General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA‑ASI) has announced that it can provide a company-owned aircraft to support humanitarian relief efforts.
“Angel One,” an aircraft based on the jet-propelled Predator RPA system owned and operated by GA-ASI, is capable of delivering 8,500 pounds of Humanitarian Daily Ration packets (HDRs) for 3,400 people each day. This capability could ensure that urgently needed food and medical supplies to reach those otherwise inaccessible, such as victims of war-–as in Syria–or following natural disasters throughout the world.
Using a specially designed internal bay door release mechanism, which allows for two separate drops of aid per mission, the field is evenly distributed with HDRs, increasing the likelihood of civilians successfully retrieving needed aid, and ensuring greater delivery success over more traditional “pallet” aid drops.
“Angel One” can fly up to three missions of three hours each per day for as long as humanitarian relief is required.
Source: Press Release
One aircraft I admit It is a nice start, but if you have 50,000 refugees in a camp and you drop enough food for 3400 a day per mission, that is 14 missions a day just to get enough food to feed them.
while the math and the logistics MIGHT work if you have a less than hour and 30 min round trip mission profile, and you can reload and refuel in a matter of minutes, it overlooks basic human nature. If you fly over and drop food, a seething mass of humanity is going to boil forth from every tent and hovel, and fight to the death for every scrap of food you drop no matter how many packets or missions you fly.
Old people and Babies will be just step stools to breakfast. Hundreds will be trampled, and that is what will make the news, not the fact you fed them for a day, a week or a year. I love the idea, don’t get me wrong, but I have seen the elephant… (and he is sitting on my chest). You need a way to maintain order and discipline in the distribution of it or the strong will rob the weak of their HDRP and you get to watch more folks waste away while the strong and aggressive ones with no compunction what so ever to steal food from a child’s hand, survive to bring about a new order and society based on violence and fear.
Sorry got on a soap box there. Thank you GA for the thought, but one journalist with a drone will get footage of the carnage and the PR you hoped to garner from this flight of altruism will disappear faster than “an HDR pack in a starving crowd”.