On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 11:10 PM, Silas Savali <dzez2003@gmail.com> wrote:

On the drones,

The somali coastline is aprox. 3025km in length. The drone with the best endurance that the US have currently (Global Hawk) is 36hrs and a range of 24,985 km!

Now this baby is usually parked at the Edwards Air force Base some 15,541 km from Somalia since its not Carrier Certified (cant land on an aircraft carrier)

Now assuming the drone will fly at an average speed of 725km/h(average of top and cruise speed) it will take it 21 hrs to get there.
Remember, it still needs another 21hrs to get home.

Okay maybe they might have several of them hidden at Diego Garcia (for spying on Afghanistan and Pakistan) which would reduce the distance to 7,106 km making the flight time around 9hrs one way, so 20hrs of flying to somalia, 16hrs of patrolling the coastline.

The somali coastline is 4 hrs flight time one way on this drone which means 2 patrols then fly back home so it is technically feasible

But wait, there is the delicate question of who is paying for it. The drone alone is worth a cool $35M, there is also operational costs per sortie running to the hundreds of thousands of dollars.