The Air Force's Love For Fighter Pilots Is Too Big To Fail 253
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.'"
Re:The time has come to move forward (Score:4, Informative)
"that's what they said about guided missiles. It's the future, guns are obsolete because jets are so fast now, all air combat will be beyond visual range."
It wasn't completely true in 1968. Today, it actually is. Simulations and training are more realistic---the side which can get off targeted missiles before being targeted wins.
Guided missiles are single-purpose drones.
USAF Combat experience, path to becoming General (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Shockwave Runner, wasn't it? (Score:4, Informative)
"The Shockwave Rider"
Re:Real War (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Is Lepercy Fatal? (Score:2, Informative)
holocaust of Muslims.
False. "War against jihadis" is what is going on. No-one is waging war against Muslims. While jihadis are all Muslim, not all Muslims are jihadis (thank goodness! look at how great the people in Egyptian and Turkey are as they struggle for freedom using peaceful protest). It would be better of people stopped using words like "holocaust" and "genocide" when they don't match their defined uses. Leave it for the real thing, please. Killing a few thousand barbaric jihadis is not a "holocaust" in any way (like the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, or the Armenian Genocide etc). It is simply a fight between 21st Century Enlightenment Culture defending itself from jihadis that would like to replace it with a supremacist 7th Century Culture (under the Islamic poltical order and Sharia - their stated goals).