillance, like a U2.
* Therefore, it’s no surprise that the mission of the drone would result in an airframe configuration similar to an A10 or a U2.
It primarily has to do with speed and range.
Airplanes with long, skinny, straight wings are super low drag and very efficient at lower speeds. Think about a sailplane.
Airplanes that travel close and beyond the sound barrier have swept wings that reduce drag as you fly faster – but these aren’t as efficient as flying slow with long skinny wings.
Drones for the most part fly fairly slow and are designed to loiter and observe or travel long distances meaning they should be as efficient as possible – hence long skinny wings.
They look different for the same reason that Olympic athletes from different sports look different. An Olympic gymnast, swimmer, and marathon runner are built for very different tasks. Each athlete works on the muscles or flexibility or endurance for the task they want to accomplish.
For the A-10, the task was handling a ludicrous auto-cannon that has no business being airborne. But someone saw the GAU-8 and said “this needs to fly, design me a plane that can fly it.” And thus the A-10 was designed to accomplish that task.
For a drone the intended task is different. Let’s take Global Hawk for example; the task is High Altitude Long Endurance surveillance. So it’s designed much more like a glider with super long wings.
< – go fast turn slow
I – go slow turn fast
The latter is way more useful for something you want to stick around an area slowly circling and watching.