BAE Mantis drone doing flight tests in Australia
 

The british Mantis twin-turboprop-UAV has started flight tests at Woomera.

Picture:
BAE Mantis im Flugtest - FLUG REVUE

Hmmmm.....

With the stunning success of introducing Nimrod 2000 and EuropHoon into service on time and on budget :rolleyes:, why do I feel some concern at the prospect of 't Bungling Baron Waste o' Space building an unmanned aircraft?

:eek:

At Krautland they are phasing out electronic intelligence gathering Atlantics and plan to use unmanned Eurohawk drones instead.

Mantis has no orders so far AFAIK but was developed and paid for by BAE Systems.

If your German language skills are not quite up to reading the Flug Revue, try this link (Flight International article on the Mantis first flights).

Well the very same picture can be "understood" anyway can't it?

KK -

IIRC, Mantis is a joint venture between MoD and BAES. Why we are paying anything for this when we could buy Reaper and Global Hawk is beyond me, but there you are.

S41

"Jobs for the boys" springs to mind...

Not forgetting priority in the order book / production line .....












..... right up until someone else wants them!;)

Defence Industrial Strategy
 

The very reasonable question "why do we pay BAE Sys to produce system X, when we could just buy system Y off the shelf" can normally be answered by reference to this http://www.mod.uk/nr/rdonlyres/f530e..._wp_cm6697.pdf

Use a PDF search to count the number of times BAE Sys are mentioned by name (105 excluding the glossary).
What does this tell us?

Sun Who.

"Sithee by 'eck, 't mantis.exe has encounterred a problem, tha' knows and needs terr close. Sorry for 't inconvenience, tarrah"

That had me in stitches, thanks Beags!!!! After working closely with BWos in the recent past at a large centre of "flt test excellence"........well I'll say no more! Man-tis looks no less impressive in the flesh either......

Do I detect 'Regionalist' undertones in Beagle's comments?

I believe the chopper you refer to is more than likely from middle england/south east and is obviously struggling to find his/her own identity.

I fear for their safety once he/she realises they have more in common with northern France than anything you could consider English.

Sun Who,

Indeed, the "BAES, AW & BVT must remain profitable at all costs irrespective of how poor their performance" document. And we wonder why they can - esp. BAES - be a little overbearing, or even, dare we mention it, "Arrogant"!?! :rolleyes:

it would be most interesting to see how long the Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) would last if when "buying British" was not demonstrable value-for-money, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, (nee BURR :yuk:, nee DTI :*) had to pay the difference between the BAES / AW / BVT costs and those of the preferred / lowest cost bidder who many or may not decide to build the equipment in the UK... :hmm:

Let's hope the damn thing gets re-written in concert with SDR 2010 and focusses on value for the front line rather more than in protecting major international companies that happen to operate in the UK from their own incompetence and ineptitude. (See NAO Major Project Reports, passim).

S41

It seems that "Buy British" is a self defeating policy. Could we move towards a "Buy Effective" policy... It might help and it might save one or two lives along the way.

But let's not loose sight of the "big picture"... It's not all "insurgent warfare" - we need to be able to fight in any scenario.

Alternatively hit the Union Flag button at the top right of the Flugrevue website. ;)

Does anyone know what it CAN do that REAPER does not do? ...and I won't even go to the fact that REAPER is doing IT today...

You could drive it from Waddo rather than Vegas thus saving the tax payer £2.99 in LOA? :}

Assymetric? :cool:

Looks like there is space for a pilot upgrade/downgrade option. :eek:

.... and they have raided the parts bin. I'm sure that tail looks like it has come off something else.:bored:

Mantis, eh - does that mean the users will spend most of their time praying it will work?