Hi all,
I'm new here but I'm impressed by the level of discussion here. I'm a mechanical engineer. I'm having an idea for a long time. I was thinking about "eye in the sky". The design is a spherical body with a coaxial-multirotor fans(so no tail rotor) on top of it. The sperical body can be made of a lot of small facets to minimise radar signature (since electric motors are used so no thermal signature either). but the basic idea is to make this helicopter like thing using electric motors and mount a camera on it with indeed the needed actuators for tilt/pan/zoom. the entire size is not going to be bigger than a football for the base body. the rotor fans can be or can not be made of foldable type.
Now is the point. Having a data link with the ground base of optical fiber and power supply too from the ground by a cable (the cable can be made with both optical fiber data link and electric supply wires embedded in it, and even of the color of sky blue for obvious reasons). So this eliminates the need for mounting the power source on the craft and reduses the size very much(compared to payload) plus gives it practically infinite hovering ability(limited by the supply from ground though).
Now if this craft can be flown from a outpost or from a vehical(like dingo II which has already got hybrid engines so no add anything for power) upto 2-3 kilometers one should be able to get the view of upto 70 kilometers easily(I haven't flied much only in glider but there I used to get enormus field of view at the altitute of 800 FEET) moreover with 2 meter high body we easily get the view of upto 100 meters.
Now this has several possible applications. One is indeed recon. since you can take images. One can also scan the field real time. The best part is complete radio silence
The main application I though is that in artillery(by the view of upto 70 kilometers that is typical range for most of the heavy guns even less for SP guns so in fact this best be used in SP guns in that case it will be safer to counter battery fire). This can bypass the need of FOP(to a large extant if not completely). Putting thermal sights or EVS(enhanced vision system) will make it very effactive in night time.
Of course there are limitations. One is cloudy or windy wheather( in rain if one will still try he/she shall be fried by THUNDERBOLT
). Other is the possibility of enemy seeing you and possibly counter battery attack. Now for that I thought of flying the thing not straight upright but at an angle of say 30 to 45 digree at random in random direction. Still it will be able to focus the view on the target area.
What I mainly want to know is the opinion of people with real life field experience about the feasibility of such system. I mean what will be the worth of the system in the field? If there are other possible problems I an eager to know.
PS This will violate OOE's principal that artillery people should not SEE enemy for in this case they will be SEEING the enemy all the time
Think of increase in the ability of salvo weapons at night time