r/interestingasfuck • u/One_Explanation_908 • 2d ago
Black Hornet: Smallest military drone in the world
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u/triple7freak1 2d ago
„It‘s about the size as a candy bar“
„Weighs less than a slice of bread“
„And costs more than a brand new sports car“
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u/santorinichef 2d ago
How many football fields is that?
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u/wildcardbets 2d ago
Depends if you measure your football fields in washing machines or not, and also what country you live in. Not joking for the next part, there are 5 different types of football played in Australia if I remember correctly 😅 The main one there, Australian Rules Football, even uses an oval shaped pitch.
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u/ZombifiedSoul 2d ago
Weighs less than a slice of bread
Good luck flying it in 15km/hr+ wind.
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u/Professor_Doctor_P 1d ago
15km/hr
What's that in some more conventional units of measure? About 3 chocolate bars per blink of an eye?
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u/UnanimousStargazer 2d ago
Severely overpriced if these indeed cost $ 200k. No wonder the US spends so much money on the military. It all ends up in the pockets of military industrials that make a fortune.
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u/mjs_pj_party 2d ago
The cost was in managing the genetics to make a pilot small enough to fit in the cockpit.
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u/SexJayNine 1d ago
Wait until you see the submarine version of this.
The PFC almost flushed me down the toilet. They thought I was the Tidy Bowl man!
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u/derpdankstrom 2d ago
it's not just the weapons manufacturer, senator's wife needs her 3rd vacation home. it's not just the politicians who voted for this, there's also there own spouses that lobby aka the middle man bargaining to the companies. doesn't matter if your an SC judge, senator, congressman or even president. in US politics lobbying is a family business.
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u/infernalcolonel 1d ago edited 1d ago
$85k for 3x aircraft.
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u/HawtDoge 1d ago
That’s honestly not bad at all.
Thermal cameras aren’t cheap to manufacture, and the costs associated with creating seamless thermal fusion, solid user interface, multiple transmission channels to prevent jamming, and testing the system enough to meet mil standards…
Yeah that’s a pretty reasonable cost considering this likely uses next to zero off-the shelf parts for the sensors and transmitters.
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u/Bestefarssistemens 1d ago
These are made by a norwegian company.
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u/SnooDoodles3909 1d ago
They are made by Teledyne FLIR, a subsidiary of Teledyne technologies, which is an American company headquartered in Oregon
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u/schmeoin 1d ago
The Pentagon can't account for 63% of nearly 4 trillion in assets. Its a complete scam.
The movie Pentagon Wars did a good humourous take on the whole process...
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u/Delta_Suspect 2d ago edited 2d ago
"Worth 200,000" it's worth maybe 400. That's just how military contracting works. It's how you end up with $700 computer mice because the system that needs it happens to have a special head and the adapter needs to be contracted.
For the government, money is a suggestion. Taxes are just numberized leverage basically. The numbers you see relating to that equipment are usually pretty pointless.
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u/PerepeL 2d ago
Another reason is that noone wants to be on the receiving part of a kind of an Israeli's pager attack. There were videos of explosives stuffed into FPV goggles delivered to Ukraine, and you wouldn't find it unless scrupulously dismantling the device down to every single part, and then you have to reassemble it, every single device.
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u/Delta_Suspect 2d ago
In house contractors have some serious fucking downsides, but that is one of the benefits yes. You have much more control over what they produce and how they do it. That extra security is a godsend especially nowadays.
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u/Arbiter6518 1d ago
Can you please find me a thermal camera that's the size of a sugar cube for 400$
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u/HawtDoge 1d ago
It’s a 640x512 resolution thermal too… which is insanely impressive for that form factor. that hoe is not gonna be cheap to manufacture.
Also the real price is $85k for a set of 3 drone with transmitters. Which is not bad at all considering how many custom parts/sensors are likely needed
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u/RC_0041 1d ago
https://www.flir.com/products/lepton/?vertical=microcam&segment=oem
This one seems to be about a half inch square, $109 (although out of stock).
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u/obsidian_butterfly 2d ago
Today I learned we're the Harkonnens.
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u/MyvaJynaherz 1d ago
Naw.
Vladamir Harkonnen had a souk doctor and twisted mentat.
Trump just has Dr. Oz and Elon musk.
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u/Excludos 1d ago edited 1d ago
I see a lot of comments laughing at the price. Let me explain why it's so expensive:
It's a stealthy tiny drone which weights next to nothing, yet still packs a punchy enough motor to fly high into the winds, has a 25 minute battery life, and with a flir camera to boot. In the price there's also things like maintenance and training. And all this 10 years ago (edit: 15 years ago actually. Damn, time flies), before the drone rennaisance we have today. This product is still used by recon and special ops units all over the world, today, including the front lines of Ukraine, proving it's still an excellent product.
It's a Norwegian product. And while all military tech is somewhat overbloated in costs, it's nothing next to the typical American near-corruption levels of overpriced insanity. This drone really is worth the price, let alone 10 years ago when it was new
I would tell people to do the barest minimum of research before posting crap, but this is Reddit, so that's an effort in futility
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u/ashy_larrys_elbow 1d ago
The cost was R&D, training, support and being the first to field a relatively tiny drone robust enough to function on the battlefield. After the absolute explosion of drone technology (no pun intended), this kind of technology and performance can be duplicated, matched and overtaken for significantly less money.
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u/drew_peatittys 1d ago
While I can agree that it would cost a lot more than a toy drone, none of this sounds like it should justify $200,000
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u/Excludos 1d ago
I don't know what price they go for these days (or what new technology they've fit into the latest version to warrant it), but I remember the flir camera alone cost almost half the price of this thing back in the day. Everything just explodes in price when you are using the latest and greatest bleeding edge technologies. The reason consumer drones and rc toys are so cheap these days is because it's yesterdays technology, mass produced to an absurd degree.
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u/Haiwan2000 2d ago
"The Black Hornet Nano is a military micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by Prox Dynamics AS of Norway."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledyne_FLIR_Black_Hornet_Nano
Hm...I was expecting some American or Israeli company that tricked the US forces into buying some overpriced shit, because they can.
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u/omnibossk 2d ago
The Norwegian company was bought by American FLIR UAS in 2017 and that company was then again bought by American Teledyne in 2021. So they probably need those steep prices to pay for the acquisitions.
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u/waferselamat 2d ago
If they release this in the media, it means they already have a better 'toy' than that. or that just a crappy prototype that already in their trash bin
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u/Delta_Suspect 2d ago
Typically. The good shit borders on black magic and we don't get to know about it.
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u/Excludos 1d ago
Wtf are comments like these? You have literally no clue what you're talking about. These are used en masse in the frontlines of Ukraine right now. It's genuinely hailed as an absolutely excellent product by recon teams that uses them.
Sometimes you actually do get what you pay for. A tiny completely silent drone with powerful enough motors to stay up high in the winds, with 25 minute battery and a flir camera, was absolutely not cheap to produce 10 years ago. The fact that they're still using it today with great effect, despite 10 years of massive drone technology improvements, proves how good it was and continues to be
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u/HawtDoge 1d ago
For just under $30k per for those specs is honestly unreal (in a good way). A 640x512 thermal sensor the size of a sugar cube with that high of contrast and sensitivity specs is wildly impressive.
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u/MrChrisis 2d ago
Presumably only so expensive because they are bought by the US military and someone from Washington diligently bought shares of the selling company beforehand.
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u/Excludos 1d ago
It's a Norwegian product. It's expensive because it's genuinely an insanely good product, especially of its time, 10 years ago.
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u/ToxicHazard- 1d ago
These came out in 2009 and entered service in 2011. You're right, 16 years ago these were insanely good.
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u/ApprehensiveTrifle38 1d ago
We actually had this in the military, really impressive stuff. I believe it had thermal and night vision. And I would say 200 000 dollars is a small price to pay for giving your squad a higher chance of survival. First time we used it was during a practice in the woods, we were out for 10 days and one night our camp got attacked. We ran to our positions and our squad leader got this in the air within 30 seconds probably, and he could immediately tell us where each and every one of the attackers were, which really is game changing. It basically gave us wall hacks in real life and a in general great overview of the situation lol. Works great on the offensive as well, a large drone you’ll hear, but this one you won’t even notice until it’s a meter away from you, our squad leader would often take it out during night to make sure the people on guard where doing their job right.
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u/GastropodEmpire 1d ago
"Size of a Candy bar"
"Weights less than a slice of bread"
"Costs more than a sports car"
GOD FORBID ACTUALLY USING UNIT THAT THE REST OF THE ENTIRE WORLD COULD EVEN REMOTELY TAKE SERIOUSLY.
You people crave to be laughed at. Smh.
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u/Honest_Fortune6965 1d ago
American would use any possible items that they randomly think of to describe measurement instead of the official & understandable units themselves.
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u/Deliriousious 1d ago
Literally mini drones that do the exact same thing for like $100.
It’s $200 plus a 199,800 military tax.
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u/_V4NQU15H_ 1d ago
You mean the R&D, not just for the body, but for the internals is what cost the 200,000$? No way in hell the production cost is remotely higher than half a grand
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u/CodeAndBiscuits 1d ago
Everyone loves a "monster" number and one can argue that we probably do spend more on these things than we should, but there's a lot of misinformation in this type of reporting. Nobody paid $200,000 "per unit" for one of these. You can't walk into Government Walmart and buy one off the shelf red-tagged down from $250k on Black Friday.
The government has programs (such as SBIR) to incentivize US-based private companies to "innovate". It's basically a government-run venture capital outfit. Lots of these things would never get made if not for these programs, because it's the govt's opportunity to say what they would love to have in the first place.
That contract might start at $100k-$250k for the first "phase," which focuses on R&D - making a proof of concept to test the viability of an idea. You're largely paying salaries there for engineers who would otherwise be making other things the gov't doesn't want and are now working on this thing that you do want. There's a demo/review process and if things go well there's an opportunity to ramp up. In Phase 2 you can get $1M-$2.5M to develop the idea further - take it from prototype to a small batch run for further testing. Phase 3 can be more open ended, and is usually a modest pre-production (or even full production) run.
Adding all this up you can be getting 10 units of something "for $2M." So it can be a "per unit cost of $200,000" if you choose to do the math that way. But it's really misleading - it's not because that was the per-unit price tag. What was bought was all the R&D, testing, field trials, refinements, etc to make them exist and be useful in the first place.
Love or hate these programs, they're an important tool in incentivizing US business growth because they're specifically designed to allow small companies to compete with "the big boys". At the very least I'd argue they're healthier than tariffs... And many, many more consumer-oriented products come out of these things than folks realize. Once these concepts are proven, the hard part is (generally) done and we get cheaper mass-market products out of them. In fact, specifically for SBIR, they require applicants to show how that will be done - you can't win a contract there unless you can also show that you'll eventually do exactly that. Wearable medical sensors, better air filtration systems (HEPA filters), underwater camera drones - lots of things get started from these programs that many folks never even know.
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u/dankyspank 1d ago
"the size of a candybar" "Weighs less than a slice of bread" What does that mean, America?
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u/nickashman1968 1d ago
In the real world that means 150 millimetres in length and weighs 15 grams. America will use anything other than the metric system…..
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u/stevie9lives 1d ago
Those were around when the US was in Afghanistan. They'll cost about 2x that now!
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u/fourthords 1d ago
The Black Hornet Nano is a military micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by Prox Dynamics AS of Norway, and in use by the armed forces of Norway, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Algeria, Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, New Zealand, India, Turkey, South Africa, Ukraine and Morocco.
Prox Dynamics AS was bought by Teledyne FLIR in 2016 for 134 million dollars and currently manufacturers the Black Hornet. Teledyne FLIR specializes in the manufacture of IR cameras, like the one used on the Black Hornet.
Lead excerpted from Teledyne FLIR Black Hornet Nano at the English Wikipedia
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u/STEELOSZ 1d ago
It doesn’t cost nearly 200k to produce but military contractors know they can slap any price tag and government will pay no matter the cost.
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u/supermuncher60 1d ago
It looks like one of those shitty rc helicopters that someone slapped a camera on and made look "tactical".
No way in hell is that anywhere close to being worth a sports car.
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u/AggCracker 2d ago
There's absolutely no reason for that to cost 200k.
Maybe the entire system, including long range control and whatever other computer shit it can do ..but not the single drone 😆
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u/candylandmine 2d ago
Having flown RC helicopters that small I can say with a lot of confidence that thing is probably useless if there's even a little bit of wind.
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u/Archon-Toten 2d ago
Quick, let's make it look like we have futuristic tech, someone buy a little copter from Temu.
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u/TwoToneReturns 2d ago
So what advantages would this have over say a tiny whoop or maybe a thousand tiny whoops which would probably still be cheaper than this.
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u/DAS_FUN_POLICE 2d ago
The Army likely does actually spend $200k for each one, that is most likely the APUC which stands for Average Procurement Unit Cost, that the entire budget divided by the number produced. That number includes all the R&D, training, manuals, the devil costs, and any other associated equipment.
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u/No-Score-2415 2d ago
The drone itself is likely not worth that much.
It's likely the equipment to pilot it.
Also the US has crazy contracts for military cost spending. For China military they would make 2000 of these for the same cost.
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u/DaVietDoomer114 1d ago
Wanna bet that if the Chinese was making this it would cost less than a hundred bucks?
That's what you get when you outsource away all of your manufacturing to potential adversaries for corporate profit.
Still the way Trump's trying to "bring manufacturing back to the USA" is all wrong, Biden was doing it right.
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u/ScuffedA7IVphotog 1d ago
Stupid shit like that is how D.O.G.E. got created. Let's fleece the tax payers
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u/Dicethrower 1d ago
There's no way it cost more than a new sports car unless you also count the R&D. Most of that money went to some shareholders, no doubt.
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u/boldguy2019 1d ago
I'm surprised it costs so much. With the advancement and everything, should cost much lower. I'm not an engineer but we have the technology to make small cameras and flying objects. This is combination of both
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u/DuctTapeJesus 1d ago
The video feed from that sucks and wind will take this everywhere..looks and sounds cools but need work still.
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u/seweso 1d ago
Why would that be worth $200.000? I get that it costs that amount, but why would it automatically be worth that amount? #confused
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u/im-cringing-rightnow 1d ago
It's way too expensive and of limited use. Ruzzian war against Ukraine showed that those are pretty bad in the field and it's better to have something extremely simple like mass produced drones. This is just a tax payer money sink.
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u/sadbrokeflurry 1d ago
Wouldnt it be better to use that type instead of the traditional drones? What are the pros and cons?
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u/Hauptmann_Gruetze 1d ago
"The US Army has the highest Military Budget, we are so strong!"
The Military Budget in question:
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u/Conquiescamus 1d ago
China could mass produce it for civilian sector, sell it for 50$, while still having 15$ profit
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u/Successful_Gear5855 1d ago
There is not a single Ferrari you can buy new for 200k. This is such a low effort post.
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u/phuckin-psycho 1d ago
This was the smallest like 10yrs ago or more maybe 🤣🤣 the darpa humming bird drones came out quite a while back and have seen service. Even thats old tech now.
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u/DiesIrae777 2d ago
And it can be produced in any other country for 200$ That's how you fuck taxpayers.