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Predator C Avenger Makes First Flights
stoolpigeon writes "General Atomics' new unmanned combat aerial vehicle, the Predator C Avenger, has been making test flights. This new Predator has a stealthy design, 20-hour endurance, is jet powered and has an internal weapons bay. A number of photos have just become available. 'The aircraft was designed so the wings can be folded for storage in hangars or aircraft carrier operations if a naval customer is found. Cassidy, a retired admiral, has talked about a possible Navy role for Predator C since 2002. The Navy was interested in the Predator B's capabilities, but didn't want to introduce any new propeller-driven aircraft onto carrier decks. The UAV also comes with a tailhook, suggesting that carrier-related trials are planned. The inner section of the cranked wing is deep, providing structural strength for carrier landings and generous fuel volume while maintaining a dry, folding outer wing. Right now, the US Air Force and Royal Air Force are considered the most likely users.'"
Possibly part of the reason they want to cancel the F-22. Yes, I think UAV's will eventually be the planes of the future, but you still need manned aircraft for a while. With a UAV, you have no environmental system for a pilot, plane can out turn (G's) one with a pilot, and most importantly, you don't put the pilots life at risk.
Works for me. You may like wars to be about heroism and patriotism and motherhood and apple pie and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori and all that bullshit, but I prefer them to be won, as quickly as possible, and with as few people getting hurt as possible. If that can be achieved by using robots instead of humans, that's just fine.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
A "grossly obvious fact" for your consideration: "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf." http://www.george-orwell.org/Notes_on_Nationalism/0.html
Nonsense. He's the type of person who had the ability to become a doctor, but would refuse to do so if it would come with the expectation that he would perform abortions, and so instead found a different line of work. That's a perfectly morally acceptable way to behave.
And he asks a worthwhile question too. It's similar to the question often asked of defence lawyers as to how they can defend people they know to be guilty. If you're a programmer of weapons systems, how does that sit with your conscience? Especially unmanned warplanes: while the current generation are remotely controlled by some guy with a joystick, future models are expected to be fully autonomous - which means that somebody, somewhere, right now, is working on the AI code to control them. AI code to make decisions as to whether to fire weapons. AI code to decide whether to kill somebody.
How can that person sleep at night? Since there's a realistic possibility that such a person is reading /., the question's well worth asking, and the answers could well be very interesting and illuminating.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Gandhi threw the British out of India using active, aggressive, non-violent resistance.
I wonder how long Gandhi would have lasted using "active, aggressive, non-violent resistance" against Stalin or Mao.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Isn't the issue here the cavalier attitude that being able to fight wars with out cost will engender. The idea of the citizen soldier was born specifically because when a society had no personal investment in a conflict they became endemic.
See Also: The mercenary wars fought in late medieval Europe.
That strategy worked because the opponent was the British and Gandhi understood how to exploit the culture he was fighting. It would have been a foolish strategy if it had been, say, the Soviets.
The previous Predators cost 9 million for the aircraft itself, and another 20 to 30 million for the controlling systems, from what I could read. It can carry 14 hellfire missiles, which are $25,000 a piece. I think we're spending 3 billion per year just on the aircraft acquisition.
So, every day, we send out these 10 million dollar drones, which cost a few thousand per hour to operate, with $350,000 of ammunition. 25% of these aircraft have been lost in operations. Meanwhile, $75,000 would build a school, supply it, and provide money for staff for five years in Afghanistan.
So when you're trying to prevent a young muslim from becoming a radical, what's the better option - allowing him the chance to have an education, or blowing up his brother's wedding party and then air dropping him some pudding cups with little American flags on them?
The fact that people keep choosing the second option astonishes me.
This has been answered MANY times, Ghandi's approach only works when the oppressor in question is capable of shame.
Good-bye
Depends what you want to do. You couldn't fight a war like the current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan with drones alone - those are wars of occupation, with large numbers of infantry on the ground. The advantage comes with conflicts like those we saw from time to time in the 1990s: faction A (we like) are fighting faction B (we don't like), but we lack the will for a proper war, so we just bomb faction B's facilities and units and let faction A take advantage. That's the kind of situation where drones would be wonderful. Mind you, I don't think the risk to pilots is a major deterrent to our leaders in that case: it's more a matter of how the scenes of devastation on the ground will play with the voters, and those are the same whether it's a human or a drone that did it.
See Also: The mercenary wars fought in late medieval Europe.
According to Machiavelli, the problem with those wasn't so much that the availability of mercenaries let leaders go to war with less risk to their own people: it was that the mercenaries themselves were unreliable and disloyal. For a start they'd fight only for their pay, and so their stomach for a losing battle was considerably less; and if the mercenaries won their battle, then whatever lands had been conquered were held by the triumphant prince only so long as he kept the loyalty of the mercenaries. Whose price, of course, just went steeply upward. Better, he said, to triumph by your own arms. This, at least, is not a problem with machines, which will happily sacrifice themselves for you, more willingly than even the most jingoistic soldier.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Decision to fire a weapon, or to be more precise the ORDER to go 'weapons hot' will remain the same as it is today, from the chain of command. It will not be making 'decisions' to fire, but rather acting on orders, just like we have today with human pilots. While yes it may run variables to determine best target, time to fire etc, the 'decision' to allow weapon fire will always come from above. I understand what you are getting at but I felt the impression you were giving was too skynet-esque for my taste.
Good-bye
Unfortunately ShieldW0lf is part of a growing of subculture here at SlashDot who advocate murder as a perfectly legitimate method of advancing their social grievances. I ran into a few the other day advocating the murder of all cops.
I guess it's all part of the new "hope and change" we are experiencing here in America.
Do you have any real inkling of just how old the technology in the F-15 is?
Try this: make a timeline. Start at 1945. End at today - 2009. Now, put the year of the first flight of the F-15 - 1970 - on that timeline. In scale. Realize that the technology of the F-15 predates it by a few years.
Yes. The F-15 reaches fully two-thirds of the way back to the days when propeller-driven P-51 Mustangs were the front-line fighter of the US Army Air Force.
And get this: F-15 technology dates to 45 years ago. Aircaft have been flying for only 106 years.
Yeah. You could say the McDonnel Douglas designers of the F-15 did one helluva good job. But don't forget those guys probably cut their teeth working on DC-3 designs. Literally.
That means most F-15 airframes are getting old, too. And need to be replaced because they're worn out.
Hell, it's even worse of the US Navy. It's "new" front-line fighter is the F/A-18E/F "Super Hornet". That's nothing more than an overgrown YF-17, which lost the Air Force competition for a "light weight fighter". In about 1973 or so. And that's the US Navy's "new" fighter.
There's going to be a whole lot of pissed off Navy pilots if they make a UAV that can land on a carrier deck at night in crap weather. Their main reason for superiority over all other pilots will be shot to hell.
When Navy pilots say "Flaring to land is like squatting to pee" then land based pilots will be able to come back with "Oh come on, landing on a carrier is so simple, even a computer can do it!" :)
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Right. I'm a brutal asshole who advocates the act of murder. And the people who make and sell killer robot drones are a social grievance.
I think you need to re-examine things.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Troll? His view is perfectly valid.
While you may not agree due to the large amount of propaganda and FUD that you (the American public) gets fed, there is no moral difference between the predator drone shooting an Iraqi insurgent and that insurgent using an IED to kill an American soldier.
There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" in war. There is only perspective. A civilized and educated people would understand this. America is neither.