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Demand For Unmanned Aircraft Outstripping Their Capabilities
coondoggie writes "Has the highly successful but disparate unmanned aircraft strategy deployed by the military outstripped the Department of Defense's ability to handle its growth? The Air Force, Army, and Navy have requested approximately $6.1 billion in fiscal year 2010 for new systems and expanded capabilities. The Pentagon's fiscal year 2010 budget request wants to increase the Air Force's Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft programs to 50 combat air patrols by fiscal year 2011 — an increase of nearly 300% since fiscal year 2007. In 2000, the DoD had fewer than 50 unmanned aircraft in its inventory; as of October 2009, this number had grown to more than 6,800. The program's success, however, is causing some big cracks in the system. According to a report issued this week by congressional watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office. The military is facing a number of challenges — including training, accessing national air space, and improving aircraft communications systems — that must be overcome if unmanned aircraft are to take their place as a central piece of the military's future, the GAO stated."
The difference between dropping a bomb from a UAV while you are driving it from in a trailer, and dropping a bomb while you are sitting at 25,000 feet and 15 miles away is not that much different. You still have no real 'connection' and you are still relying on intel from elsewhere.
Specifically, a laser guided bomb (LGB) may be relying on a laser designator from someone else, not in your aircraft. This works for a regular A/C or a UAV. Drop within the basket, and someone else guides it in.
And that intel/targeting may be from a competing warlord, wishing to take out his competition.
Please explain the morality of war to me.
Sometimes going to war is the best of several bad options. It can never be any better than that, but it can indeed be a moral decision.
Note that I'm not saying this applies to our current wars, just that it does happen from time to time. And when it does, it is also a moral decision to try to reduce the attendant horror as much as possible.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
My capabilities are far outstripped by my wife's demands.
These thing remove the human element to much
People have been saying that since roughly the invention of the thrown rock. Do you honestly think that the bombardier looking out a glass window miles over the battlefield has any human connection with the targets below or "verification" of who he kills?
If anything, being physically separated from the battlefield makes it harder to indiscriminately kill, as you have all the self-doubt and remorse but none of the adrenaline and self-preservation instincts. Killing becomes a lot easier—and you become a lot less discriminate—when you know somebody is actively trying to kill you.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
We did not choose it? You might want to do a little studying about the "peace" conditions imposed on Germany after World War 1.
No, I'm not EVEN going to try to justify Hitler, and the Nazi party, but raping Germany of her coal and other mining capabilities certainly didn't endear the French to the Germans. There was a lot of stuff the allies imposed on Germany that only tended to feed German nationalism. Remember, the entire world was experiencing the Great Depression, and German workers endured more than a lot of other workers because of those oppressive peace conditions.
No, maybe we didn't "choose" to have World War 2 - but we certainly contributed to German greviances against us.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Can you point one out? A moral war that is.
Aha! This is a trick question. You ask an objective question, pretending it might be subjective, and when someone gives a subjective answer (even if the answer would be agreed upon by 99% of the world) you will get to play devil's advocate and claim the answer is subjective. The end result: a damaged definition of "moral" and a smug slashdot poster.
If that's NOT your aim, and your question is a serious one, then I submit that it's harder to name a war that ISN'T fought for a moral cause. Whether you're providing freedom for the oppressed, resources for your starving people, or a more peaceful planet for our grandchildren -- there are few wars fought for war's sake. The morals may be egocentric, delusional, misguided, or just contrary to your own, but they are the fuel for the engine that keeps a war running.
As an exercise for your philosophical side, generalize the motives to the point that all wars are fought for a more perfect peace, and you quickly realize the unfortunate flipside: For most humans, Peace can only truly defined as a combination of "everyone who is not like me is dead" and "everyone gives me what I need before taking what they need"
Yes, wars are fought for Peace, and therefore wars are moral. It's just not the Peace that everyone else wants. That's what makes it a war, and that's what makes it immoral.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Ahh well. On subject. The morality of these unmanned killing machine? They don't appeal to me very much. Somehow, it seems a bit cowardly.
Comments like this (and yours is better thought out than many others in this thread) make me wonder if anyone gets how your average UAV actually works.
You've got a spotter (human) on the ground. He lights up a target to destroy. You've got a Reaper overhead, armed with Hellfire missiles. The pilot of the Reaper (also human) is on the ground somewhere, controlling it remotely. The pilot sees the target illuminated by the spotter, locks on, and fires a missile. Boom.
Take the UAV and replace it with a manned aircraft and what changes? Nothing. Same spotter, same pilot, same missile. You might argue that the pilot isn't at risk in this instance, but hell, most US pilots are only put at risk when someone on their side screws up. Nobody the US is currently at war with has a hope in hell of threatening their aircraft.
Just so we're clear, with or without the UAV, you've still got the same human decision makers. We're not at the stage yet where we can trust an armed and autonomous war machine not to screw up. This isn't Skynet, and the spotter on the ground is the one at the greatest risk, and the one deciding what gets cratered.
If you wanted to argue that using any air support is cowardly, then I'd remind you that war has far less to do with bravery than it does with practicality.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
You got it exactly right. War isn't a game. The less fair we can make it, the better.
I can tell you the answer to that. They are facing stresses that a normal soldier isn't facing. A Predator pilot in Las Vegas has to fight a war for 10 hours a day and deal with all the stress that comes with that, AND THEN go home and deal with all the stress of family life. When deployed you 'turn off' after you fly and recover. Flying from home means you have to constantly deal with much more stress than normal. And you have to separate your military life from your family life even more. You can't talk about the problems you deal with at work with your wife because missions are classified. And you can't talk about your kid failing a math test because you are busy tracking a high priority target. No down time means no recovery. And add all to that this problems mentioned in the article above. Then to top it all off, good luck getting out of an unmanned plane. Without enough training, assignments are lasting much longer than normal. Pilots are getting called back from manned planes to fly drones. It's a no win situation for those who need a break.I did it for a while, and life is rough,
I was a Predator pilot in the AF for 5 years, and I can tell you it's not a pretty picture.
Seems like this works so well they want more of it... but in order for it to do all that they want it to do they'll have to divert resources from the manned flights that exist now. Some programs win, some programs lose. Typical Washington debate about to come up...
No, more than that, UAV's are such a contentious issue because of the tremendous culture clash it's causing in the Air Force. In the Army, Navy, and Marines, UAV's are just another military tech tool to use in battle. But in the Air Force, which bases its entire identity on the old Knights of the Air thing, UAV's aren't seen as a valuable tool so much as they're seen as a threat to the very existence of the Air Force itself.
Think about it. If the day is coming when you can train young, non pilot computer geeks to do what current pilots do.... at less cost and less training time, too.... then why have an independent Air Force at all? Because sooner or later, we'll be able to make UAV fighters that can maneuver better, fly farther, and hit harder than any manned craft of today. It's just a matter of time
I think the dawn of the UAV era may well herald the end of the independent Air Force, and I think the current crop of pilots know it too. And it begs the question, did a seperate Air Force ever really make that much sense? It was a branch based on a particular technology.... akin to the Army splitting Tanks off into their own separate service, or the Navy doing the same with submarines. Airpower really isn't a doctrine so much as it's just one more weapon in your arsenal.
I think by our children or grandchildren's lifetimes, the Air Force may be long gone, and looked at the same way jousting knights in armor are looked at... a glamorous, romantic period that was relatively brief, and brought to an end by technology that made it obsolete.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Mod this +1e100 insightful. I'm away from home right now (in Tampa, no less. building a data center) so when I'm stressed because some piece of gear is borked I can just go back to the hotel and zone in the hot tub, quick call home, all is good, cool.
But, if I was at home I'd have all the honey-do's and familial interactions (step-daughter in treatment, African Grey parrot, four cats, oh, and the wife, need to stack that firewood, the toilet downstairs is making a funny sound...) needing to be taken care of, and I couldn't get in the space I need to solve the problem, nor could I talk to my wife about the intricacies of the setup (like talking about classified.)
It may be better to just put these pilots on some other base away from their families, a nice TDY, to let them deal with their job and give them the excuse to slack off on the family front for a while. Kind of a toss up. Give them the option, just don't let the spouse know whow asked for the TDY.
What these remote pilots have to deal is so much more REAL and INTENSE than what you or I deal with, unless you are in combat, it is NOTHING, FUCKING NOTHING compared what these Airmen have to deal with.
Sirs. My most humble thanks for your service! (this from an ex-USAF desk jockey, circa '79)
-Joe
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