Would you start a road trip with a quarter tank of gas, and not knowing what road you need to take to get to the freeway?
Probably not, unless you’re way more adventurous than I am.
Then why do so many teams try to do the same thing with their UAV development programs?
I keep seeing it again and again: a project with a reasonably clear final destination, of an airplane that does X at Y altitude and flies for Z hours, but the plan to get there is fuzzy at best, and nonexistent at worst.
There’s a vague notion of needing aerodynamic analysis, maybe looking at airfoils?
One person has started modeling the fuselage in SolidWorks to look cool but has no idea how big it should be.
And another engineer is doing the equivalent of taking a detour to see the world’s largest ball of yarn: they’ve gone down a rabbit hole trying to find cool folding propellers, without really knowing what kind of performance they’ll actually need out of it. Or if they need it to fold at all.
Please stop that. We can do better.