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BasicLuxury t1_je1yz2j wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Ukraine Defense intelligence shows insides of Shahed drones, which Russia uses to attack by DoremusJessup

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/good-wood-4915226

Article from 2003, but it does specifically mention wooden props for UAVs. You can run them into nets and recover the drone while only breaking a relatively cheap wooden prop.

I assume it's a similar problem WW2 Japan ran into. They tried cheapening and lightening kamikaze by removing the landing gear, but quickly found that if a plane couldn't find a target, then they would have to ditch, wasting the entire plane.

Note how these drones lack landing gear.

There's also other considerations mentioned in the article that may make wood better for this application, but I don't have information.

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Joezev98 t1_je28p77 wrote

>Note how these drones lack landing gear.

Because they don't have to search for a target. The coordinates of energy infrastructure and civilian hospitals are well known.

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BasicLuxury t1_je2ea2a wrote

Even being the Russian use case, Iran designed these as loiter munitions.

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degotoga t1_je33wzt wrote

No, that’s not correct. They are more akin to cruise missiles than true loitering munitions. They are guided by GPS coordinate, not manually

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