Chinese UAV/UCAV development

tphuang said:

while this conversation is sort of related to the manufacturing process of UAVs in China, let's try not get too far off topic. I think we can conclude that there are serious issues in product management in hierarchy and in communication between engineers and technicians.

Dennis, I'm not sure if you are at liberty or have access to some of China's other UAV helicopter projects. I think we have what appears to be a cloning of S-300 that flies off some Chinese ships and also another UAV helicopter called U-8 (I think). Do you have nay opinion on the quality of those helicopters? Based on what you are saying, it sounds like you believe the helicopters you are developing right now is a leap over what China is currently using?

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t2contra said:

The SVU-200 team. Picture is from modelairplanenews.

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vesicles said:

I think that may have something to do with how the managing hierarchy is structured. When a project manager manages only projects but not people, they get little respect as they can't hold the people accountable for what they do. They would behave completely differently when their own dept managers tell them to do something. I think this is inherent in a lot of companies, Chinese or not. Before grad school, I worked at a pharmaceutical company in Texas and I've encountered similar issues with an almost entirely Caucasian crew. It's all about how the company is structured, as well as the culture within the company.

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vesicles said:

I think this issue mainly stems from the ferocious competition in schools. Because it is so important to get into colleges in China and such a large student body in high school trying to squeeze into a relatively small number of the colleges, competition becomes so ferocious. In such case, students/parents/teachers have to focus on the one thing that will give them the biggest return: grades. And this mentality has been so entrenched in their minds, everything else becomes less important.

The same thing happens in the States in Medical schools. Because of the incredible competition (average college GPA for a typical entering class of Med school students is ~3.8-3.9 out of total of 4.0) , the college students trying to enter medical school tend to focus more on grades and less on everything else. You can immediately tell, among a full class of college students, who is in pre-Med. These students tend to roll their eyes and complain a lot when they are required to do a hands-on project since in their mind, these projects have little to do with their GPA. They get more motivated when being told that the project would take up 40% of their final grades. And once in Med school, you can immediately tell that they have had little hands-on experience while in college. Although most of them majored in biology or something similar, which means they have taken biology lab courses, most of them don't even know how to hold a micro-pipetter or how to place a Petri dish in an incubator.

therefore, in my opinion, it has little to do with cultures (East vs. West, etc), but has everything to do with the level of competition, which forces one to prioritize.

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vesicles said:

I think this issue mainly stems from the ferocious competition in schools. Because it is so important to get into colleges in China and such a large student body in high school trying to squeeze into a relatively small number of the colleges, competition becomes so ferocious. In such case, students/parents/teachers have to focus on the one thing that will give them the biggest return: grades. And this mentality has been so entrenched in their minds, everything else becomes less important.

The same thing happens in the States in Medical schools. Because of the incredible competition (average college GPA for a typical entering class of Med school students is ~3.8-3.9 out of total of 4.0) , the college students trying to enter medical school tend to focus more on grades and less on everything else. You can immediately tell, among a full class of college students, who is in pre-Med. These students tend to roll their eyes and complain a lot when they are required to do a hands-on project since in their mind, these projects have little to do with their GPA. They get more motivated when being told that the project would take up 40% of their final grades. And once in Med school, you can immediately tell that they have had little hands-on experience while in college. Although most of them majored in biology or something similar, which means they have taken biology lab courses, most of them don't even know how to hold a micro-pipetter or how to place a Petri dish in an incubator.

therefore, in my opinion, it has little to do with cultures (East vs. West, etc), but has everything to do with the level of competition, which forces one to prioritize.

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DennisFetters said:

I can't answer everyone's posts. Since I arrived at this new company I have been unbelievably busy trying to move me and my wife to a new place to live, plus the company's need for me to start the improvement of their UAV's. They got themselves in a little trouble being a little enthusiastic and now have some problems that need to be resolved in the past designs that customers have in their hands.

Nevertheless, I do agree with what everyone posted about Chinese engineers and class separation. I could add more but that will have to wait until I have settled and have more free time.

As for the other UAV's here in China;

I can only talk about the ones that have been posted in the news, so that way I know I'm not getting into trouble.

The U-8 is a military project. It is a medium-size UAV using an air-cooled Chinese made engine. The total lifting capacity is claimed to be 230kg, while only having a 40kg payload. In my opinion, that's not a very good payload capacity for a 190kg helicopter. My SVU-200 was 195kg empty weight, and yet could lift a max payload of 200kg. (realistically would operate with a 150kg payload for reserve performance). The U-8 is having overheating problems (confirmed by all the extra holes) and still needs a great deal of development. Some engineers told me that it is not that good of a design, but I have no way to confirm that.

The one being seen flying around some Chinese navel ships is a Sheaibeal Camcopter S-100. There are no cloned S-300's in China that I know of.

There is also the Z-5, which is just a small Italian built CH-7 single passenger helicopter converted to a UAV. They are very expensive to buy in Italy. I'm sure that they have the intention of just copying everything and duplicating them in China, but that will be a hard task.

There is also the V750 UAV helicopter, which is just the old 1950'e era Brantley two-passenger helicopter that went out of business in the 1970's. I believe it weighs about 1600 pounds and only has a 50kg payload. The Chinese company purchased 18 used helicopters from people around the USA, which was all the they could get their hands on and shipped to China, along with the old factory leftover stock. They converted all but one to UAV's, and are telling everyone they built them all in China, when in fact I look at all 16 of them (one crashed and one is still original as I said) and they are all old helicopters inside with a paintjob and new nose job on the outside. It's a waist of time and money.

It is a hard thing to take a manned helicopter and convert it into a UAV, and also much more expensive. It will always have compromises in stability and performance. Better to design from the ground up. Up-scaling toy RC helicopter into large UAV's (the mistake most everyone makes) is also not a good way to go. small RC helicopters are very unstable in their types of rotorsystems, and the larger you build them, the more unstable they get, and the performance scale drops due to weigh and inefficiency of the power drive systems.

That all I have time for by now. When I'm allowed, I'll post some pictures.

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plawolf said:

The weak link in EMP shielding is the antenna, which links the shielded electronics to the outside world and which could provide a bridge for EMP to get at the electronics inside the shielding, but a basic fuse would provide protection there, and something slightly more advanced like a common surge protector would allow the connection to be restablished without needing a manual fuse change.

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