Wondering what proportion of the weight of a boat is generally afforded the engine, I draw up some scratch stats based on a UK powerboat in the shape of the Iron 647.
Though I'd be interested in knowing what proportion of the empty weight of airliners is occupied by the engines, it's not easy knowing because manufacturers rarely split the engines from the airframe in the specs.
Interested to see that in either case (with the cat confined to a pair of cruise motors) it's about a quarter of the gross. Batteries are included in the electrical USV, although these would be unlikely to last much more than twenty minutes am guessing and so I've discarded any reference to range or endurance that as yet are unknown. That said am unsure whether these were listed for the 647 either, the target customer likely to be a circumnavigator of say the Isle of Wight on a sunny day.
Speed I've pro-rata'd from the length of the craft, or the time to cover its own length. In the second case, again, it's as much an aspiration as an aspirated record.
The takeaway however is the fact that even with the avionics thrown in, the cat is a comfortable hundred times cheaper than the powerboat.
I discussed this with the man who heads the sales of BAE's maritime division, pointing out that the RIBs they use as a platform cost an arm and a leg. His point though being that given the extraordinary cost of the sensors on board (I recall that some third of a million was quoted for just one of them) that the cost of the platform was a bagatelle.
To me that says something about the cost of those sensors in the scheme of things. In the modern world ~ take satellites or drones for instance ~ most things trend towards a multiplicity of much smaller and cheaper units of production altogether.
With its 'quicksink' guided bomb, the US has demonstrated that even carriers are now sitting ducks that can be eliminated by munitions not one hundred times cheaper, but several millions times so.
Interesting times, but for now BAE have an expensive pension fund to maintain at war readiness.
As things stand though, their takeaway is that their's works and as yet mine doesn't...
