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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. :)
Think it was John Brunner's "The Shockwave Runner", which had the phrase: "There are two kinds of fools -- one who says this is old and therefore good, and the other which says this is new and therefore better."
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.
It's this giant, nuclear powered single point of failure that the enemy has had a lot of time to think about.
10. We have 10 Nimitz-class carriers. With 3 Ford-class ones being built.
And the counter to Carriers, and ships in general, are submarines. And yes, the Chinese have been showboating dicks about it and manage to surface an electric sub within an alarming distance to our carrier group. Maybe they got lucky, but it's really only an option for a brown water navy, as nuclear engines are too loud to get away with that. And who knows, our sonar might have gotten better since then.
Also, you know, NUKES. Oh, yeah, that's right, the entire point of our massive show of naval force and it's ability to stand off against other first-world nations has been obsolete since ICBM's took over. Does everyone really forget this so easily?
(Also also, simple speedboats loaded with explosives and a suicide crew, see the Millenium Challenge where one such retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper who is the type who thinks these things manage to take a third-world force and hand our simulated asses to us. )
But no, carriers allow us to project some force onto third world nations pretty much as soon as they can scoot to the nearest port.
Some Chinese guy is going to plug a Mac into it, type furiously, and destroy the North American Empire. Then what?
We Nuke Them All.
By definition they are not. Because you would have to come up with every possible scenario that the enemy could design to outsmart your drones. Remember the V1, the first "drone", so to speak? English pilots came up with a clever (albeit quite dangerous) maneuver that could easily down them.
In Vietnam, the US made the mistake to only prepare for the "big war" against the USSR, ignoring minor conflicts that might appear. Planes didn't get guns anymore because "modern air combat will be fought beyond visual range. Then politicians came up with the stupidity that enemy planes first have to be visually identified. Not to mention that the long range air-to-air missiles of the time were unreliable at best and required an active lock (yeah, it's a really bright idea to fly straight towards and enemy plane coming at you with its weapons pointed your way...). In a nutshell, the USA relied on technology that was simply not ready to fill the role it should, coupled with political stupidity of epic dimensions.
I'd fear that this is heading towards the opposite. We're just preparing for an asymmetric war, ignoring the possibility that we might have to face an enemy of equal technological level. And while it is quite unlikely that there will be a full blown war between the USA and, say, China (just to name one country that might be some sort of threat, replace with your favorite boogeyman at leisure), if the past half century taught us anything then that proxy wars where one side is the US and the other side gets top level equipment from a "partner" are by no means far fetched.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I spent four years in USAF as an officer in the late 1970s.
It stands to reason that you'd expect your general officers in the military to have combat experience. As USAF has historically been a manned aircraft oriented organization, it stands to reason that fighter pilots would be the people who eventually become USAF generals. After all, the first mission of the military is to fight our wars and you want people who have first-hand knowledge as your leaders.
USAF is very adverse to losing fighter aircraft because they are trying to protect pilots. It only stands to reason. That's also why un-manned aircraft are so much less expensive. I believe there is a need for both manned and un-manned aircraft. Wherever you can, un-manned aircraft are preferable because they are so much less costly, but just as there is a case to be made for manned space travel, so there are times when you want humans flying combat missions.
But beyond all this, you still have the human issues of organization. It is the military's way that *ALL* officers are in training to become generals, and they only keep a small percentage of them around long enough to reach 20 years. In USAF, you go before the major's board at the 12 year mark. If you are passed over for major twice, you have to either leave USAF or accept demotion to the enlisted ranks, to finish out your 20 years and retire as a captain. This gets rid of well over half your officer staff. There aren't a lot of guys willing to take a demotion to enlisted for 6 years so they can stick around for a captain's retirement pension.
I don't know if drone operators are officers or enlisted. Either way, can you call a drone operator a combat experienced person you want to eventually become general? USAF has a problem here.
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.
We don't have autonomous drones today ...
You obviously don't watch CSPAN... :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Drones can have several times the combat radius / on station loiter time of a manned plane.
Drones can withstand G Forces that would turn a person into soup.
Drones can be sent on missions that would be deemed too high risk for a human.
Drones can be smaller and stealthier than airplanes with life support systems.
I think the advantages of drones would be even more pronounced in a "real war".
Drones suffer from communications lags. Just a half of a second delayed command, and your drone bites the dust.
One must encrypt, emit, retransmit, relay, receive, decrypt and then analise the drone's data before the pilot could see it, react (adding our neuro system own delays to the process) to then encrypt, emit, relay, retransmit, receive, decrypt the commands in order to be obeyed by the drone.
Until Optical Computers and Quantum Entanglement Communications do exists, I don't think drones will be successful in dog fights.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
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.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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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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