Posted on 08/22/2009 9:34:01 PM PDT by TaxPayer2000
As part of an expanding programme of battlefield automation, the American air force has said it is now training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots.
In a controversial shift in military thinking – one encouraged by the confirmed death of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a drone-strike on 5 August – the air force is looking to hugely expand its fleet of unmanned aircraft by 2047.
Three years ago, the service was able to fly just 12 drones at a time; now it can fly more than 50. At a trade conference outside Washington last week, military contractors presented a future vision in which pilotless drones serve as fighters, bombers and transports, even automatic mini-drones which attack in swarms.
Five thousand robotic vehicles and drones are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2015, the Pentagon's $230bn (£140bn) arms procurement programme Future Combat Systems expects 15% of America's armed forces to be robotic. A recent study 'The Unmanned Aircraft System Flight Plan 2020-2047' predicted a boom in drone funding to $55bn by 2020 with the greatest changes coming in the 2040s.
"The capability provided by the unmanned aircraft is game-changing," said General Norton Schwartz, the air force chief of staff. "We can have eyes 24/7 on our adversaries."
Some analysts view the Flight Plan study a virtual death knell for the pilot profession and predict the F-22s successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, could be the last piloted fighter programme.
Colonel Eric Mathewson, who directs the air aorce task force on pilotless aerial systems, has sought to downplay the studies' most futuristic predictions. "We do not envision replacing all air force aircraft with UAS (unmanned aircraft systems)," he said.Currently airborne drones are directed by trained pilots who then return to their assigned aircraft. This year, the service ...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
The most important safety device in any aircraft is a well trained pilot.
In the Air Force they have to be actual pilots and officers and be fit for flight status. StrategyPage reported that if they twist an ankle on the beach and lose flight status then they cannot sit at the desk and operate drones.
In the Army and Marines and I guess the Navy, enlisted people with skills operate them.
The F-35 is not the F-22s "successor", more like the F-16s successor.
LOL, sure, wonder how much money the tax payer has lost because of some so called pilot hot dogging it. You could not count the billions.
The technological hurdles are daunting. The ability to “flip” the aircraft against you is a real threat. That’s bad enough with a fighter, its a truly disastrous thought on a transport with 300+ US soldiers on board. Or how about a bomber with nukes on board? Think our enemies haven’t considered that while we progress down this road?
I am extremely biased against drones for many reasons. They serve a purpose, however, that is extremely useful. They are of absolutely no use against a high tech threat like China, Iran or N. Korea. They are as easy to shoot down as a Cessna 172, and they aren’t cheap or easy to replace. The fighter drones (UCAV and such) have way more issues than a comparable fighter. I don’t know that they can solve all the problems of an “autonomous kill vehicle” with current technology, and if they can it’s going to cost a ton.
We have overweighted towards them too early before the technology has matured, and I hope we don’t pay the price for that.
The pilot need not be inside the aircraft.
On the B-2 program they changed the assignment to “improve safety” from a pilot and Weapons Systems officer to two pilots. A letter circulated suggesting that the crew complement be changed again to further increase safety, to a pilot and a dog. The purpose of the pilot was to present the correct political image, wear a big flashy watch, and feed the dog. The purpose of the dog was to bite the pilot if he ever tried to fly the plane.
The point is safety is not paramount. Effectiveness is.
Think of the Peacekeeper missile with 10 nuclear warheads. Where is the pilot?
Oh, there isn’t one. Any concerns about flipping that? No.
Carry on.
By the way, the B-2 has already flown unmanned.
Just so you know.
You sir, are an idiot. Sorry - I have 2,000 hours in an F-14 and over 400 carrier landings. Billions lost from hot dogging it - nope. Seriously, you are an idiot.
Just saying.
By the way, about how many days does it take for comments to be posted on “free” republic? Seems like a day or more for mine - maybe it’s because I’m new and untrusted?
Anyway - seems pretty worthless to me so far even though I enjoy the posts I read. Is there some odd libertarian in a closet approving each post somewhere to screen out the libtards?
Thanks... I’m pretty much in the “ if my posts only show up 3 days later, I’m outta here mode”.
....Seriously, you are an idiot....
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Excellent response, Naval Aviator....Guy probably thinks the ships are out there just to sail from Liberty Port to Liberty Port...oh
Check Out #3....it is said that AF Pilots have to ‘man the drones’...probably because they don’t have much else for them to do if they don’t fly aircraft???? <: <: <:
HuH? You made your posts days ago in anticipation of this thread that was posted 30 minutes ago?
On FR you should ping the guy you are talking about, what about post 3?
Yup - been to a few of those. You must be a troll working for BHO.
I take that back...
No - I’m just coming up to speed. I gave up on previous posts because they seemed to get lost 10+ notes down in the discussion.
So, there must be some 24/7 minions moderating somewhere to account for the 5-10 minute propagation time?
that would be a valuable skill indeed!
No - reality is that I’m just new here and don’t have full SA yet..
I don’t know, there could be. I get the impression that sometimes they have a delay and sometimes they don’t depending on whats going on but really I don’t know if they ever do it at all.
Ridiculous.
You are correct.
The tailhook reference he made was unfortunate because that pretty much lines a fellow up with the Clinton administration and the radical left and their use of the phony tailhook tale to purge the Navy of people that weren’t with the Clinton program.
Sorry, meant to ping you to post 23.
Really? I’ve found them on a crappy APG-68 at 25 miles, and was able to get valid AIM 120 and AIM 9 symbology. Not to mention the one shot down by a MiG29 before the war, the ones shot down by MANPADS in 2003..... We won’t even talk about how well they do with jamming around.
But I defer to your experience, please enlighten me.
Hey smart guy, last I checked peacekeepers were driven by an INS. That would be an Inertial Navigation System. There is no outside input post launch (GPS, midcourse updates, need to land, etc.), and oh by the way, the target is loaded by a person (missile officer).... Unless you’d like to bring back the WHOPPR lol.
Please do carry on, but please try to think your responses through. I’m more than a little familiar with this, and will gladly answer questions if you have any.
Dude, Fox-3 on the pounder! Why is it the “keyboard warriors” go on the attack when you dis the UAVs? I’ve refrained from using the “choke yourself” comment on this with the truly uniformed, but its tough lol!
Seriously? I didn’t know that. I’m not being sarcastic, but can you point me to an article? I’m writing a paper on some of this UAV tech and would like to reference that if you point me to a link. Thanks for any help.
This site posts a lot of articles about those matters.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20090525.aspx?comments=Y
Ok, now the rest of the joke.
The B-2 has flown with an all female crew, making it unmanned.
My understanding is that the AF uses pilots. The Army mostly uses NCOs, most of which are intelligence branch.
My association with the Navy is far enough back that I don’t know what they do.
Difference in personnel policy between the service.
Darn, I remember that reported but didn’t catch it in the joke.
ROTFLOL!!! That is excellent! I was thinking “... they flew the B-2 unmanned! That’s amazing!” You got me good, guess I won’t use that in my Master’s class! My prof is a woman, she may actually laugh at that now that I think of it. Have a great night.
F-16 pilot?
There are old pilots,
and bold pilots,
but there are NO old, bold pilots!
Well one was RINO MCLAIM. Look at his record.
Billions I seriously doubt it. Some? sure pilots are human. Most that I dealt with were very good pilots and good people.
Getting back to the RINO. If not for his father he would have washed out of the academy and never even been a pilot. He should NEVER have been in the flight program. NEVER. . . . .
When you call for a Dustoff, you are not praying for Mr Caution.
Very Good!
Exactly. Speaking from an RF Engineer's perspective, all it will take to make drones useless is to kill the link between the drone and the ground based pilot. No link, no threat and also no drone once the link is disabled.....
From a layperson, sounds like the mistake Clinton made in the 90’s going with tech instead of HUMINT.
Arrgghh! I can't find it on my HD, but I used to have a list of pilots' "famous last words." Some of my favorites:
1. [right before some dumba** stunt] "Oh, I have more than enough altitude..."
2. "I've never seen this gauge do that before..."
3. "Pre-flight? Nah, let's just get up there..."
4. "That looks like the runway..."
5. "What do you mean? I know exactly where we are!"
6. [on final] "I'm not going around again! I'm already late..."
7. "Oh, SH*T!!!!"
Yes, more disgrace and dishonor on the bumbling navy. Go run a sub into a mountain are something.
Piss breaks breaks and GLOC...not so much.
So, you go a lock on a few UAVs over the years. If they need to be out of your view, they will be.
So put an INS into the RPV....
There are pretty good encryption schemes available that would limit inputs to what could be properly encrypted. The encryption scheme and keys would be loaded by someone analogous to a missile officer.
Not trivial, but not insurmountable either.
That is a good point. The great killer of young pilots is “get home itis”. That just doesn’t apply to UAVs, because a replacement pilot can sit down and take over.
The pilot is the two guys who turn the keys to fire it. The launch mechanism is hard wired, not flying around by itself.
All you mention could be true, but currently is not. I am wholeheartedly in favor of a robust debate, and can take some hits in making my point. Please bear with me on this.
The current “run of the mill” predator is in some ways extremely low tech; rotax engine, simple aerodynamics, low speed, lots of gas and endurance. The sensors are awesome, the data links cosmic, the capability is all around superb.
BUT, even with the low tech flight challenges, they crash at 100 TIMES (!!!!) the rate of a similar manned aircraft. The legendary Cessna 172, which is similar in speeds, power ratio, landing speeds, etc. They cost on average $7-10M depending on what sensor packages happen to be on board. The latest USAF safety report I read said the airframe was $5M without sensors.
So, the legendary Pred, with control laws needed to run a C-172 type airframe crashes at 100 times the rate. What do you think the accident rate would be for something that can emulate an F22? An F16? An A10? And would have the autonomy to make “kill/don’t kill” decisions on its own? You cannot count on data links. The USAF has recognized this, and it is a key component of future proving of technology. It will be awesome when it gets here, but its at least 10 to more like 20 years before we turn lose a test bed with an autonomous “kill/don’t kill” logic in the air to air arena, and about 20+ for an air to ground platform. That is not to say there isn’t hope for a “bomb dump truck” that you launch, hits coordinates with whatever (JDAM/JSOW/etc.) and comes home without making any decisions. That is definitely possible and being tested by other countries. The ability to make decisions on the fly is waaay out there though. This isn’t just my opinion, its the opinion of a long time USAFA buddy who is currently working on this with Lockheed.... The lines of code and ability to run Identify Friend or Foe logic is amazingly complex, to trivialize it as a “it will be fixed” statement without regard to the complexities and costs is foolish.
If you have something to back up otherwise (unclassified, of course) please point me in that direction as I’m writing about this as we speak for my master’s program. I have found nothing that supports a “we’ll be there in five years” outlook on this.
True, but what if you can’t get the encrypted message to the platform? High power broadband jammers are widely available, extremely cheap in the big scheme of things, and not something I would bet against when the SHTF. They’ve been around since the 1940’s and they’ve got a little bit better since then lol.
So you keep on the preplanned mission until the broad band barrage jamming lets up. Some unmanned vehicles should be set up to attack the barrage jammers.
Most times we try to set up our communications channels with directional antennas, that point away from the jammers and toward our transmitter. There are limits on that gain, but there have been improvements in broad band communications techniques recently as well.
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