Demand For Unmanned Aircraft Outstripping Their Capabilities 325
coondoggie writes "Has the highly successful but disparate unmanned aircraft strategy deployed by the military outstripped the Department of Defense's ability to handle its growth? The Air Force, Army, and Navy have requested approximately $6.1 billion in fiscal year 2010 for new systems and expanded capabilities. The Pentagon's fiscal year 2010 budget request wants to increase the Air Force's Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft programs to 50 combat air patrols by fiscal year 2011 — an increase of nearly 300% since fiscal year 2007. In 2000, the DoD had fewer than 50 unmanned aircraft in its inventory; as of October 2009, this number had grown to more than 6,800. The program's success, however, is causing some big cracks in the system. According to a report issued this week by congressional watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office. The military is facing a number of challenges — including training, accessing national air space, and improving aircraft communications systems — that must be overcome if unmanned aircraft are to take their place as a central piece of the military's future, the GAO stated."
Re:Bad news (Score:4, Informative)
Grok this and you will understand all human life.
now, I have read a lot of Heinlen, and he's written some good stuff, but he was a jerk. while his work can provide a nice entry point to thinking about the human condition, please don't use his writing as the source of knowledge about humanity.
Re:Bad news (Score:2, Informative)
War is an extension of politics - clausevitz. In the quest to get some power/people/entity to stop doing something (invading, destabilizing, living in some land you want) you must find a way (a policy) that convinces them (harasses them) such that continued pursuit of the policy you abhor (invading, destabilizing, living in some land you want) is NOT in their best interests. Since kings/presidents/governments tend to listen to their people _before_ they listen to some other king/president/government - your task as a war strategist: convince the king/president/government to stop the behavior you abhor (invading, destabilizing, living in some land you want) by causing chaos and fear amongst his population (the people who pay for the invading, destabilizing, living in some land you want activities). This could be peaceful (voice of america), cruel (trade emabargoes, sanctions), or violent (killing them / breaking their stuff until they see your way)
Jomeni advocated bombing the city centers (al queda have you been studying jomeni?) to cause chaos.
This method of warfare dominated US strategy during WW2 (nagasaki, hiroshima, fire bombings: germany, japan) and briefly during linebacker 2 of the vietnam war.
This is also the method of warfare of "terrorists" since beirut. Using largely ineffective, but spectactular effects to scare people. (cars/heart attacks/cancer kill way many more people than terrorists)
Recent glamorization of war (going back as far as the chivalry movement of the knights to cut down on the sheer barbarism of war) since WW2 has led to this thought of "civilians" - people who have nothing to do with war - and thus don't deserve to be targeted: it is merely a myth to calm the palettes of doves to convince them that war isn't really all that bad. Which of course is not true.
Once we stop the idea of "civilian" - I think people will realize that we all are responsible for the people we put in office, and it is our responsibility to stop them from expressing anything other than our intent when it comes to war. we are all in this fight, whether it be school teachers educating the next marines, or even the grocery store, our taxes fund the war machine and are a collective message to the rest of the world on our approval of the current war we are in.
in short: war was never meant to be moral - it is simply getting a country to do something they do not want to do, by means of strategic maneuvering (bombs, trade, money, isolation, invasion, eradication)
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Informative)
Ahh well. On subject. The morality of these unmanned killing machine? They don't appeal to me very much. Somehow, it seems a bit cowardly.
Comments like this (and yours is better thought out than many others in this thread) make me wonder if anyone gets how your average UAV actually works.
You've got a spotter (human) on the ground. He lights up a target to destroy. You've got a Reaper overhead, armed with Hellfire missiles. The pilot of the Reaper (also human) is on the ground somewhere, controlling it remotely. The pilot sees the target illuminated by the spotter, locks on, and fires a missile. Boom.
Take the UAV and replace it with a manned aircraft and what changes? Nothing. Same spotter, same pilot, same missile. You might argue that the pilot isn't at risk in this instance, but hell, most US pilots are only put at risk when someone on their side screws up. Nobody the US is currently at war with has a hope in hell of threatening their aircraft.
Just so we're clear, with or without the UAV, you've still got the same human decision makers. We're not at the stage yet where we can trust an armed and autonomous war machine not to screw up. This isn't Skynet, and the spotter on the ground is the one at the greatest risk, and the one deciding what gets cratered.
If you wanted to argue that using any air support is cowardly, then I'd remind you that war has far less to do with bravery than it does with practicality.
Re:Bad news (Score:3, Informative)
According to the CIA World Factbook [cia.gov], Afghanistan's top three exports are opium, fruits and nuts, and handwoven carpets. They produce absolutely no oil. Natural gas production is 30 million m^3 per year and is all used domestically. None of the gas is exported. Furthermore, it's not like they're sitting on a natural gas gold mine. Known reserves place them at number 65 in the world.
Re:Bad news (Score:2, Informative)
You obviously aren't familiar with how this works, you can't "take your time" often your target is only available for a short period of time and then quite often surrounded by "non targets".
On the ground you can "take your time".
Take comfort no one is targeting you...yet.
Re:Bad news (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with that example is that by some accounts, if Japan hadn't bombed pearl harbor, it's just as likely the US would have stayed out of the war entirely.
Do said accounts mention Lend-Lease [wikipedia.org] at all? The US took sides in March, 1941. Or from the perspective of the Pacific conflict, the US took sides when they instigated embargoes against war supplies Japan desperately needed to (literally) fuel its war effort - Japan needed oil, rubber, and metals to feed the industrial machine, and the US wasn't cooperating.
Pearl Harbor was the tipping point, a rallying cry, and a tremendously effective excuse, but realistically the US would have entered the war eventually anyway.
Re:Comparison numbers (Score:4, Informative)
It depends on what you're considering a UAV. By far the most common UAV is a glorified toy RC airplane. The RQ-11B Raven, for example, of which 13,000 have been built, costs about $35,000 including camera and data link. The ground station is a laptop.
Of the big, expensive UAVs you see on the news, Global Hawk and Predator/Reaper, less than 250 have been produced. I doubt even half of the original MQ-1 Predators remain - according to wikipedia we'd lost 70 of them by March 2009. UAVs aren't as reliable as human-piloted aircraft, especially while landing. Also, engine wear is a function of flight hours, and these things can stay in the air for up to 48 hours, depending on the loadout.
Re:Money better spent (Score:3, Informative)
I assume GP's point was that the money could be better spent employing people in Afghanistan, so that they have something better to do than join the Taliban and whatnot. It's not clear to me that GP is right, mind you. ;)
Re:More than the usual debate... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More than the usual debate... (Score:3, Informative)
If you blanket the radio spectrum with high-power white noise, you've just made an incredibly attractive target of yourself - jamming involves transmitting a signal that basically says "HEY EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION TO ME NOT TO ANYONE ELSE". That'll last about as long as it takes for a dumb cruise missile to drop on your antenna.
And if you're the sort of douchebag who sets jammers up in a civilian hospital or something, I'm sure the drone guys are working on that too - you've just told all the drones in the area exactly where your antennas are, so even if they can't talk to their handlers they might be able to surgically remove the interference.