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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."
The Pentagon announced their new "Skynet" project.
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you."
-- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson"
crazy dynamite monkey
Since there is no cockpit maybe they should paint one on the tail end to confuse our enemies' pilots. It works for fish with "eyes" on their tails.
Hey with these things they will be able to continue to nuke the planet after everyone is dead.
Unlike the crewed planes it may replace, the X-45 would be partially autonomous. Its pilot ? who may fly several planes at once ? would remain on the ground, out of harm?s way.
I wonder what is to stop someone from cracking the communications protocol and effectivly hijacking the plane. It seems like similar less advanced spy planes are already being used in Afghanistan but if these become standard I could very well see an enemy putting a significant amount of resources into cracking the encryption. Does anyone know enough about the system to know whether there is a significant risk of a 3rd party taking over one of these planes during a flight?
I stole this Sig
Yes. In fact, I believe the article is wrong. This plane is designed not to destroy, but to bring hope to the hopeless.
Large-breasted, scantily clad women are the bomb, and, at about 100 pounds each, this plane will be able to carry 30 of them. The payload will be dropped as a form of humanitarian aid at enemy Star Trek conventions, Linux User Group meetings, Magic: The Gathering marathons, and other places which haven't a hope of seeing the fairer species any other way.
Let's hope this does the trick. (They say mass-sterilization efforts are the next and last resort, but I say it'd be a moot point.)
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
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?
Basically these are cruise missles that return the returnable parts instead of destroying them. Think of these things as the space shuttle vs just big rockets.
(only of course for the analogy to hold, you'd need to make the space shuttle carry 10x what it currently can)
All we need is one general with a weird obsession about pure water and the unmanned bombers will go out causing mass destruction and risking world war three unless we can guess his recall code.
Then again, if it is unmanned who will be there to manually unstick and release the bomb and ride it down? Maybe this is a good idea for real-life afterall, just not very exciting for a movie end sequence.
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Yeah, civilian lives matter a whole lot to our military. (For those that don't want to click, it's more than died in the "9/11" attack.)
Fool: when was warfare supposed to be fun? It's all about imposing your will on somebody else, probably at the expense of pain and suffering to them, or even both of you.
Will they be hooking these planes up to video games for kids, and will Robin Williams be able to save us in time?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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."
Technology has come a long way; we have not. We build better weapons to kill people with more efficiency. We focus on winning the conflict, but not preventing it.
No doubt, it is a very cool piece of technology. I can't imaging the engineering that went into it. I wish this energy went into exploring other planets, instead of "fighting for peace".
Once upon a time, you had to look into someone's eyes to kill them. Then you could do the job from 20 yards away, 100 yards away, from 2 miles in the air, from another nation, another continent.
Doesn't something change when you take human conscience out of the equation? The dot on the screen is a village with many homes, families, adults and children. We can unleash hell without ever seeing our victims. To them, we are a faceless empire, worse than Rome's wildest dreams.
We use space-age technology to accomplish cave-man goals. We don't need better weapons, we somehow need better people.
=brian
If you're implying that the US and her allies intedded to kill civilians, than you're an idiot. There would be millions dead if that were the case.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Great, so those X-10 webcams featured in those annoying pop-up ads can fly now? Is there no end to the invasion of our privacy?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Those numbers have been discredited a long time ago. See the section on civilian casualties at the end of this article for details.
More importantly, this is beside the point. In Afghanistan, we are doing our utmost to avoid civilian casualties by putting brave men in harms way, on the ground, to pinpoint targets to be hit. In contrast, the September 11 terrorists did their utmost to maximize the number of civilians killed. You don't see a difference?
The really worrying thing about the way that technology has advanced at an ever-increasing pace is the fact that it now places some similar powerful offensive capabilities well within the grasp of terrorists and smaller countries.
UAVs, RPVs and cruise missiles are a perfect example of a technology that is well within the reach of such foes of the USA.
The ready availability of low-cost GPS units with computer interfaces, small and efficient low cost high powered computers, advanced composites such as kevlar and carbon-fiber, solid-state gyros, high-power servos and cheap but powerful jet engines (such as this or maybe this) has lowered the barrier to entry significantly.
Up until now the might and technical superiority of the US defense arsenal has proved a mighty deterrent and (when used) a mighty effective tool in battle.
The only response that terrorists and small factions have had to the US's superiority has been to offer suicide bombings and attacks such as those of September 11.
However, now that just about anyone (or group) with access to some readily available knowledge and equipment can produce their own cruise missile , RPV or AUV, things could begin to change -- for the worse.
Imagine the effect that such a craft would have if it were programmed to fly over NYC and dispense a payload of anthrax or other bio-agent over a wide area as it went?
Such a remotely piloted or autonomous vehicle could be built for as little as US$10,000 and could be launched from the roof of a van or SUV at a location which might be several hundred miles from the intended target.
The use of a fairly small airframe built from composites would mean a low radar profile and the onboard computer operating in concert with an onboard GPS receiver and small radar distancing system would allow a low-altitude pre-programmed flight path to be followed with relative ease.
That good numbers of these machines could be built using "off the shelf" materials and components that would not ring any bells in the way that the training of Al Qaeda pilots did, is worrying.
Imagine the effect of 20 or 30 of these missiles being launched simultaneously at NYC or LA on a warm summer's day when plenty of people are outdoors enjoying the sun.
Just as the X-45, Tomahawk and other remotely piloted or automomous weapons can impersonalize a war for the USA, we should be aware that the same may now be true for the USA's foes. Suicide bombing may become redundant real soon now.
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
No, he doesn't, because he's motivated by ideology instead of reason.
Not only that, but none of the dipshit kneejerkers reading this article has realized that this technology will actually reduce civilian casualties in the event of a war. Most of the misses by bombs and missiles from the US Air Force are due to the crews flying high enough to avoid antiaircraft fire. With unmanned drones, that's no longer a concern, identification is easier, and the uninted casualties are lower.
But this is Slashdot, what do you expect?
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
You think it takes a lot of competence to push the launch button on a ICBM? If the US really just wanted to kill civilians, it could do it pretty quickly and easily.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
call things 'prudent' and 'effective' that amateurs and romantics call 'cowardly' If you come at a professional with a knife, he wants to shoot you with a gun, at a distance; if you have a gun, he wants a morter. If you have a morter, he wants artillery; if you have artillery, he wants air support. It's about making some other dumb son of a bitch die for his country. A misaimed UAV isn't much worse than a short round from a 155mm gun. Stop hand wringing-- once you decide to be in a shooting war, it's ugly. The stick and rudder guys in the pointy planes may not like UAVs, but they understand the motivations. They probably don't want to be flying a lot of the missions that they are (or will be) assigned to perform. When I was in school, a teacher once said to the class, "if we're at war, I want killers on my side." That's the job, if it comes to that. The military people I know don't want to fight, but they'll do it for us when required. It's nearly memorial day. Go hug a serviceman, servicewoman, or vetern you know. -dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
...through conventional means, then the rest of the world must play dirty.
Increasing automation of weaponry, and now, total remote control has led and will lead to fewer and fewer deaths of American servicemen and women. This, in turn, removes the single biggest reason for the American political establishment to hold back from launching into war; if there are no body bags flying home, who is going to bother voting these politicians out of office? If a victory can be gained quickly and the opposing side forced to follow the American Way, generating a tidy profit in the process for those American companies that will help them see the light, it is entirely good political karma. Where once a diplomatic solution would have been applied, politicans will be all too keen to apply military solutions instead. No risk, all gain.
America cannot expect those in the world who do not share her views to sit idly by whilst this happens. When people are fighting for what they believe to be their country or their way of life, they will continue to fight back no matter what the military imbalance may be against them. This can be seen, for instance, in the current Israel/Palestine conflict, where despite being massively outgunned and confined to very limited areas, the Palestinians continue to get back up off the floor and keep fighting.
Notice how the Palestinians fight back. They do not have a conventional army, so they must choose other means. Currently, their method of choice seems to be the suicide bomb, and they are called terrorists by the Israelis. The Palestinians, of course, who believe that they are fighting to regain their homeland, call them martyrs.
This is what lies in store for America should she choose to go down this path. Without fear of being voted out of office thanks to the technology, American politicians will throw the country into many wars, and no doubt she will win them in spectacular fashion. However, the opposition will fight back, not through conventional means but through 'terrorism'. It is easy to infiltrate a country as proud of its freedoms as America. What lies in store then? Suicide bombs? Information warfare? Or worse?
We have already seen this scenario once, with September 11th. I am firmly of the belief that the key driving force behind Bin Laden is that he feels his homeland, Saudi Arabia, is being 'occupied' by American forces stationed there since the Gulf War. Of course there is much more to it than that, but it is all too convenient that his anti-American rage became prominent only in the years following the Gulf War.
When this starts to happen, how do you stop it? The obvious way is to restrict those very freedoms that allow the enemy to infiltrate and perpetrate this 'terrorism'. Then what happened to the 'American Way', the very thing that the war was meant to be protecting in the first place?
It's time we started thinking about some of the consequences of the great superiority in American military technology, before those consequences come back to haunt us.
..it is sure to not have happened. Only tin foil crackpots could suspect that NSA would be secretive about such a thing!
Actually, it is a lot. The UCAV is being designed to carry a new generation of miniature cruise missle designed by Boeing, which has a 100 pound warhead that is the equivalent of a 500 pound conventional explosive bomb. The small cruise missle has about a 40 mile range, so even the UCAV can stay out of harm's way.
No one has made this particularly clear, but semi-automomous for this vehicle is an huge understatement. The aircraft have the ability to self-deploy from bases far from the conflict site and will include a computer generated voice radio to communicate with traditional air traffic controllers as it proceeds through controlled air space to its mission area.
Multiple UCAVs will have the ability to share target info amongst themselves and can strike each others' targets if one becomes disabled.
Most importantly, unlike other unmanned vehicles to date, nobody flys the UCAV with a joystick. Its flight control system accepts inputs in the form of waypoints and actions to perform. All of the necessary control inputs required to reach the desired target are generated and executed by the UCAVs own computers. This is also true for threat avoidance and evasive manuevers.
I've actually had the opportunity to operate the UCAV flight console in a simulator environment and it's actually quite boring from the operator's perspective. There's a moving map display with friend/foe data on it, several windows containing vehicle stats, and a mouse and keyboard for command input. I was able to target downtown Las Vegas with one mouse click (and contextual menu choice) and fire a stand-off missle without any additional input. The UCAV took off, flew the mission, struck the target, and returned to the base with only that info as input. It also sent back multiple side-scan radar images of the target area prior to launching its attack so it could receive confirmation from a human before completing the attack.
Given that 5 or 6 of these things can be loaded on a C-17 and deployed to any commercial or military airport within 700-800 miles of a hot spot, the bad guys should be very afraid of these aircraft. They're stealthy, small, cheap, and can outmanuever any manned aircraft. They also don't require expensively trained pilots to operate. Just hope we don't sell them to our "friends"...
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
No, unmanned fighters won't stop terrorists. Thats obvious. But unmanned surveillance drones that will collect massive amounts of data and never need to come back for a pee break, just might.
Peace is won through strength. Somehow that simple fact escaped you in history class, but your bashful pleas for peace love and happiness are completely out of line with what we know about human nature and human history. If you value your culture, you defend it.
Get the guys from Junkyard Wars (aka Scrapheap Challenge for those in the UK) to "bodge" together a motorcycle engine, a propellor, 100kg of C4, a GPS receiver and some control circuitry. Brand new and in quantity these could probably go for about $10,000.
Let's see... for the price of one of these drones (assume $20 million for the drone), we could launch 2000 of our expendable smart bombs.
Now, now, I know theirs will probably be supersonic, but let's face it: most of the enemies can't hit the broad side of a barn, and if we send 5 or 6 of these things on target at least one will get through.
That's the big problem with the US military: too much money spent on big showpiece weapons. They've forgotten what won WWII. It was massive industrial output. We no longer have the ability to flood the battlefield with thousands of cheap weapons. God forbid somebody gets lucky and shoots down a B-2. That's what... a billion dollars? Yikes!
Yeah, I know, we're doing great now, but when it comes to military stuff "now" is yesterday. The future won't look all that bright if we keep buying our weapons from Gucci.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In Afghanistan, we are doing our utmost to avoid civilian casualties by putting brave men in harms way, on the ground, to pinpoint targets to be hit. In contrast, the September 11 terrorists did their utmost to maximize the number of civilians killed. You don't see a difference?
Ok, Rah Rah U-S-A and all that... go America.
However, it bothers me that you seem to think that the civilians on the ground in Afghanistan are supporters of the Taliban, or Osama bin Laden. They did not vote the Taliban into power, and they did not invite Al Qaida (sp?) to their country. As a matter of fact, I believe that the people of Afghanistan (and their army, the Northern Alliance) were already fighting against Taliban rule LONG before the US or its allies ever got involved.
Therefore, when you say that the US is doing its "utmost to avoid civilian casualties", I fail to see why America should be canonized for this. The 9/11 attackers targeted civilians because they are terrorists, and they see American civilians as their enemies. The Afghan people are not your enemies, they are your allies! It makes sense to avoid shooting your own allies, but I guess Americans don't get that.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
>The military is always claiming that Force Protection is one of the most important things they do.
I never knew the U.S. military was using The Force. But that would explain their fascination with hokey religions and ancient weapons.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
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
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
However, it bothers me that you seem to think that the civilians on the ground in Afghanistan are supporters of the Taliban, or Osama bin Laden.
I re-read the post you are responding to and it said nothing remotely like that. What are you talking about?
Therefore, when you say that the US is doing its "utmost to avoid civilian casualties", I fail to see why America should be canonized [dictionary.com] for this.
He didn't say they should be canonized. He said that they should not be equated with terrorists. Are you replying to text in the post that is marked with an invisible tag?
It makes sense to avoid shooting your own allies, but I guess Americans don't get that [cbc.ca].
I'm a Canadian too. Way to use the deaths of honorable men to score cheap shots against an American that you seem not even to have a legitimate disagreement with. Its a new low for Slashdot. (but only for today)