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.'"
Shockwave Runner, wasn't it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Think it was John Brunner's "The Shockwave Runner", which had the phrase: "There are two kinds of fools -- one who says this is old and therefore good, and the other which says this is new and therefore better."
Re:Navy too. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's this giant, nuclear powered single point of failure that the enemy has had a lot of time to think about.
10. We have 10 Nimitz-class carriers. With 3 Ford-class ones being built.
And the counter to Carriers, and ships in general, are submarines. And yes, the Chinese have been showboating dicks about it and manage to surface an electric sub within an alarming distance to our carrier group. Maybe they got lucky, but it's really only an option for a brown water navy, as nuclear engines are too loud to get away with that. And who knows, our sonar might have gotten better since then.
Also, you know, NUKES. Oh, yeah, that's right, the entire point of our massive show of naval force and it's ability to stand off against other first-world nations has been obsolete since ICBM's took over. Does everyone really forget this so easily?
(Also also, simple speedboats loaded with explosives and a suicide crew, see the Millenium Challenge [wikipedia.org] where one such retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper who is the type who thinks these things manage to take a third-world force and hand our simulated asses to us. )
But no, carriers allow us to project some force onto third world nations pretty much as soon as they can scoot to the nearest port.
Some Chinese guy is going to plug a Mac into it, type furiously, and destroy the North American Empire. Then what?
We Nuke Them All.
Re:Real War (Score:5, Interesting)
By definition they are not. Because you would have to come up with every possible scenario that the enemy could design to outsmart your drones. Remember the V1, the first "drone", so to speak? English pilots came up with a clever (albeit quite dangerous) maneuver that could easily down them.
In Vietnam, the US made the mistake to only prepare for the "big war" against the USSR, ignoring minor conflicts that might appear. Planes didn't get guns anymore because "modern air combat will be fought beyond visual range. Then politicians came up with the stupidity that enemy planes first have to be visually identified. Not to mention that the long range air-to-air missiles of the time were unreliable at best and required an active lock (yeah, it's a really bright idea to fly straight towards and enemy plane coming at you with its weapons pointed your way...). In a nutshell, the USA relied on technology that was simply not ready to fill the role it should, coupled with political stupidity of epic dimensions.
I'd fear that this is heading towards the opposite. We're just preparing for an asymmetric war, ignoring the possibility that we might have to face an enemy of equal technological level. And while it is quite unlikely that there will be a full blown war between the USA and, say, China (just to name one country that might be some sort of threat, replace with your favorite boogeyman at leisure), if the past half century taught us anything then that proxy wars where one side is the US and the other side gets top level equipment from a "partner" are by no means far fetched.
Re:Real War (Score:4, Interesting)
Drones require a robust communication channel between the control station and the drone.
Most current drones require an RF link. Future drones will likely use unjammable line-of-sight lasers to a relay (either a satellite or another drone). Even if the comm is jammed, they can be programmed to continue their mission. We don't have autonomous drones today for political reasons. But in a high-stakes war against a technologically equivalent adversary, we may be less squeamish.