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To: Little Pig
Use drones for combat airspace control, as they can do things that aircraft with fragile humans aboard cannot. Leave missions like the Iran surveillance one to piloted aircraft, since humans can’t be jammed the way a GPS can.

If recon drones can be jammed and/or diverted, what makes you think that air combat ones, which have to locate their target from imprecise cues, or no cues at all, can't be similarly "confused"?

25 posted on 12/21/2011 11:12:29 PM PST by El Gato ("The second amendment is the reset button of the US constitution"-Doug McKay)
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To: El Gato

They can, but the air-combat drones I posited are remote-piloted drones, which are harder to “crack” than a fully-autonomous one relying on navigational signals would be. Also, a combat drone is nothing more than a weapons platform. It carries very little sensitive tech, so losing one does not have the same impact as losing a surveillance drone, and is also not worth the same effort to bring down as a recon one would be. Plus, a remote-piloted drone can have its control link encrypted, making spoofing and other attacks much more unlikely to succeed. Recon drones have to rely (for now) on signals that by their nature cannot be encrypted. I can’t see much value in the current autonomous drones, save only the really big ones like Global Hawk, which have better stand-off capabilities.


26 posted on 12/21/2011 11:47:15 PM PST by Little Pig (Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici.)
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