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The Air Force's Love For Fighter Pilots Is Too Big To Fail
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Just look at what's been going on throughout the Air Force. It's as if drones pose such a threat to traditional means of aerial warfare that the flying service's historically kneejerk resistance to anything too closely aligned with sweeping technological change finds it bristling today at prospective gamechangers of the unmanned sort. Nevermind that the AF's active remotely-piloted combat aircraft outnumber its active manned bomber inventory by about 2-to-1. For perspective, as Lt. Col. Lawrence Spinetta writes in the July issue of the Air & Space Power Journal, an official USAF publication, consider that 'RPA [remotely-piloted aircraft] personnel enjoy one wing command' while fighter pilots control 26. In other words, 'the ratio of wing-command opportunities for RPA pilots versus those who fly manned combat aircraft is a staggering 1-to-26.' Such personnel policies that seemingly favor manned standbys are part and parcel of deep-rooted, institutional stigmas. In a 2008 speech, General Norton Schwarz, who served as AF chief from 2008 to 2012, did not mince words when he said that this systemic obsession with all-things manned has turned the Air Force's swelling drone ranks into a 'leper colony.'"
As a former Naval Aircrewman, and an all around "flying is awesome" kind of geek (I knew I wanted to fly when I was 3), I have to say I understand the reticence. Flying is awesome. It's hard to give up something you love doing.
At the same time, the cost-benefit analysis is swinging/has swung towards unmanned craft. They can have performance envelopes that won't allow a human inside. They can have significant cost savings in not having to protect the human inside.
Situational Awareness is big, but we do that with the Electronic Battlefield now. Some years ago I was very much in the "you'll never replace a pilot in the cockpit" side of the argument. Now.. I think the F-35, a fighter I so desperately wanted, should be eliminated, and replaced with drones. Times change. Technology changes. We all love the Sopwith Camel and the P-51, but you wouldn't use either one in a modern war.
It's going to be a difficult political move, but it's the right move, long term. And it took me many years before I could say that without gritting my teeth first. :)
Both the USAF and the U.S. Army field Predators. The Army has them driven by sergeants, and has autoland installed. The USAF has them driven by officer pilots, and refuses to have autoland installed on their birds.
USAF drone crash rates are much higher than Army crash rates.
Drones are effective for some things but I doubt they'd be effective in a real war vs a competent adversary.
Why not? The limiting factor on a manned fighter's turning radius, time-on-station, cost, and political expendibility, is the man. Since drones are cheaper, you can employ more of them. A manned fighter might defeat an air-superiority drone, but it won't defeat a swarm of them. A huge cost for manned fighters is training. Drones don't have to be trained. They just have to be programmed. The drone pilots can do most of their training on simulators. In past wars, pilots have spent 95% of their air time flying to and from their targets, and only a few minutes engaging them. With drones, you can have less experienced/capable pilots ferry the drones to the target, then have your best ace take over for the dog fight. If your ace screws up, he learns from the mistake. If a manned pilot screws up, he is dead, and all his skills and experience die with him.
We are in the process of spending nearly a trillion dollars on the F-35. It is, by far, the most expensive weapon system in the history of the world. We spend a tiny fraction of that on drone development. Yet I predict that, within a decade, air superiority drones will make the F-35 obsolete.
Hello, UAV researcher here. The answer to all of your questions is "Yes".
Let's break it down:
1. A UAV is not limited by the g-constraints of human pilots
2. A UAV will be 300+ kg lighter than a similar manned fighter
3. A UAV does not get tired at night or during extended operations
4. A UAV benefits from the same targeting systems humans use
5. A UAV will unwaveringly sacrifice itself to make a kill if commanded.
6. A radio-silent UAV with preprogrammed orders and terrain databases is no more jammable than a conventional aircraft.
Within 15 more years of development, there will not be a manned aircraft that can survive against a UCAV.
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Drones require a robust communication channel between the control station and the drone.
Most current drones require an RF link. Future drones will likely use unjammable line-of-sight lasers to a relay (either a satellite or another drone). Even if the comm is jammed, they can be programmed to continue their mission. We don't have autonomous drones today for political reasons. But in a high-stakes war against a technologically equivalent adversary, we may be less squeamish.
So get your own laser to hit the receiver, jam the uplink to the satellite or mother drone, have a spy cut the comm cable linking the drone shop to the satellite transmitter, etc.
The problem with a drone is you're introducing a single point of failure that you can't fully protect, either a long communications channel and all the technological infrastructure around that, or an AI with a massive codebase and potentially exploitable bugs or behaviour.
A drone can be a very efficient way to wage warefare, but it's also a method with some potentially massive vulnerabilities that you may not be able to rely on in a significant conflict.
p.s. Even the context where drones are effective, waging war on the cheap, may not be a good one. The US is blowing up a lot of terrorists and bystanders because the drones make it cheap and easy, is that something that's really helping the US's security?
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