{"id":32455,"date":"2016-12-06T22:03:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T06:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/tern-tailsitter-drone-pilot-not-included"},"modified":"2017-06-04T09:00:08","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T16:00:08","slug":"tern-tailsitter-drone-pilot-not-included","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/tern-tailsitter-drone-pilot-not-included","title":{"rendered":"Tern Tailsitter Drone: Pilot Not Included"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tizhOt4UVXA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One of the oddest military drones aborning reinvents a stillborn technology from 1951. That\u2019s because the unmanned aircraft revolution is resurrecting configurations that were tried more than a half century ago but proved impractical with a human pilot inside. The case in point: Northrop Grumman\u2019s new <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/?s=flying+wing&submit=Search\">Tern<\/a>, a drone designed to do everything<a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2015\/10\/how-to-cut-predator-reaper-uav-crew-in-half-lt-gen-otto\/\"> armed MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers<\/a> can, but to do it flying from small ships or rugged scraps of land \u2013 i.e., no runway needed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo one has flown a large, unmanned tailsitter before,\u201d Brad Tousley, director of the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Tern\u2019s primary funder, said in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darpa.mil\/news-events\/2016-11-17\">news release<\/a>. The key word there is \u201cunmanned.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Back in 1951, when all sorts of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft ideas were being tried, Convair and Lockheed built experimental <em>manned<\/em> tailsitters for the Navy. Convair\u2019s XFY-1 and Lockheed\u2019s XFV-1, nicknamed \u201cPogo\u201d and \u201cPogo Stick,\u201d each had two counter-rotating propellers on its nose and was to take off and land pointing straight up. Convair\u2019s Pogo had a delta wing and, at right angles to the wing, large fins. Lockheed\u2019s Pogo Stick had an X-shaped tail whose trailing tips, like Convair\u2019s wing and fins, sported landing gear.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2016\/12\/tailsitter-drone-tern-pilot-not-included\/\">http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2016\/12\/tailsitter-drone-tern-pilot-not-included\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the oddest military drones aborning reinvents a stillborn technology from 1951. That\u2019s because the unmanned aircraft revolution is resurrecting configurations that were tried more than a half century ago but proved impractical with a human pilot inside. The case in point: Northrop Grumman\u2019s new Tern, a drone designed to do everything armed MQ-1 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-military","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32455"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59543,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32455\/revisions\/59543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}