Mark Wolfe wrote:
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You won't see them on small craft,...
Of course we will. When is another question.
...as it's too cost prohibitive.
It is for products designed and built exclusively for military-tasked
applications. There is little to no incentive for government in general,
and the military in particular, to require equipment to be either
economically efficient, practically maintainable, or even always
reasonably practical. Hell, sometimes there's not even a requirement to
be practically useful.
But once the technology is allowed to be used in the non-military
consumer and commercial markets, manufacturers manage to find ways of
turning what was a barely practical (and correspondingly unaffordable by
any but a 1st-world government), limited-use military application, into
something practical and affordable for the masses, and at market prices.
For good signal strength, you'd need about a 1 meter dish,
then you'd need to protect it with a radome. These things take up room,
and there's not much above deck space on a sub 40 foot boat for one.
Mark
You need all that now because there is no compelling demand to make it
more efficient. My experience in the military was that it took several
iterations to get something that was actually practical in that it
worked as spec'ed, was maintainable by the military itself (i.e. didn't
require outside contractors to keep in tuned), and was reliable in the
long term.
And having worked for a major defense contractor making very expensive,
and high-tech military-only products (Apache, Global Hawk, Firebee,
(Aluminum coffins)) I can also tell you that even if the contracted item
could be made better - it can't be. It has to be made per contract or
the contract has to be changed. And that's verrrry messy.
Incremental improvements always occur (mostly to fix minor design
flaws). But major redesigns are not the rule. It took so long to
retrofit Apache A and C models that they were practically obsolete by
the time the changes - all relatively minor - were completely implemented.
The thing is, everything made specifically for the military is a weapon,
or essentially treated as one. Once it no longer needs to fit into the
weapon niche, it might actually have a chance of becoming something
useful to the rest of us.
Bottom line - put all that high-tech stuff described above into the
hands of someone who has to turn a profit and has the flexibility to
make changes based on economics rather than on its ultimate potential
effect on body count, and you'll probably see it packaged in blister
packs at Radio Shack by the end of the decade.
--
Best Regards,
~DJ
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