Talk:Parasite aircraft
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Many of the last entries in the list of parasite "aircraft" are unmanned drones / missiles.
Q-2C Firebee, fire practice target drone D-21, reconnaissance drone Pegasus, satellite launcher X-43 Hyper-X, research drone White Knight/X-37, research drone
I wonder whether it is a good idea to include non-manned aircraft/drones/research model aircraft as the line between them and missiles is small (e.g. the Luftwaffe's Mistral programme, or the USSR's MiG 19 based air launched anti-shipping missiles). If unmanned aircraft/research models/drones/largeish missiles are to be included as parasite aircraft there are very many dropped unmanned research "aircraft" not included at present - basically only post war US types are in the list above. Some agreement as to boundaries is probably also a good idea. Winstonwolfe 01:49, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] When is an aircraft not an aircraft
Further to the above, I suggest boundary issues as to when drones/missiles count as aircraft are impossible to negotiate if we let in small remote controlled targets like the Firebee, satellite launching rockets like the Pegasus and research models like the X-43 as "parasite aircraft".
I suggest all non manned "aircraft" should be deleted from the list of parasite aircraft. That would be:
DC-130/Q-2C Firebee, C-130 based drone
Lockheed D-21/M-21, for high-speed reconnaissance, based upon the SR-71 Blackbird (1963)
L-1011/Pegasus, for satellite launches (1990)
B-52/X-43 Hyper-X, a hypersonic research test article
White Knight/X-37, for DARPA's spaceplane project
If you disagree, post reasons under :-). Winstonwolfe 08:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
- Remote controlled aircraft differ from missiles so I would consider retaining those particularly if the carrier was to recover the "drone". I would though leave one or two uses of aircraft as carriers to launch rockets as examples of where the carrier concept can also go. Is the list supposed to be examples or exhaustive. GraemeLeggett 09:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I assumed it was supposed to become an exhaustive lsit of parasite aircraft. Leaving aside the Zvenos, do you know of any manned examples not on the list?
Possibly a different section could be added to include those listed above, noting that these are examples of similar ideas or boundary cases, I don't know that the inspiration for unmanned drones or air launched space vehicles resulted from parasite aircraft, so I'm a little uncomfortable with "where the concept could go". If a drone section is included examples such as the German Mistel or Russian KS-1 Kometa / AS-1 Kennel, and Kh-20 (AS-3 Kangaroo) aircraft sized missles - and the unmanned Migs dropped in testing the idea.
Incidentally I understood it was Felixstowe, with an s, as it was named after the seaplane station (and port) of that name.Winstonwolfe 03:15, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
