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Comment by dimatura | Hacker News Reader

I haven't looked into this drone in depth, but I think it may be feasible. The DJI Mini2, which any civilian can buy for $449, has a similar size, weighs 249g, and advertises a flight time of 30 minutes. (In my experience with the Mini 1, it's plausible).

Side note: the DJI Mini 1 is an excellent drone -- stable flight, great camera, and great range. I wouldn't be surprised if it outperforms this 'Bug' drone by most metrics, except for the critical (at least for military purposes) "not being made by a Chinese company" metric.

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It's hard to express how awesome the Mini is. IMO it's an underappreciated technological achievement at the once-in-a-hundred-years level. Only a few years ago, it was hard to get a decent digital camera for $400 and change. The Mini is a decent camera that also happens to fly.

When that realization hit me, it reminded me of the first time I saw a $29 DVD player for sale at WalMart. Some incredible things had to happen to make that possible, almost all of of them going completely unnoticed by almost everyone.

The BAE drone probably costs $50,000 apiece, and doesn't appear to be substantially different from the current-generation (or even the original) Mini.

And the $29 DVD player often had more features than the $200 ones, especially the ability to play other regions discs.

I have to concur. I built many drones with 400$+ flight controllers that look like trash next to my mini 2.

Which drone flight controllers cost $400+??

Apologies as I was ambiguous here. I find myself including both the GPS and flight controller computer/ carrier board in that 400$ price tag. I’m using Hex Cube Orange with Here gps units. This says nothing of cameras, radios, batteries, flight time, and live camera feed/control.

"The BAE drone probably costs $50,000 apiece"

That may be a little high. UAVTek's site says they beat the FLIR Black Hornet 3 bid[1]. Estimates based on US Army budget requests say the Black Hornet 3 is coming in between $15k and $16k per unit[2]. Probably still 5 figures though.

[1] https://uavtek.co.uk/news/uk-mod-acquire-latest-nano-drone-t...

[2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26359/the-pocket-sized...

In addition you have to think of the trade-offs. If the army multiplied the price by 10 to get 10% better performance, that might save a soldier’s life.

Hmm, shades of Kipling‘s Frontier Arithmetic: “four thousand pounds of education/Drops to a ten-rupee jezail”....

That’s based on the value of the whole contract, which will include the costs of participating in trials, demonstrations, training, lifetime service and spare parts. There are likely to be a whole team of personnel dedicated full time to the contract for years, all included.

I have both the Mini and the Mini2. The mini2 is even more impressive. Better camera, better batteries, longer range.

I flew mine today in -15ºC for 35 minutes, and managed a range of 3km.

It's crazy.

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