The Unmanned Air Force 352
coondoggie writes "How important have unmanned aircraft become to the US military? Well how's this: the Air Force says next year it will acquire more unmanned aircraft than manned. Air Force Lt. Gen. Norman Seip this week said the service is 'all in' when it comes to developing unmanned systems and aircraft. 'Next year, the Air Force will procure more unmanned aircraft than manned aircraft,' the general said. 'I think that makes a very pointed statement about our commitment to the future of [unmanned aircraft] and what it brings to the fight in meeting the requirements of combatant commanders.'"
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't have the numbers handy but I'm betting that they can get many unmanned aircraft for the cost of a single manned one.
Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm curious as to what the costs of training a single pilot are, and even more to see a comparison of the average pilot skills vs an AI pilot.
However, this sure screws my plans to corrupt the air force pilots to get them to bomb random sites I generally dislike.. hmm after reflection maybe a virus for this AI would be easier!
Remote or AI? (Score:0, Interesting)
So are these being piloted by remote or with pure AI?
I think for now the remote option is far better, as long as there are sufficient cameras/other output from the plane in order for the "pilot" to know what's going on.
I think this makes the Air Force far more attractive to more people. Sure, a non-tech saavy pilot who thinks he's a hero won't like it, but take an intelligent, college educated soldier and put him in command of a military operation *with no threat to his person* and I'm sure you could achieve some amazing results.
Maybe we'll stop bombing civilians eventually.
Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Right. But I'd imagine that's why we have the incredibly expensive stealth bombers: once the enemy air defences are down, it would really be much more cost effective to run the drones. The drones should cost less to run and would be cheaper to replace.
Wait a second... (Score:5, Interesting)
lets see
1 $400 million dollar F-22
10 $40 million dollar F-35
or
Where are you getting those figures? Your larger point... UAV's are cheap compared to manned fighters... still stands, but your figures for the manned fighters are off significantly. Your F-22 price is waaay to high, and ironically, the price for the F-35 is too low. No one really knows for sure, as Lockheed Martin and the Air Force fudges their financial figures on this, but the most credible figures for an F-22 is between $120 and $140 million a copy (flyaway cost), and at around $87 million per copy for an F-35A.
Both are wayyy to expensive, but at least the F-22 will do what it promises... dominate air-to-air battles. The F-35 is beginning to look like an expensive pig in a poke. If UAV's can become more and more capable (and stay cheap), you're right in that the trend of replacing some manned missions with unmanned planes will only accelerate.
Re:Jamming the communication system (Score:4, Interesting)
Two things:
1 - the control station is only announcing its presence loudly if we assume non line-of-sight radio use. The CIA and USAF have been rapidly moving to LoS radio and laser communication (satellite bounced) for their UAVs. The control station may be in-theater or:
2 - there is no reason to park your control station anywhere near the battlefield. The USA is very capable of controlling their UAVs from the continental US, where no opponent outside Russia could likely strike.
That combined with the fact that the UAV software is quickly progressing to the point where you can "park" one over a target site and it can operate autonomously for long periods, only requesting human intervention when a "key event" is detected and there is little reason one pilot can not control an entire squadron.
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you even need AI if you can do low-latency remote control?
Yes. I say this because of the high number of Predator crashes that are always blamed on "pilot" error. Compare that to Global Hawk which has one crash (which was in a very early stage of the aircraft -- late 90s I think), which has a totally autonomous flight control. None of the deployed GHs have crashed. I don't know how many Predators have crashed but for awhile it seemed like I was hearing about them once every 2-3 months.
Here's the key (Score:3, Interesting)
If they can make UAV's cheaper than the missles to shoot them down, then it changes air warfare completely.
Re:Not surprising (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering this is what both the test platforms I've done work on are using as links, I think your concerns are irrelevant.
Re:Not surprising (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the Japanese had a great innovative idea with kamikaze attacks, if only the United States could find a cheap way to manufacture cheap UAV's. :P
Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Very Very Dangerous Ground We Tread Upon (Score:5, Interesting)
This is about as dangerous as Shinsheki's push for the lighter more mobile Army which was torn to shreds by IED's in Iraq and Afganistan.
If too much focus is put towards UAV's we'll end up with a manned Air Force that begins to put A2A combat second to UAV combat. What happens when we end up fighting a real war?
Capitalistic principles have no room in our military, if we cut corners we will someday pay for it.
Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:UAV's vs. Manned Fighters (Score:3, Interesting)
My Aerospace Engineering Degree + Industry Experience > Your Arm-Chair Slashdot Posts.
You're assuming a UAV is a small, flimsy device. Perhaps you haven't met the Global Hawk. Note that if I take the F-22 airframe and avionics, and dump in UAV intelligence, it's now a UAV. All the benefits of not having a human onboard, with the only negative being situational awareness (or lack thereof). It's only a matter of time before the software becomes faster at judging a situation from it's data and acting on it (I leave the question on if the decision is "better" to others). I suggest you stick to working on sound software. Seems to be a better fit than aerospace-related work.
Re:Among insiders this is a well-known phenomenon. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to disagree. Wholeheartedly.
During WWII the cost was so much higher than what Iraq and Afghanistan is today. It was a cost we could actually *feel* and experience everyday. There were rations. War Bonds. Women in factories all day. Your statement about "price" is simplistic. WWII made us pay a much higher "price" with human lives, yet it did not deter us from our goal. We paid a much higher "price" by having to work harder and enjoy a lower standard of living temporarily. That did not deter us from going the distance either.
We believed in the "Mission" during WWII. That was to defeat the AXIS. Defeat Hitler and the Nazis. To defeat fascism in Europe. To punish the Japanese for their audacity in attacking us and killing all our soldiers in Pearl Harbor. It was an emotional response to Pearl Harbor and the resultant hardening of our will to stand up for the principles of our own nation. It was a war over ideology. It was about freedom. Now I am sure there are some cynics and conspiracy theorists that would argue otherwise, but that is how the American people felt during that war. WWII is where America started to "export our democracy".
Most people don't care too much that we are losing lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's sad, but true. Americans don't BELIEVE in the MISSION. We don't believe we should have been in Iraq in the first place. We never bought the story (we all know it was fabricated at this point) that it was a direct and imminent threat to our welfare.
Your statement about the billions not making an impression is ludicrous. The whole reason we are in this recession-turning-into-a-great-depression is that the average American is a Grade-A-Fucking-Moron(tm) when it comes to finance, credit, and money in general.
We *don't* even understand how much money was spent on Iraq, how much was stolen, how much went to nepotism laced deals with Haliburton and a new black force of unaccountable mercenaries that replaced our own soldiers for the "wet work".
If we truly understood the scale of this expenditure, the corruption involved, we would not be asking for an end to the Iraq war. We would be demanding that the Bush Administration be put in prison, that hundreds of others be held accountable with prison time, forcibly taking our money back from the scammers, etc.
I'm sorry, but what you said was offensive in many ways. It is NEVER the financial cost of a war that will deter us. We proved that beyond all doubt with WWII. You make it sound like Americans are weak willed and that the moment it gets to tough we just give up.
The way to "defeat the US" is to win our hearts and minds. You need to make us believe that you are not a threat to the world and our future. That us having our soldiers over there dying is pointless, and moreover, just wrong.
We *lost* Vietnam because we did NOT believe that we had to defeat Communism at all costs. We did not believe that we had to fire bomb a country into oblivion and lose thousands of lives on both sides. It was not the financial price of Vietnam that had people in the streets chanting anti-war slogans.
Your absolutely wrong on both counts. If your first statement was true, we would have stopped our involvement in World War II well before the summer of 1945. Obama needed to promise to withdraw our troops, not because of how many we were losing, but because we no longer believed we should be there in the first place, and
Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Another solution would be to fly a million small model airplanes armed with bombs directly to the enemy. Small in size but big in numbers way is way more effective and vastly cheaper than big in size and small in numbers.
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
I say this because of the high number of Predator crashes
Don't forget a number of these planes were actually downed from small arms fire. Even with full size aircraft, human error is often attributed to crashes when it really isn't a factor at all.
Example: A small, single engine plane on short final (low to the ground and slow airspeed) encounters wind sheer which forces it into the ground. Cause of crash may be, "Human error. Failure to maintain positive control of craft and while close to the ground. Failure to initiate a go-around." I'm not kidding, stuff like this is actually recorded in NTSB and/or FAA crash records. Of course it ignores the fact that it is impossible for some craft to escape wind sheer. And in fact, it has caused the crash of large, commercial jets before. The problem is serious enough commercial jets now have wind sheer detection systems on board and large airports now detect and report the condition.
Additionally, as many as a half dozen commericial jet crashes which were originally attributed to human error have since been determined to be attributed to humans actually doing things properly. In fact, in these cases, the cause of the crash was actually failed hydraulic valves causing the rudder to operate in reverse direction; meaning correct corrective action by humans actually cause the problem to become worse. Yet it's still dubbed, "Human error."
Long story short, don't get too caught up believing in "pilot error" claims.