I’m sure they’re working on partly autonomous drones that can survive seriously noisy communication environments. They’re not going to fucking fall out of the sky just because they can’t chat with the mothership. Not to minimize the problem – the problem is huge – but it’s also not that easy to completely jam modern spread-spectrum radios / radars.
But the point is more that you can’t run your jammers all the time (or you’re fucking your own forces’ communication ability), and if your adversary has a bunch of stealthed drones coming your way (even smaller and less radar-noticeable than an F35 or even an F22), how are you even going to know it’s Jammer time?
Just watch how fast New Zealand militarizes when the dread secret becomes known, the secret to nuclear fusion is wool!
As we’ve hashed over before, autonomous combat operation is one hell of a technical challenge, and even if it were on the near-future horizon, the legalities make it a complete non-starter for the US, much less Europe.
This is true, but we are talking about potential distances of hundreds of nautical miles here, and balls to the wall EW power output. If you’re using a satellite link, it’s presuming you don’t get shut out due to uplink interference, much less that your single-point-of failure satellite has been slagged in orbit.
Depends on the scenario, I’d been presuming a defensive one where, yeah, the incoming hostiles are going to be going all out EW because it’s a planned SEAD campaign where if you don’t repel the initial strike you’re pretty much fucked.
Which again swings around to the survivability of manned platforms as well.
Earth to Janster: Training a combat drone pilot and maintaining proficiency via operational training isn’t going to be that much less expensive, hell if you want to have more pilots because the drone platforms are ‘cheaper’ then you might end up spending even more money on the pilots.
Not to mention the fact it’s easy to assume that a drone is going to be a lot cheaper when nobody has actually built a full-on replacement for say, a Gripen or F-16 in unmanned form yet.
You want a stealthy drone? Guess what, you still have the LO upkeep and maintenance costs you’d have with a F-22 or F-35.
Want all the bells and whistles? All of a sudden you’re paying EADS Eurofighter costs for your UAV.
Oh, and enjoy your trial at the Hague for turning weapons release authority over to a computer.
Do we need to run drone pilots through the traditional training pipeline? Hell, do we need officers still? What if we start selecting enlisted ranks for pilot ratings? The Navy has a testbed program right now and I believe the Airforce is working on something similar. That would slim training costs and sharply reduce long term personnel costs.
You might see this happen, but this also enters the arena of political and legal complications that aren’t just the machinations of the fighter mafia. Part of the problem is you end up either running enlisted through a lot of the same officer training to give them equivalent operational authority, in which case why aren’t they officers? Or you end up with a situation where you have to figure out how many enlisted an officer can manage simultaneously during operations without things going even more fubar than usual.
So someone launches a cruise missile from a ship and by accident it blows up an orphanage. Someone launches a drone and by accident it fire a missile that blows up an orphanage. Doesn’t the chain of responsibility run through the person who launches in either case?
To me it just comes down to the likelihood of error in various scenarios and to me it’s not clear that a human pilot is going to make fewer of these types of errors. I mean, if the mission is ‘go blow up stuff in this general direction’, then that’s way beyond a drone’s capabilities but for more restricted missions it’s not clear, especially if we are talking 10-15 years from now.
Well, with a human you’ve still got someone to fire, demote, take (some form of) responsablity. You start handing that off to a computer…I’m not sure anyone that’s thought it though is that comfortable with it, assuming we cross into ‘technically feasable’ territory at some point.
Accident implies weapon malfunction. Which I’d state is a different situation from improper target selection. Even in the case of the former, there can be hell to pay, especially if the determination was negligence of maintenance or operational procedures.
In other words, it can be, but isn’t necessarily as big of an issue as if somebody signed off on hitting a target that turned out to be an orphanage.
Now, what we are talking about with autonomous operation is handing off some of those target designation and engagement decision roles to a computer, with implicit human assent to the choices.
It’s hard enough to say:
“I was responsible for pulling the trigger and making that mistake.”
Do we really expect an officer to accept responsibility for:
“Well, I approved the mission parameters and authorized sending the X-47D squadron off and it decided to light up a bunch of noncombatants, the software fault is on me.”
Ok, I can see the logic. It basically the same situation as computer-controlled cars, except that with cars the other drivers can be expected try to avoid an accident rather than confuse you into causing one.
Let’s not forget the 300lb gorilla in the room - Affordability. You are going to see very, very few new major programs kick off anytime soon in the US…there simply isn’t any money for them.
Someone else called it correctly - unmanned aircraft that are large enough to carry useful payloads are going to cost about as much to maintain as a manned platform. No real savings there. Still need ground crews to turn them around.
Also, the FAA is terrified of a large (i.e. Global Hawk class) UA flying through the national airspace with lost comms. A lot of work is going into “Due Regard”, which is a system of systems (TCAS, IFF, air-to-air radars, etc) designed to “see” and avoid both cooperative (airliners, etc.) and non-cooperative (light civilian aircraft, etc.) targets. We aren’t there yet though. Hell, they nearly had to shoot down a Firescout (small unmanned helicopter) that lost comms and was making a beeline for DC last year. They were able to regain control in time, but it caused a pretty good scare among folks I work with.
So you’re arguing New Zealand needs a robust force projection capability to maintain the world order that allows a modern, economic state?
Edit: None dick answer: if there was a benign super-power that would keep the sea lanes open and provide a de facto defense against some country going on a WWII style invasion spree, we wouldn’t need any F35s either.
There have been drone strikes practically every day the last few years – cheapish unmanned platforms carrying useful payloads.
From what I’ve heard, the people on the ground are constantly clamoring for more drones – the ability to loiter for ~40 hours and base them on tiny runways makes them so much more useful than any manned craft they can call in.
The Air Force now has 48 Predator and Reaper combat air patrols currently flying --compared to 18 CAPs in 2007 -- and is training more pilots for advanced UAVs than for any other single weapons system. Nonetheless, the demand from commanders for ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] continues to outpace supply, and we must press on to ensure that everything that can be done is being done to give our troops down range what they need to survive and succeed on the battlefield.
So the most-used armed drone is one-twentieth the cost of the least expensive estimate for the F-35. And they’ve only gotten six F-35s off the runway so far. I flat out don’t believe that an aircraft that costs 5% as much to produce (at most) will cost the same amount to maintain.
A Predator isn’t an F-35. Or even an F-4. It’s basically a drone helicopter. Comparing the cost of the two is kind of silly.
A better comparison: $4.5m per Predator drone (or $10.5m for the Reaper drone, which is the current version) vs. $6.7m per similarly armed OH-58KW scout helicopter. A better cost (especially factoring in 100% less pilot deaths) but not quite as dramatic.
Not really, it’s not. The question isn’t just whether one aircraft can do the same job as the other. The question is whether one aircraft can do its job so well that the other aircraft doesn’t have to do its job at all.
It’s clear that the F-35 would do no damned good hunting Al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The question is, where does the F-35 make sense? Going after ground targets… well, over time drones will get better at that. Naval targets? Missiles are better. So that leaves air superiority as the sole justification for the F-35.
The Wikipedia page cites SAM hunting as a core F-35 competency:
I don’t see why a drone couldn’t do a much better job of SAM hunting, given its lower profile, greater linger time, and theoretically equal surveillance technology.
Wikipedia, again:
Lockheed Martin claims the F-35 is intended to have close and long-range air-to-air capability second only to that of the F-22 Raptor.
This is probably the hardest capability for drones to replicate. Still, over time, drones’ advantage in maneuverability (they can pull G-forces that would kill human pilots) will give them the technological edge here as well.
I didn’t say we were there today, but I said all the trends are going towards robots and away from expensive manned warcraft, and that still seems very justified, especially given that the damned F-35 isn’t even done yet and its cost escalation is certainly not nearly over with.
One last Wikipedia quote:
$1,000,000,000,000. For under 2,500 planes. Jesus, that’s… that’s $400 million per plane!!! Yeah, right, tell me drones will be that expensive.
Part of the reason for the cost explosion here is that the JSF has to do a bunch of different jobs. Drones don’t have that problem; they can be much more specialized for their roles. That alone will give drones another cost efficiency edge.
