Hunter Killer Robot

If it always has to land by turning off its rocket engine and dropping like a rock, it won't survive for long under battlefield conditions, where it is likely to be falling onto a hard surface, not netting. Also, you can't tell from the video whether it is producing aimed fire, or just firing in all directions (which might be equally hard on friendly forces as on the enemy).

--This thing's been around in one form or another for over a decade; it's old Reagan era tech but it's looking a little more sophisticated now. IIRC it's intended to be an *orbital* kill vehicle; i.e. if fired into the right orbit all it's gotta do is line itself up and, at a closing velocity of several miles per second, achieve a 'kinetic kill'; no explosives needed. Supposed to be launched in swarms, too.

If it is intended to ram into its target, then why did it appear to be firing guns in multiple directions? The flame from the underside appeared to be a rocket engine; the brief flames going in other directions looked, and sounded like, gunfire.

Doesn't seem likely that is what it was designed for.

Why would they design a device that could hover at ground level if it was indented for use in space? It takes much stronger rockets and complex stability systems to achieve hover at ground level which has nothing to do with the guidance needed to track and intercept a satellite or rocket in orbit. I don't think that film is a demonstration of something intended to be used in space.

In another post, someone talked about "which direction it fired". It wasn't firing anything except stabilizer rockets in the film.

I'm thinking that video was of a concept device that could work more like a cruse missile except not have the limitation of needing to maintain speed for flight so the thing could fly around corners and through doors and down the steps into a bunker, or deep into a cave or wherever it needed to go to follow and locate the bad guys.

Whether it was intended to carry weapons like guns or whether it was just a flying bomb like a cruse missile was not possible to tell from the video. Rocket power however can't last long for something like that (a few minutes at most) so it's range would be very limited and refueling would probably not be easy enough to be practical on the battlefield so I'm thinking the idea is a use-once smart-bomb type of device which would be remotely operated.

But maybe the idea is to put guns on it and have it fly into a building (shooting down doors if need be), to hunt down and kill a sniper for example without taking out the whole block. It would probably work much better in tight quarters than a helicopter like device - no rotor blades to get damaged or tangled in obstructions. It might even have enough power to simply break though a closed door by ramming it. That would be scary as hell to hear something as loud as that coming after you and have it break through the door of the room you were hiding in or come crashing through a closed window and then start to hover and spin around looking for you.

It really does look like some type of probe from Star Wars.

Nah, I don't think so. The flames elsewhere were just stabilizer rockets keeping it pointed upright and making it move right and left. They were pulsing like that because they probably can't be adjusted for thrust. They are either on (full thrust) or off (no thrust) so the control system has to pulse them like that to keep the device stable. The film was called "hover test" so it's clearly just a prototype to test to see if the control system could make it hover and move back and forth - which it did very nicely until it was turned off (or maybe just ran out of fuel).

--Those are thrusters; that's what they sound like. Noise not an issue in a vacuum, heh.

--For a good time google "brilliant pebbles"; IIRC that was the original name for this device..

I wonder why the main engine wasn't put on a gimbal and it controlled that way, though perhaps the multiple rockets and on/off valves are more reliable.

Faster. Reaction times are far lower. Plus, no rotational inertia to deal with. Note that each thruster is mounted to thrust directly through the center of gravity of the vehicle. Given that it's intended to attack a target via hit-to-kill at truly ludicrous closing speeds, the guidance system needs to be capable of making lots of very small velocity vector changes *very* rapidly. In a real scenario, it would be be operating in a free-fall environment, so there wouldn't be any "hover" thrust going continuously. All the thrusters would be pulsing as needed to keep the target in the crosshairs. Conceptually, it's a very simple guidance system, but getting it to work dependably and quickly enough must have been a huge challenge.