Agreed. Didn't mean to suggest that a carrier UCAS is invalid. Just don't think it'll go off without a hitch. That's not how shit happens.

Don't think we've seen the end of man in the loop either, and I don't buy "no human input or interaction to complete their missions". In war things don't go according to plan. If Plan A is a machine, Plan B is having a human in the loop to reboot or troubleshoot it.

That's simple redundancy. Didn't mean to suggest anything more.

Posted by: demophilus at September 19, 2007 01:49 PM

Demophilus, human pilots are not "foolproof" either.
A lot of us don't trust human pilots. They crash, sometimes for no reason. In the past 100 years, humans have broken a lot of airplanes trying to get them on and off aircraft carriers. Yet that doesn't invalidate the "human pilot" concept - nor should (inevitable) accidents invalidate the robot pilot concept.

Posted by: Robophilus at September 19, 2007 07:15 AM

I think this passage from a August 20, 2007 Financial Times article titled "US Military In Dogfight Over Drones" covers the UAV issue from the US Army point of view.

>“What the army suspects, rightly or wrongly, is
>‘thank you for filing your flight access
>request. We will get back to you within a 48-72
>hour period and make certain that there are no
>air assets. Thank you and this is not a
>recording,’” says Mr Aboulafia.

The arrival of the Guided MLRS and Excalibur 155mm artillery guided shells has turned that Manned combat aircraft versus UAV debate on its head.

UAV's, plus immediate ballistic PGM fire support, are more responsive and cheaper than manned fighters.

It is also a "disruptive technology" to the Manned Fighter paradigm in that it is rapidly evolving into something more useful to ground pounters. (Consider for a moment that the arrival of GPS fuzes for dumb tube artillery shells is less than 18 months away.)

Adding sensor pods, data links and JDAMS to a F-16 will not change the basic nature of an F-16.

Individual jet fighters have a 10,000 flight hour airframe limit.

We are not building enough fighters to support current Army air cover needs and we will never have enough F22 or F35 to replace the inadequate numbers of fighters we have now.

Army Hunter UAV's in Iraq are racking up 6,000 flight hours a week alone. The thousands of Raven class hand thrown UAV's at least double or triple that figure.

So what if we lose 5% of Army UAVs a month to crashes and other operational attrition. We are buildings thousands a year.

Army Artillery with PGMs and organic UAV support is more tactically useful than jets in urban combat on a 24/7 basis. It is all weather and it does not have to go to another service's command and control network for permission to be used.

Now consider this passage from strategypage.com

>Note that the air force only dropped 177 smart
>bombs in Iraq last year, and only fired 52
>Hellfire (from Predators) or Maverick missiles.
>Activity is up this year, but still minuscule
>compared to past wars. So every smart bomb or
>missile counts, and accuracy is very important.
>Meanwhile, army and marine helicopters fired ten
>times as many missiles, as well as over 10,000
>70mm unguided rockets and over 10 million rounds
>of cannon and machine-gun ammunition. This year,
>the air forces is using a lot more Maverick
>missiles, and is borrowing laser guided versions
>from the navy.

at this link:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairw/articles/20070820.aspx

In 2006, the linking of Army UAV's to Guided MLRS in Iraq allowed the Army to dispense with the majority of USAF precision guided fire support that there were not immediately provided by Apache and Kiowa Warrior helicopters.

The upshot of all this is that USAF has to get control of UAV development and deployment ASAP, or it never will.

If the USAF does not, it will lose the close air support and tactical recce missions to the other services and the budget$ that go with them.

The fundimental difference between the services is that the Army wants thousands and thousands of UAV's that can be operated by enlisted men.

The USAF wants a only a few hundred F-16 cost class UAVs that can only be operated by aristocratic aerospace engineers with thick necks and good eyesight -- AKA _PILOTS_.

Gold plating UAV's with "requirements," so that there are only a few, is how the USAF brass is trying to forstall the day when an enlisted man can replace the college trained officer-pilot in the UAV cockpit.

UAVs in the hands of ground forces such as Army and Marines are as much a threat to the pilot/aristocrat as the musket was to the knight.

We know how that one ended.

Posted by: Trent Telenko at September 18, 2007 05:16 PM

Rip:

Maybe USAF's figuring that if the USN/carrier system works, they can dump the arresting gear, lighten the landing gear, and get a more capable dual mode system. Or maybe that's just a taxpayer's fantasy.

J.A.:

No offense, but it wasn't so long ago that the F-22's computer systems crashed on their deployment to Okinawa. The meat puppets had to fly them back to Hawaii.

A lot of us don't trust our computers. They crash, sometimes for no reason. Especially, if we're running Microsoft apps.

Redundant, highly tested systems are a beautiful thing, but sometimes they're only as foolproof as their assumptions. Catastrophe theory and uncertainty are the enemies of anything highly engineered, and they're hard (if not impossible) to beat. You can test something until Doomsday, and all you'll find is what you tested for. Some glitches only happen later. When they do, they can be spectacular.

Posted by: demophilus at September 18, 2007 04:38 PM

Looking at the big picture, it appears the USAF made a decision to withdraw from the UCAV track for publicly vague reasons. Some believe it was a victory for the "fighter mafia" insuring much less likelihood of competition for the F-22 and eventually, the F-35. The hard fighter jocks look at the 2001 NDAA and say, "F'em - they're just a bunch of politicians..."

They (USAF) are still advancing the ISR UAV (Preaditor/Reaper, Global Hawk, and perhaps some black programs); however, the increasing success of the armed MQ-1/MQ-9 is an embarrassing reality they would like to go away. (It will not!)

Meanwhile, the recently floated USN studies make a very compelling case for the CAG UCAV to insure the carrier's relevance in at least the first half of this century.

The next key strategic event will be if the USAF proposes as part of the Global Strike System (i.e., the B-3), to include an unmanned MQB-3 variant. If they don't elect this option, and have nothing under the black kimono, then they are ceding the technology and lead to the USN for years to come.

The "man overseeing the loop" is the future in the DoD, it's sad to see the USAF, who toots the image of being in tune with the future, fighting a battle based on tactical retrograde.

Posted by: Rip at September 18, 2007 11:27 AM

Yes, just like there can be a glitch in any fly-by-wire system that isn't properly engineered (Airbus crash, anyone?) But if you know anything about software and vehicle management systems like those on the UCAVs, you might recognize that they actually do get tested before they are deployed.

You think having meat in the cockpit makes it safer when the flight controls fail? Joke's on you if you do. Ask those Airbus pilots...

Posted by: JUCAS Architect at September 18, 2007 10:00 AM

There is absolutely no chance of a bug or an AI "glitch". Zero. And anyway, if it hits the wrong target, this is Iraq we're talking about.. What's the big deal?

Posted by: cynicism at September 18, 2007 07:56 AM

This article is FUD. First and foremost, "hiccups in the data stream" don't happen with an autonomous vehicle. The X-45 and X-47 vehicles aren't dumb fly-by-wire systems like Predator or GlobalHawk. They are completely autonomous vehicles that are in control of their entire flight regime from take-off to landing and require no human input or interaction to complete their missions. Second, the ability to auto-land on a carrier has existed for decades. That it isn't used or widely known is a testament to the machismo of Naval aviators and not an indictment of autonomous landing technology. Anyone espousing fear of this technology is expressing a profound ignorance of the technical realities.

Posted by: JUCAS Architect at September 18, 2007 06:45 AM