By Garrett Reim2021-04-06T09:06:00+01:00
The sight of an aircraft crashing and burning is for most engineers the stuff of nightmares. But, for engineers developing a new class of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) called attritable aircraft, such destruction is not likely to elicit more than a shoulder shrug.
Attritable aircraft are designed to be thrown out – eventually.
Source: Boeing
Attritable aircraft require a change in mindset, says Boeing
The US Air Force (USAF) believes that by designing and building military UAVs cheap enough it can gain an edge over its adversaries in a war of attrition (hence the name “attritable”). Essentially it wants UAVs that it can afford to lose.