TR UAV/UCAV Programs | Anka - series | Kızılelma | TB - series

[Abdelaziz]

(a delay of signal around 2 seconds

This is really a problem .. especially if you are aiming at a target .. is it the same with all satcoms ?

 

[Combat-Master]

This is really a problem .. especially if you are aiming at a target .. is it the same with all satcoms ?

There is latency, but the latency most certainly is not 2 seconds - that would make for a very awkward Sat-phone conversation.

 

[Yasar_TR]

This is really a problem .. especially if you are aiming at a target .. is it the same with all satcoms ?

Yes it is the same with all satcoms.
In Afghanistan, the local bases used to execute take off and lading procedures. Once the Predators were airborne Texas USA used to take over the flying. To hit targets on the ground once locked, was not a problem in spite of the latency of the signal.
If you try to do dog fighting, it would be a problem. Then you would need advanced AI systems to overcome this.

 

[Yasar_TR]

There is latency, but the latency most certainly is not 2 seconds - that would make for a very awkward Sat-phone conversation.

Actually it is around that figure. Just check a TV that has satellite connection, and one that is receiving signal from land bases. I remember in UK, Brazil scoring against us in 2002 world cup, on my kitchen TV before my lounge TV could show it. It was most annoying and like a time warp effect. It is not just the signal going back and forth between land stations and satellite, but latency of the signal processing units of the system. Normal latency is around 400 miliseconds. But the other factors will increase this to close to 2 seconds.

 

[Combat-Master]

Actually it is around that figure. Just check a TV that has satellite connection, and one that is receiving signal from land bases. I remember in UK, Brazil scoring against us in 2002 world cup, on my kitchen TV before my lounge TV could show it. It was most annoying and like a time warp effect.

Civilian signal =/= Military Signal

Not accounting for the processing of the data, which would be highly optimised for the military.

 

[Zafer]

When it comes to latency of satellites having a network of satellites in low Earth orbit is an advantage which makes Starlink a threat in this case.

 

[TheInsider]

Well, Starlink solved the latency issue. Wait until a military satellite constellation with a 25ms latency is put on LEO. Starship can launch 400+ Starlink satellites at once.

 

[Combat-Master]

When it comes to latency of satellites having a network of satellites in low Earth orbit is an advantage which makes Starlink a threat in this case.

A massive threat indeed, the potential of Starlink could be as close to having a direct copper line.

 

[Zafer]

Advance AI and/or having a network of your own will eliminate this threat or equalize the balance.
Good thing dog fighting is becoming obsolete.

 

[kimov]

Most UAV’s work on the principle of “Line-Of-Sight”.
From a land based control centre the distance to control UAVs is limited to around 150km. This is governed by , equipment power and the geographic limitations too. But if a UAV is at around 20000ft the line of sight communication distance can be just under 300km. So with powerful enough communication systems it is possible to control UAVs from 300km away.
With satellite communication option there is no limit to your control distance. (US for example can control UCAVs in Afghanistan from a centre in Texas.). We are limited with our satellite coverage.
Also there is less likelihood of electronic jamming of your control signal with SATCOM. But there is a signal latency issue (a delay of signal around 2 seconds) in satcom. This renders the satcom inoperable during landing and take off. So a close by control centre achieves landing and take off (or automated systems can be implemented if push comes to shove).

You are off with a factor 10 on the delay. it is about 0.24s (= 2 x 36000 km / 300 000 km/s) for standard geostationary comm-sats. For LEO sats which are used for some applications it is much shorter delay but I dont think Turkey has them. For example, the new Starlink project from Space X will use LEO sats at 1100km with 7ms delay.

 

[kimov]

Actually it is around that figure. Just check a TV that has satellite connection, and one that is receiving signal from land bases. I remember in UK, Brazil scoring against us in 2002 world cup, on my kitchen TV before my lounge TV could show it. It was most annoying and like a time warp effect. It is not just the signal going back and forth between land stations and satellite, but latency of the signal processing units of the system. Normal latency is around 400 miliseconds. But the other factors will increase this to close to 2 seconds.

The delay in football is only partly technical. The main delay is an intentional delay, which can be anything from seconds to minutes to allow local operators to intervene if needed.
Even your home router for $50 has latency below 1 ms so modern military sats would hardly be worse than that to shuffle a few Mbps.

 

[Yasar_TR]

You are off with a factor 10 on the delay. it is about 0.24s (= 2 x 36000 km / 300 000 km/s) for standard geostationary comm-sats. For LEO sats which are used for some applications it is much shorter delay but I dont think Turkey has them. For example, the new Starlink project from Space X will use LEO sats at 1100km with 7ms delay.

if the satellite is positioned at 36000km orbit, and your receiver is in Texas; then you send a signal to Afghanistan which is 13000km away then your signal first goes up 36000km, then travels (36x36) +(13x13) = √1465 = 38275km to Afghanistan. That is best part of 80000km. Then it has to come back to you so that you can react to it. That is around 160000km. That makes more than half a second of delay.
There is switching and processing system latency as well. If you look it up you will see that with all satellite communications there is significant processing delay.
Extra delays occur due to the length of cable extensions at either end, and very much so if a signals is routed by more than one satellite hop.
Significant delay can also be added in routers, switches and signal processing points along the route.
So no! I am not out by a factor of 10. In fact most sites will accept average satellite latency as “up-to” 2 seconds.

 

[Test7]

 

[kimov]

if the satellite is positioned at 36000km orbit, and your receiver is in Texas; then you send a signal to Afghanistan which is 13000km away then your signal first goes up 36000km, then travels (36x36) +(13x13) = √1465 = 38275km to Afghanistan. That is best part of 80000km. Then it has to come back to you so that you can react to it. That is around 160000km. That makes more than half a second of delay.
There is switching and processing system latency as well. If you look it up you will see that with all satellite communications there is significant processing delay.
Extra delays occur due to the length of cable extensions at either end, and very much so if a signals is routed by more than one satellite hop.
Significant delay can also be added in routers, switches and signal processing points along the route.
So no! I am not out by a factor of 10. In fact most sites will accept average satellite latency as “up-to” 2 seconds.

You are more or less saying the same thing, the difference is that you use 80kkm instead of my 72kkm as signal path, which gives a latency around 250ms.

You are just doubling a well defined parameter like signal delay/ latency bcs you want human reaction time but that is not very well defined. For example, a human operator will take some 200-1500ms to react even under the best of conditions but it can even take hours to "react" if he needs to get an approval from superior. Do you include 1h to get that approval as a latency? Obviously not. So, you are correct that it will take 250ms (drone to operator) + 500-1500ms (operator) + 250ms (Operator to drone ) + 5-20ms (computers) or "around" 1-2s for an intelligent human reaction under the best of conditions but that is not latency due to sat communication but rather mainly governed by human reaction time.

Here are some pages talking about delay in sat com.

Geostationary satellite latency and time delay 240ms - 279ms

Geostationary satellite latency and time delay due to distance and the speed of light

www.satsig.net

Satellite delay - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Concerning your last comment about delays in routers and switches.
You can use a computer tool called ping to get the round trip time to any network connected computer. Below are mine ping values from Stockholm to randomly chosen NYTimes server. As you see, it takes below 5ms from my computer to go through several busy public computers and then back to me, nothing near 2 seconds. So, you can rest assure that sats with military grade electronics and prioritized traffic will have an order of better computer latency than than my 10 year old router trying to talk to NY Times.

Ps, ping values below also indicate that they have a cached server very close to me in Stockholm. I assumed it was in the New York but I seem wrong. However, this is irrelevant for the subject of latency/delay due to switches/routers handling Gbps data.

> ping nytimes.com
PING nytimes.com (151.101.1.164) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=3.55 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=4.37 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=4.07 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=3.37 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=6 ttl=55 time=3.42 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=7 ttl=55 time=3.85 ms


Ps. as an interesting comparison, the MAM-L is air-borne for some 30+ seconds after released from TB2.

 

[Yasar_TR]

You are more or less saying the same thing, the difference is that you use 80kkm instead of my 72kkm as signal path, which gives a latency around 250ms.

You are just doubling a well defined parameter like signal delay/ latency bcs you want human reaction time but that is not very well defined. For example, a human operator will take some 200-1500ms to react even under the best of conditions but it can even take hours to "react" if he needs to get an approval from superior. Do you include 1h to get that approval as a latency? Obviously not. So, you are correct that it will take 250ms (drone to operator) + 500-1500ms (operator) + 250ms (Operator to drone ) + 5-20ms (computers) or "around" 1-2s for an intelligent human reaction under the best of conditions but that is not latency due to sat communication but rather mainly governed by human reaction time.

Here are some pages talking about delay in sat com.

Geostationary satellite latency and time delay 240ms - 279ms

Geostationary satellite latency and time delay due to distance and the speed of light

www.satsig.net

Satellite delay - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Concerning your last comment about delays in routers and switches.
You can use a computer tool called ping to get the round trip time to any network connected computer. Below are mine ping values from Stockholm to randomly chosen NYTimes server. As you see, it takes below 5ms from my computer to go through several busy public computers and then back to me, nothing near 2 seconds. So, you can rest assure that sats with military grade electronics and prioritized traffic will have an order of better computer latency than than my 10 year old router trying to talk to NY Times.

Ps, ping values below also indicate that they have a cached server very close to me in Stockholm. I assumed it was in the New York but I seem wrong. However, this is irrelevant for the subject of latency/delay due to switches/routers handling Gbps data.

> ping nytimes.com
PING nytimes.com (151.101.1.164) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=3.55 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=4.37 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=4.07 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=3.37 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=6 ttl=55 time=3.42 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.193.164 (151.101.193.164): icmp_seq=7 ttl=55 time=3.85 ms


Ps. as an interesting comparison, the MAM-L is air-borne for some 30+ seconds after released from TB2.

I know about everything you have mentioned. The delay is not just 250ms. It is double that because signal has to come back to the operator too. We seem to be saying more or less same thing. Yes. But it doesn’t detract from the fact that there is a significant time delay in Satcom operated drones (around 2 seconds has been calculated by US) that it makes it impossible/dangerous for drone operators to land and take off via satcom. When they see a target on the ground and then fire at that target the delay doesn’t really matter too much.

The Predator is reported to have a 'latency' of around two seconds, which causes problems during takeoff/landing. According to the telegraph,

But the two-second delay between a pilot moving a joystick in Nevada and an aircraft responding in Afghanistan is enough to cause a crash during take-off and landing. Crews in Afghanistan control 'launch and recovery’ through direct contact with antennae on the aircraft. Half an hour after take-off, control of the Reaper is handed to a crew in Nevada; half an hour before landing, it returns to the crews on the ground in Kandahar.

 

[kimov]

I know about everything you have mentioned. The delay is not just 250ms. It is double that because signal has to come back to the operator too. We seem to be saying more or less same thing. Yes. But it doesn’t detract from the fact that there is a significant time delay in Satcom operated drones (around 2 seconds has been calculated by US) that it makes it impossible/dangerous for drone operators to land and take off via satcom. When they see a target on the ground and then fire at that target the delay doesn’t really matter too much.

The Predator is reported to have a 'latency' of around two seconds, which causes problems during takeoff/landing. According to the telegraph,

Please don't use a general newspaper journalist as some form of source, they are utterly non-technical on almost every subject you can think of. That sentence from Telegraph is simply dead wrong from a technical point of view. The delay from joystick to drone is very well defined, it is 240-250ms for a single sat relay. The time from drone-> HUMAN -> drone is about 2s and again, that is mainly due to human reaction time.

Please understand, I dont say that the 250ms signal delay is irrelevant for time-critical applications like landing. I would say 250ms is even very critical (just ask any online gamer or stock broker) but all I'm saying is that the correct technical signal delay or latency for a satellite relay is around 250ms.

 

[tayyare]

Ping is round trip so without any extra processing one way 250ms is 500ms ping, if you wanna think of it like a video game, 250 is borderline playable. 500 is not

 

[Yasar_TR]

Please don't use a general newspaper journalist as some form of source, they are utterly non-technical on almost every subject you can think of. That sentence from Telegraph is simply dead wrong from a technical point of view. The delay from joystick to drone is very well defined, it is 240-250ms for a single sat relay. The time from drone-> HUMAN -> drone is about 2s and again, that is mainly due to human reaction time.

Please understand, I dont say that the 250ms signal delay is irrelevant for time-critical applications like landing. I would say 250ms is even very critical (just ask any online gamer or stock broker) but all I'm saying is that the correct technical signal delay or latency for a satellite relay is around 250ms.

That is valid news supported by US army action re satcom delay on drones.
Please don't give Wikipedia as a source either as it can be easily manipulated!

 

[Quasar]

-Most UAVs operate primarily on commercial Ku band.

 

[Cabatli_TR]

Supersonic target drone

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1479302914715881473