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.'"

Comments

Not surprising

[OverlordQ]

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.

Re:Not surprising

[usul294]

Reaper is $13.325 million and carries 3,750lbs of payload. F35 is $83 million and carries 15,000lbs of payload, thats what wikipedia says. Reaper carries more load per dollar, but is much slower, carries less, flys lower, and doesn't have a person taking a ride.

Re:Not surprising

[vux984]

Do you even need AI if you can do low-latency remote control?

You do if your opponent has some sort of communications jamming technology.

Re:Not surprising

[jcr]

No UAV is capable of fighting a mannned air craft and winning.

Except for all of the air-to-air missiles, which are UAVs of a sort.

-jcr

Re:Not surprising

[qbzzt]

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.

Re:Not surprising

[Odin The Ravager]

No UAV is capable of fighting a mannned air craft and winning yet.

there, fixed that for you

Re:Not surprising

[johnsonav]

UAVs are a lot cheaper, and a lot more expendable.

Exactly. UAVs will require a complete reevaluation of how we fight an air war. Much like tanks, machine guns, manned aircraft, and ICBMs before them, UAVs won't fulfill their promise until our military doctrine catches up.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

lets see

1 $400 million dollar F-22

10 $40 million dollar F-35

or

  100 $4 million dollar UAV's

yea the math speaks volumes. UAV's can target and back up ground troops but no UAV has done air to air combat. No UAV is capable of fighting a mannned air craft and winning. 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.

From someone who used to fly them... There is something called a UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle).

As a matter of *FACT*, the X45A shot down the top pilots over and over from the Airforce's topgun school in games of lasertag. The UCAV can pull a 12G turn in a dogfight. Most humans can't stay conscious in 8Gs and the human limit before passing out is 10G.

A UCAV vs a manned F22 is like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_Combat_Air_Vehicle

Re:Not surprising

[vux984]

One hell of a jamming technology to block the laser to satellite communication of a high-altitude plane.

1) Satellite communications are not generally referred to as "low-latency" which the OP suggested were required.

2) Two way Laser links are extremely difficult to maintain outside of your idealized scenario. Two rapidly moving endpoints, one of which might be engaged in combat.

Re:Not surprising

[pushing-robot]

One hell of a jamming technology to block the laser to satellite communication of a high-altitude plane.

Yes, the level of technology required would be ridiculous.

Re:Not surprising

[Bios_Hakr]

It's even better than that. The pilot is really only needed on take-off, landing, and to carry out the mission over the target.

20 pilots can take-off 200 UCAVs, direct them to loiter over the target, and then bring them down in groups of 20 over the target. Finally, they can land the remaining UCAVs at the base.

While those 200 are en-route, the 20 pilots can be launching or recovering 200 more planes.

Or, even better, you can set up an assembly line of pilotage. 20 dedicated launchers, 20 dedicated recoverers, 20 dedicated mission specialists. And maybe 5 guys to monitor in-flight information. You could rain constant fire on a target for 24/7*365 with 300 pilots or so.

And all the pilots would be able to go home at the end of the day.

Re:Not surprising

[evanbd]

Be very careful when reading stats on pilot error. Generally, if a report claims something was pilot error, it is appropriate to ask what caused the pilot error. The answer can usually be found in some sort of human factors design flaw -- poorly laid out controls, confusing instruments or indicator layout, overly complex procedures, poor scheduling leading to fatigue, etc. When you decide the pilot made a mistake, that is not the end of the investigation -- and it doesn't mean that the correct solution is to replace the pilot with an AI, either.

About time.

[jcr]

For decades now, the limit to fighter aircraft performance has been human endurance.

-jcr

Re:About time.

[Bios_Hakr]

For years, "fighters" really haven't been doing A2A combat. Most (all?) of these are employed as bombers. And fighter/bombers are limited by airframe, not the pilot.

And when it comes to bombing, unmanned aircraft are just better. One can orbit at high altitude and lase targets while others come in lower and drop GBUs all over the target. If a few get shot down, no big deal.

Set up an INS with a gyroscope and trigger that to the proposed flight path and set the bomb to detonate if the plane veers off course. If a few blow up in the air, no big deal. Better than having one go "unguided" and hit whatever.

Forget calling in air strikes for CAS roles. The soldiers on the front can launch their own RPVs for some stuff. And for other missions, it'll be cost effective to have a wing of escorts accompany the troops. If they are attacked, the UCAVs can come down in seconds and drop munitions.

Forget the traditional role of air dominance. We can just send hundreds of UCAVs for every piloted vehicle the enemy has. He can't possibly shoot them all down. And in the opening days of the war, we'll blanket all the enemy runways with thousands of UCAVs anyway. Bomb the shit out of the runways and then loiter to take out any combat engineers trying to fix it.

The greatest thing is the manpower use. One pilot can update the INS for hundreds of UCAVs. Then, they just fly themselves. Once over the target, one pilot can take a single UCAV out of loiter and hit targets all night. Or, 20 pilots can be re-directed to engage in "shock and awe" while their former flights loiter.

Pilots will be working 8-hour shifts with 15 minute breaks every hour. They will even be able to take lunch. They can do their job from Utah or Maryland or Colorado without every having to deploy to Iraq. They won't have to be in perfect physical shape to fly. Bum knee on a great pilot; no problem.

Re:Among insiders this is a well-known phenomenon.

[chadenright]

In order for unmanned, remote control aircraft to fully replace manned aircraft 3 things have to happen:

*Reaction time for the remote pilot must equal or exceed that of an in-the-air pilot.
*Data the remote pilot has access to must equal or exceed that of an in-the-air pilot.
*Counter-counter measures must ensure that the remote pilot is always in control of the craft.

In order for self-guided robotic aircraft to replace live pilots the following must happen:

*Reaction speed must equal or exceed that of human pilots.
*Appropriateness of reaction must equal or exceed that of human pilots.
*Counter-counter measures must ensure that the robot cannot act against its creator body (IE, it can neither be subverted, nor rebel).

Assymentrical warfare

[mi]

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?

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.

Re:Remote or AI?

[DougF]

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.

Wait a second...

[DesScorp]

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.

UAV's vs. Manned Fighters

[DesScorp]

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.

Re:UAV's vs. Manned Fighters

[Kadin2048]

You're making something of a ridiculous comparison.

Nobody is planning on attacking an F-22 with Predator. That's not the purpose of the Predator, or of any other current UAV. It's not what they're designed for, and it makes no sense. Criticizing them on that basis is like arguing that you can't shoot and disable a tank with a handgun; very true, but only an idiot would try. It doesn't really say anything about the fundamental design of the handgun, or whether bigger guns operating on the same principles might not be useful against the tank.

The F-22 is the pinnacle of more than 100 years of manned flight experience, and it represents an investment of trillions of dollars over the course of decades by the U.S. alone (for it and its antecedents, which it builds off of). It's a stunning machine.

Current UAVs are the very bleeding edge of an emerging technology that wasn't realistically possible until perhaps a decade ago. Someday they'll probably be regarded as the Sopwith Camels of unmanned aviation (and perhaps only then if someone is speaking kindly).

Given that manned aviation is starting to run into some fundamental limitations (amount of force the human body can bear, minimum size of an adult human, need for oxygen and sleep), plus it has political concerns (risk of dead or captured pilots and resulting changes in public support for military action), which UAVs simply do not have, it seems very likely that an increasing amount of resources will be spent on unmanned platforms rather than manned.

A great many of the advantages currently enjoyed by manned aircraft will probably be transferred to UAVs (there's no reason why you can't build a UAV with a low radar cross-section, for example), and it seems arguable at best that the one difference they will always have -- the presence of a human operator in the manned one -- will always translate into combat superiority. There seem to be many situations where that could be a serious liability rather than an advantage.

Re:Sad to hear it

[trolltalk.com]

I'm sure you are grief-stricken, but that topic is one article that way. (down)

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!"

Very Very Dangerous Ground We Tread Upon

[Bruha]

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.

Re:Very Very Dangerous Ground We Tread Upon

[chadenright]

Bruha:

If and when we end up fighting a "real" war, by which I assume you mean a war against a superpower with near-comparable strength to the United States, there are a couple of factors to keep in mind:
1) Each power is unilaterally capable of assuring mutual destruction of the other, should the conflict escalate to atomic-biological-chemical (ABC) levels.
2) Should the loser be pushed to hard by losing, they will escalate the conflict. See 1) above.
3) This means that at best, any such conflict will consist of minor skirmishes, preferably through third parties, such as Iraq.
4) Please refer to this hypothetical situation which simulates what a "real" war might be like.