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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."
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
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!
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
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
'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.
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.
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."
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