Shark tactics?

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

I'm thinking these different models are ones proposed by different contractors. And it's our job to figure out which ones work the best. But my question then is, why can't we have 360', High speed, MF AND HF on our drone? Why do we have to choose?

I'm sure a lot of things go into this! Money and practicality not the least of them. As with most research, some of it is promised but the 'customer' (i.e. the military) may not have the confidence that it will actually be delivered. In other cases, it may be possible, but at a cost to the vehicle's capacity or even just economic viability. I think one of the key things here is that the ACTUV has to be cheap and reliable - if it's lacking one of those qualities, it makes no sense to deploy it. I'm pretty sure all of these proposals are very early concepts. It makes sense to test out how all of them work and what ups/downs there are to the systems, just in case the one that's ideal on paper and in sim turns out to be terrible or even just too pricey in reality.

Of course this being a research project, it makes sense that we're kept in the dark, as subjects.


[edit]

GOOD LORD! I was tracking the thing happily in my gator, when out of nowhere, it surfaced about 200 yards from me! Somebody seems pissed

I like the "security" focus of this game, by the way. It makes things interesting. It's not about killing things, and you really don't know who you're up against and what their real goal is - and actually that makes reactions interesting and unpredictable sometimes.