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X-45 Makes Debut Flight
jonerik writes "The Associated Press (by way of MSNBC) reports the debut flight on Wednesday of Boeing's X-45A, the first unmanned aircraft designed from the start to carry weapons. According to the article, the X-45 - one of two being tested - flew for 14 minutes and will be able to carry 3,000 pounds of guided bombs. If eventually purchased by the Pentagon, expect to see it in service sometime between 2007 and 2010. The plane's relatively cheap cost ($10-15 million per aircraft), ease of maintenance, and lack of an onboard pilot will likely make it a staple of future U.S. war plans."
Ah, the bravery of being out of range.
Nevertheless, I can't imagine real pilots having the same positive impression of these devices. Human judgement counts for something.
Will these things end up making less of these "mistaken target bombings" or is that all just garbage-in-garbage-out intelligence snafus?
So, you're saying the reason the US doesn't bomb everything in sight is because they would "have to risk a pilot or an expensive plane" to do so?
Along similar lines, Northrop Grumman is working on a naval uninhabitted combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) of their own. Take a look at their 'Pegasus' here.
The idea is that these things could be placed in storage and then pulled out only for when combat is imminent: pilots would be unable to tell the difference between simulator and real combat. Obviously, some random testing of the equipment is needed, but expensive training gets a whole lot easier and cheaper.
Finally, keep in mind, at this point they are going to be used for SEAD (supression of enemy air defenses) and precision strike, not air-to-air combat. That will be another 20 years off. Bandwidth is a killer in that application.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Unless they are complete morons, the thing will be programmed to head home if it ever loses it's connection.
Even if all the targets are pre-programmed, and the thing needs no guidance, there needs to be a way to at least call it back. Everyone has hopefully seen Dr. Strangelove
That would be a security hole in itself, because if someone could tap into the communications and give the callback signal, then the things would be useless anyway.
Maybe the military has some quantum computing up thier sleeve...
On the one hand, a pilotless bomber is a great idea - why risk a human life if a machine can do the job? On the other hand it's more than a little scary - when your wars are fought by machines, human beings are in the way.
For nearly all of history, some people have thought they have a license or right to kill other people. Its one of the primary activities of humans - kill other humans. To become more efficient at this, we keep making human-killing technology better and better. Now we're talking about giving that license to machines.
The biggest difference between the movie Blade Runner (which I love) and PKD's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep on which the movie was based (which I also love, for different reasons) is that in Dick's world androids have no compassion, no caritas. They have no inate regard for human life, or any life for that matter.
The Nuremburg trials established that "I was following orders" is not a valid excuse for committing atrocities during wartime. That only works for humans, though, since machines have no moral compass. We're talking about giving a license to kill humans to a machine with no soul, no regard for life, and no accountability. All in the name of efficiency.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
and how is it a massive improvement over missiles except that it comes back? actually today's missiles travel faster than planes so what's the point? bomb someone with these and wait for missiles to rain back, only they'll come much faster! (i think they are much cheaper too)
You're forgetting the fact that if the US creates these types of unmanned weapons, you can sure as hell bet that other countries will do the same. It's called an arms race (I think), and it's been going on for centuries. One country will come up with a great advantage, and the rest will desperately try to rise to meet them.
So what, you say? Well, think of it this way: if I send some unmanned planes to blow up some country, and they launch some unmanned planes to counter mine, what do you have? An episode of battlebots. I recall hearing someone say that wars should be dealt with using video games or something. Well, this is the next best thing in my opinion.
If it comes to actual dogfighting, false cues like that take a split second off the enemy's reaction time. Recent fighter designs have vectoring egine nozzles, and there were concepts with canard (in the front) wings in addition to the regular wings. One interesting side affect of the combination was that the control surfaces (ailerons, elevators, rudders) were no longer as good an indication of what the plane was going to do next -- roll, turn, climb, dive. One of the tricks in dogfighting is to watch those controls to know what the enemy will do next. The plane could actually fly level but with a slightly nose down attitude. Not only was it good for strafing ground targets, it was very upsetting to another pilot trying to follow it aorund the sky. The false cues were confusing enough to give a solid edge in dogfighting.
Whether dogfighting itself is still of much use is a good question, since there aren't many airforces willing to battle the USA in the air. But the experts have been predicting the end of dogfighting since the 1950s.
Infuriate left and right
Time for a rant:
One of the defining strategies of the American armed forces since the Gulf War is a near pathelogical reluctance to accept friendly casulties.
Now there's nothing wrong with wanting to keep your own guys alive, but this obsession with not accepting casulties is subordinating other aspects of the military mission. There is a deliberate movement to reduce the effectiveness of weapon systems if it means less risk for American troops.
Don't confuse "effectiveness" with "lethality" - weapons systems are only getting MORE lethal with time. What I am talking about is identifying and killing military targets AND ONLY military targets.
The most effective means of knowing for sure if what you are shooting at is a legitimate target is to be in actual contact with it - that normally means troops on the ground. If you think there's baddies in that building, you go send some soldiers to have a look.
But that exposes those soldiers to risk, and risk isn't allowed in the American battle manual any more. Instead, the new modus operendi is to drop a bomb - preferably many bombs - on anything you figure may have a target in it. Then you take satellite pictures of the crater to see what you hit.
The side effect is to inflict a much higher percentage of civillian and friendly casulties than would be otherwise done. Yes, you hit the bad guys, but you also hit hospitals, orphanages, and other non-legitimate targets LIKE YOUR OWN PEOPLE.
But as bad as this is, at least in a modern fighter/bomber you have a set of eyeballs attached to a decision-making process that can choose not to attack if they actually clue in that the target is non-legitimate. The record of those eyeballs is not great - witness the British Warriors taken out in the Gulf by American A10s, and the latest moron National Guardsman who saw fit to bomb a Canadian training exercise - but at least they were there. They were given the opportunity to not screw up.
With a remotely-piloted plane, no matter how good the sensors are on the user interface, they will not be as good as the current eyeballs in the plane are. If eyeballs in a plane have a crappy record, then the record of the RPVs is going to be even worse.
Less risk to the guys behind the weapon systems, but MORE risk for the guys on the ground - enemy, friendly, and neutral!
Somebody needs to get a grip on the guys in charge of the American Air Force. They need to be reminded that they cannot win battles on their own, that their ultimate mission is support of the troops on the ground, and that the risk of loss of life to those troops is part of the tradeoff for doing the job right. Indiscriminate bombing is NOT acceptable.
And for the kiddies who may think that you can videogame your way through everything, I have 10 years experience in the Army as a Armoured Recce soldier, so I actually DO know what I am talking about. Nothing in the Real World is as hated and feared as the American Air Force, because they are just as likely to bomb you or a crowd of civillians as they are the bad guys.
DG
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