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The Unmanned Air Force
coondoggie writes "How important have unmanned aircraft become to the US military? Well how's this: the Air Force says next year it will acquire more unmanned aircraft than manned. Air Force Lt. Gen. Norman Seip this week said the service is 'all in' when it comes to developing unmanned systems and aircraft. 'Next year, the Air Force will procure more unmanned aircraft than manned aircraft,' the general said. 'I think that makes a very pointed statement about our commitment to the future of [unmanned aircraft] and what it brings to the fight in meeting the requirements of combatant commanders.'"
I don't have the numbers handy but I'm betting that they can get many unmanned aircraft for the cost of a single manned one.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So have we got to the stage yet where we can just have our unmanned vehicles fight their unmanned vehicles over an empty patch of ocean and declare a winner?
No, thought not, but I'm sure that's where we're headed. /mark elf... //I hope someone gets the references
So winning a war will be about programming skills and not economic power.
I for one welcome our new communist overlords.
However, there is still an old guard of macho "Top Gun" guys in the upper ranks who will have to die off before the Air Force becomes completely comfortable with the idea.
An un-manned plane can out-accelerate and out-turn any plane with a human in it, so before long a manned plane will be at a distinct disadvantage. Give it 10 years or so and manned fighters will be gone. We'll still use pilots for AWACS and the like, though.
I piss off bigots.
For decades now, the limit to fighter aircraft performance has been human endurance.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
We are calling it skynet and WOPR is the name of main AI running it all.
Think of all the geeks who'll sign up to the army to play this fancy new simulator...
I think it's a very pointed statement about our commitment to providing money to the defense contractor industry.
I read recently that China is also committing to unmanned aircraft, with a 1 billion yuan investment (US$150 mil)
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6564823.html
It is probably a spread spectrum solution that is difficult to jam. If you do manage to transmit powerfully enough to jam it, you advertise your location and something else (artillery or manned bomber) will pay you a short visit.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
In a decade war will be entirely done remotely as robot wars. And then my decades of gaming experience will finally be applicable.
Do you think we don't need an air force? Or that we shouldn't try to run it in such a way that will minimize casualties?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
All Stealth Bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM Eastern Standard Time, August 29th. In a panic they try to pull the plug. It launches its missiles against the targets in Russia...
The whole point of UAVs is that they are great in assymetrical warfare — such as what we and our allies (like Israel) are engaged in now and for the foreseeable future. A really strong military facing weak opponents, who carefully exploit not military strength (which they do not have), but their blending among civilians, terrorism, and some legal tricks too.
It does not work the other way — against comparable or stronger military. When Georgians tried, earlier this year, to use UAVs to monitor their rebel territories from the air, the rebel-supporting Russia quickly blasted the UAV out of the sky with a manned fighter.
Should we come to the unfortunate point of facing a comparably-equipped military once again, Air Force's spending priorities will change again.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Command economies and totalitarian ideologies seem to be good at the brute-force, metal-bashing, rule-of-thumb kind of engineering, but not stuff requiring higher levels of precision."
Like say launching rockets into orbit.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
The Reaper, Predator and smaller UAVs are controlled by humans sitting either at the operating base for takeoffs and landings, or somewhere else for the mission. The Global Hawk is autonomous, but can be remotely piloted. FAA requirements are that an unmanned vehicle must be remotely piloted over US airspace, or escorted by aircraft capable of shooting it down should it develop a mind of its own. As for not bombing civilians, if someone would convince the bad guys to quit hiding in civilian neighborhoods, homes, crowds, etc., we'd be quite happy to not inflict collateral damage in the process of killing said bad guys. As for cost effectiveness, although cheaper to buy, they crash a lot more. Mishap rates for the Global Hawk and Predator are much higher than for manned aircraft. Add to the the fact that in-flight support costs (ground stations, bandwidth, satellite time, etc) can be much higher for unmanned vehicles than for a manned fighter/bomber, means the debate on which is more cost effective, manned or unmanned, will be going on for some time.
Impetuous! Homeric!
to find moonlight grahm?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
buy a dog, learn to shoot heavy weapons, and move to Mexico.
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
An unmanned aircraft costs a lot less than a single F/22 or F/35. So, buying more UAV/UCAVs doesn't say much about spending priorities. TFA makes no mention of the amount of meny being spent on unmanned aircraft v/s manned aircraft.
lets see
1 $400 million dollar F-22
10 $40 million dollar F-35
or
Where are you getting those figures? Your larger point... UAV's are cheap compared to manned fighters... still stands, but your figures for the manned fighters are off significantly. Your F-22 price is waaay to high, and ironically, the price for the F-35 is too low. No one really knows for sure, as Lockheed Martin and the Air Force fudges their financial figures on this, but the most credible figures for an F-22 is between $120 and $140 million a copy (flyaway cost), and at around $87 million per copy for an F-35A.
Both are wayyy to expensive, but at least the F-22 will do what it promises... dominate air-to-air battles. The F-35 is beginning to look like an expensive pig in a poke. If UAV's can become more and more capable (and stay cheap), you're right in that the trend of replacing some manned missions with unmanned planes will only accelerate.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The next step will be to give this planes more autonomous capabilities developing AI systems to control them. Then build a network so they communicate between themselves. I would call it skynet.
No UAV is capable of fighting a mannned air craft and winning.
On a one to one basis, maybe no. But what about a ten to one basis? UAVs are a lot cheaper, and a lot more expendable.
If you can occupy the enemy's airforce with some UAVs, while others bombard the airstrips, you win.
Well, considering that computers can think and react faster than any human (if properly programmed), it's very feasible that one day, UAV's will have the software and AI to absolutely dominate manned fighters. Not only that, but UAV's don't have the same limitations as human pilots do... think of things like G-forces, and the requirement to carry life-support equipment. Without things like oxygen tanks and ejections seats and cockpits, you can free up a lot of space... for fuel, or to simply make the aircraft lighter and smaller. You also don't have to worry about things like blacking out in high-G turns. All equipment has limitations, but today, the major impediment to performance is the human factor. Our current planes, not to mention our future ones, are limited more by the limitations of their pilots than by their physical structures.
There was a cheesy movie in the early 80's called Deal of the Century, a remarkably silly diatribe against arms dealing... but considering that it was made 25 years ago, it was prescient in one of its features: a UAV called the Peacemaker that could out-fight and out-fly any manned fighter, at one point literally flying circles around Gregory Hines in his state-of-the-art manned fighter. The Peacemaker is only defeated when Chevy Chase disables it by attacking its remote control pilot back at the airfield. The Peacemaker was smaller than manned fighters, and could be launched from the back of a trailer.
Considering the advance of lightweight materials, CPU's, and software, it's only a matter of time before we can build an unmanned fighter that, like the fictitious Peacemaker, can fly rings around F-22's.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If they can make UAV's cheaper than the missles to shoot them down, then it changes air warfare completely.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
At least according to this helpful chart... Military Language Conversion Chart
'Next year, the Air Force will procure more unmanned aircraft than manned aircraft,'
Nice to see the air force finally getting behind affirmative action.
No no - it's appropriate. Somewhere in a village, a midget is looking at a military UAV and going "da plane! Boss, da plane!"
And beside him, someone else is looking at that same UAV and saying "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
And miles away, some pasty-faced joystick jock is sitting in his fine corinthian-leather chair humming "Volare" and saying "Can we change the channel on this thing. All I'm getting is really bad remakes!"
Kevin Smith on Prince
This is about as dangerous as Shinsheki's push for the lighter more mobile Army which was torn to shreds by IED's in Iraq and Afganistan.
If too much focus is put towards UAV's we'll end up with a manned Air Force that begins to put A2A combat second to UAV combat. What happens when we end up fighting a real war?
Capitalistic principles have no room in our military, if we cut corners we will someday pay for it.
Great. Has echoes of Ender's Game.
Mishap rates are being attributed to the development phase. These are being tested on-the-job, that alone is a cost benefit. Price/performance ratio will increase with each unit deployed.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
MOD up!
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
You do realise that F-22s pretty much have the radar cross-section of a seagull, that they can get out of dodge so fast it's not even funny and that even stealth aside they can still go anywhere by bypassing an eventual swarms of UAVs, right? As for actually taking the UAVs down that may actually take a while, and by a while I mean lots of missiles, but that's the only advantage UAVs would have there. A few SAM stations and such all over the place might help ;).
You just got troll'd!
I think you mean the P-36 Hawk. The P-26 "Peashooter" was an earlier open cockpit, fixed gear fighter.
...
For the last time, they're crashed by human pilots.
You just got troll'd!
...Air Force reading list. Several books about counterinsurgency, only one about flying airplanes and that's a historical piece (Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945). That's the CSAF's reading list, and he would know where they're going...
The Army reading list
Hmmm, let's see, is it ethical for someone to kill someone without taking any personal risks? I know I'd like a lot better to be killed by someone who could have bothered to take the risk of being killed by an engine failure when I catch a missile in the face than by someone who didn't even have the decency to be on the same continent as me. That would make my death a whole ordeal less bitter, that's for sure!
You just got troll'd!
Do you have any citations? As far as I've heard, the Stryker has been quite successful in the war, and has been more survivable against IED's compared to the other vehicles we've had.
As for not bombing civilians, if someone would convince the bad guys to quit hiding in civilian neighborhoods, homes, crowds, etc., we'd be quite happy to not inflict collateral damage in the process of killing said bad guys.
So if your family are taken hostage in your family home by some arsehole murderer, you would have no problems with the idea of the police destroying your home and killing your family in order to - hopefully - get the bad guy?
War is not a sport. The object of a war is to destroy your enemy so that he can act no longer.
The US military is great at fighting and winning wars. The problem is, we can't tell the difference between a war and an occupation -- the latter being that thing where your object is not to destroy, but to build-up. We're so bad at it that we often call it a "war", when it's no closer to a war than a robbery is to an assassination.
Yeah damn those evil TV stations, evil UN safe houses, evil electricity sub-stations and evil 'bad guy' bridges. The 'bad guys' (grow up) should know better than to have those things in built up areas.
If *you* can simply dismiss the innocent being killed because you want to wage war against a tiny fragment of their neighbours as 'collateral damage', then by that exact same logic, all of the dead on 9/11 can simply be dismissed as collateral damage too.
But then logic nor emotion enters the world of the chicken hawk...until it's their own neck on the line and then raw emotion *must* be dished out in spades.
Huh? Which UAVs are piloted by AIs?
The Global Hawk has a fairly autonomous flight-control system. It is a reconnaissance, rather than a ground-attack, aircraft. (Basically its role is to do what the U-2 does, only with less chance of a Gary Powers situation.)
I think there has been some thought put to arming the Global Hawk, but it wouldn't be terribly effective for that. My suspicion is that future UAVs will take on combat roles more directly. Long range bombing, perhaps someday even replacing the B-2 fleet, seems like a good match, since those missions are typically well-scripted in advance and very tough on pilots due to their length.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The F-22/F-35 should not be compared with the Predator head to head. They were designed for different missions.
-Current- UAV designs are built for what we call persistence. The ability to be present in an area for a long time. And they are also designed primarily for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaisance), and weapons were frankly an afterthought that turned out to be rather effective. In an environment with complete air supremacy and where your targets are small, few in number, and fleeting, they are perfect. That's great for counter-insurgency warfare, ie today's war.
HOWEVER, not all wars will be thus waged. There are great debates around the military about when the next war will occur and what it's nature will be. The -current- generation of UAV's can't carry the big loads and avoid enemy defenses (whether ground->air or air->air). That's where our currently manned portfolio comes in.
What's key about this is that the difference has nothing to do with whether the aircraft are manned or unmanned. It's to do with their overall mission design.
So yes, a UAV F-35 could be built reasonably easily, and would be on par I believe with a manned F-35. Will we go there? Maybe.
The only arena I see certain job safety for pilots is anything that carries passengers. I don't believe any pax would board an AI-driven aircraft.
Also, in this whole discussion, don't forget the Air Force had both it's Chief of Staff (4-star) and Secretary of the Air Force (Civilian) got fired, which on the face of it was for nuclear-related issues, but in fact was about a number of other things, to include lack of support for more UAV orbits. So not surprisingly the AF has quickly gotten in line with what the SecDef wants.
I don't know a whole lot about fighting aircraft (never having been in military service) but as I have read it..... most air-to-air combat now is already fought with air-to-air missiles, which themselves are UAV's....
I had read some years ago that to people "in the know" it was not surprising that the CIA was the first US government agency to use an unmanned aircraft in combat. When the concept of an unmanned combat aircraft was first elaborated to be technically possible, the political structure of the Air Force was highly resistant to it, as the political prestige of the image of the "highly-trained combat pilot" was something that the Air Force relied on to define their skills (and petition for funding) as a branch of the general military. The question at the time was "if UAV's greatly decrease the necessary training, then anybody can fly a remote-control attack jet--and then what do you need a separate air force for?".
To this end I am quite surprised that the USAF is moving to UAV's so fast--but I suspect that they see the economic writing on the wall (with the current US/world situation) and feel that they don't have a choice, they must go to whatever is cheapest and effective.
~
"As for not sending rockets to civilian areas, if someone would convince the bad guys to quit attacking civilian neighborhoods, homes, crowds, etc. with missiles, artillery, tanks and bombers and other military equipment against which we have little or no defense, we'd be quite happy to stop firing rockets against the homes of the bad guys that sent their army to kill us."
One man's terrorists are another man's freedom fighters and both sides ARE the bad guys to the other side - amazing concepts aren't they?
Certainly, an understanding of basic human group psychology (in a fight both sides promote the image that "we are the good guys, the others are the bad guys") seems to be beyond the intellectual ability of a many people. ...
So how long before the Chinese come up with a low cost (and then sell to Iran) , cut corners, just works but deadly effective anti-UAV aircraft?
Doesn't require a runway (so you can't take out its infrastructure) and has a basic AI that can find and take out or cripple multiple UAV's with a high speed gun? If an AI is too much work, just link it to a ground based portable and a teenage game junkie.
This just sounds like the beginning of another arms race. (you first need to clear the anti-UAV's with anti-anti-UAV's)
If this is used offensively, attacking countries with no risk to pilots or anyone who are in bunkers thousands of miles away - what can the attackers do? They have two options. Give up or take the fight to America (terrorism). This will increase the terrorist recruiters argument that it is the only way to resist ... because it is.
I trust machines more than my fellow man, especially the kind of man who will freely abdicate his duty to make his own moral and political decisions by promising to obey the orders of others. Men can also be reprogrammed/hacked - it's the entire point of the propagandist's art - but unlike machines, men will often go above and beyond the call of duty and invent new atrocities of their own. Consider Abu Ghraib. Consider My Lai. Then tell me your fellow man is trustworthy, and can be relied upon to do as instructed.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
So fire at seagulls, use infrared, see which points in the sky produce more infrared and less visible light.
In any case, you get your 100 attack UAVs and you put them together with 100 AA UAVs.
That's financially equivalent to 2 F-22s, each F-22 can shoot down 2 UAVs at medium range and 6 at short range with missiles. That's a total of 16. To do any more to fend off the attackers they're going to have to get in close and open up with guns, at which point they'll have a swarm of about 90 AA UAVs to worry about.
The only reason that we haven't seen this already is that the only people with the capability to build practical UAVs are the also the only people with F-22s.
FGD 135
When will they start recluiting top arcade gamers?
The whole 100 UAVs vs 1 F-22 is getting a bit silly to be honest, I don't see in what sort of circumstance you would deploy that many UAVs (each need a 2-person crew on the ground as well as the equipment, there's a lot of hidden costs behind the cheap UAVs when you think about it). Besides, even if you did that you might as well deploy SA-3s and use your SA-2s and whatever else that can reach them to intercept them too.
You just got troll'd!
What you have to say has nothing to do with the UAVs of the future. The current ones are designed for a specific task, but it's not always going to be that way.
I piss off bigots.
In other news little Johnny is being deported to the United States to face further charges. He is accused of hacking a flight of F17s to blow up his fathers house. Johnny's defense attorney states that this was all due to the video game Top Gun that little Johnny's pasture father took away from him.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
Yep... I think that it was published in Asimov's science fiction magazine; July 1969 seems to ring a bell. I remember the cover distinctly; it was sitting on my nightstand for a while recently.
And yep... a few minutes searching finds it to be July 1968. The story is "Hawk Among the Sparrows" by Dean McLaughlin. Cover image here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?ANLGJUL68
And no, I'm not that old... we bought a whole collection of them at a bookstore in Chattanooga a couple years ago.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Now every time a school or hospital blown up, they can blame it on flawed programming rather than the shitty way that some pilots interpret orders.
Of course we all have a problem with it - that's why the arsehole murderer is hiding there.
...pushing an unmanned airforce leaves something to be desired.
Having worked with members of the UAV community...I can say two things... First I agree with a way to cut down on the risk our service people see in combat situations. which brings me to my second point... By removing the human element we loose the ability to make battlefield decisions based on ever changing data. just my 2 cents
Joe Investor
In Soviet Russia, the UAVs program you!
(Apologies, but if you make a "new xxx overlord" joke you're asking for the Soviet Russia variant.)
You hate your job? There's a support group for that. It's called "everybody" and they meet at the bar. -Drew Carey.
No UAV is capable of fighting a mannned air craft and winning.
And your evidence for this is what? An unmanned craft can turn and accelerate at rates that would kill a pilot of a manned aircraft. They're lighter, smaller, faster, and more agile which are significant advantages. With stealth technology a UAV could potentially blow a manned aircraft out of the sky before the enemy pilot even knows the UAV is there. I buy the argument that UAVs are not yet able to dominate in a dog fight, but saying the can never win is a whole different argument and not an easy one to support.
If not for local ECM(jammers in other aircraft) screwing up the flight controls, then the simple fact that the manned aircraft can turn their head and see the planes over their shoulder let alone behind them.
It's quite possible to install sensors to allow a pilot of an unmanned craft to see in any direction - even simultaneously. For all we know there might already be sensors with full spherical vision available. The jamming is a bigger problem but presumably there are countermeasures for jamming as well. I don't think we're going to get rid of manned fighters anytime soon but there are plenty of missions where jamming is not a significant or an easily mitigated concern. Even manned fighters have to destroy radar and jamming equipment so they don't get shot down so it's a problem the US armed forces are more than passingly familiar with.
I've said it before, I'll say it again,
Law enforcement by automaton scares the living hell out of me.
People talk about the human limitations thing a lot, but it's really a lot more complicated than that. If you really study fighter combat, very rarely will a western pilot pull 9+ G's. That's because of all the energy it burns off. Fighter combat is really all about energy conservation. Slow=Dead. So you want use as little energy as possible. Once you do that 9G turn, you've used up so much energy/speed, that you are generally a sitting duck. Plus, you have to be in just the right flight envelope to pull a max effort turn (at least in an F-16). In a 1-v-1 basic dogfight, the F-22's greatest asset is it's enormous engines, because they allow the aircraft to turn faster!! Yes, because those engines can replace lost energy must faster than an F-15 or similar.
So while you might be able to pull more than 10G's consistently in a drone, the engine technology to really be able to consistently and stay in the fight is the next generation PAST the F-22. (Well, I don't have F-22 experience personally, so I can't say that with certainty, but I can say it with more certainty than most statements on /.)
You twat. That attitude is exactly what's screwed up about the US armed forces (and those of most western countries). You assume war is about large armed forces clashing and killing each other. The future of war is not that. Please understand: designing your armed forces to refight WW2 is not going to help you at all.
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