((Like seat belts, autopilot for cars will likely be a requirement in the not to distant future.)) Well, so much for speeding... Aw. There'll be a hacker somewhere.
Jim- The SecAF and the CSAF were both fired over the F-22 and replaced with more compliant personnel. USAF positions after that were at best suspect, at worst embarrassing and characterless.
Unlike Elon Musks cars, seat belts even when new never caused deaths due to poor design. It is a world of difference. They may not always prevent it but never caused it. Elons hubris has killed people.
I read an an autonomous drone fighter will cost significantly more than a human one. Autonomy is great untill you need the Sully effect. Even with secure dattalinks and remote human overide nothing like having your but in the seat, and there are no 100% secure datatalinks.. the theory now is having drones acompany human fighter jets. Were alsoa very long way away from having anything autnomous able to replace the human ability to assimilate info in say an A10. If sensors worked the tanker program wouldnt be in such hot water, and thats a simple task.
Yet many of us drive with complete safety, even at speed. An autonomous car may become statisticly safer for many, and statsitricly worse for others.
There is also the issue of control. E.g. with an on-board computer able to override the driver's inputs, the police could shut down a fleeing suspects vehicle by remote. You can bet the government would love to have this type of control over the public.
It's out there already... https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/publicsafety/cops-use-onstar-to-disable-suspect-s-engine-and-end/article_33029180-bfb7-11e5-9667-1f1e3bb2f345.html
Since I believe that autonomous vehicles have sensors that read the lane lines, it means that municipalities and states need to keep their roadway markings immaculate, and that is often not being done! Also, these vehicles will presumably not be able to swerve around potholes or other sudden hazards.
Boeing has said that unmanned fighters would cost less. Much less. Consider that modern air to air combat is performed at "out of sight" distances through missile attacks. A drone swarm would have the advantage of greater numbers. And a greater possibility of avoiding enemy missiles, through higher G maneuvers than a manned fighter could perform. https://www.ft.com/content/36596f00-3a40-11e9-b72b-2c7f526ca5d0
I remember that. The test pilot fired a 20mm cannon round and then dove to continue other tests and over-took the shell that impacted the windshield, butt first. It didn't bring down the Grumman, though.
Boening bids in at 1/2 price then price quadruples. Others have shown drone planes to cost 2x. Weve seen enough sci fi to know what can go wrong when you rely on machines and someone forgot or didnt contemplate something. Theres a reason we still have manned bombers as oped to missiles only. each has its advantages. Humans in the battle field means staged escalation and response, most air balles in the 21st cebtury follow that model not ww3.. But yes the mix of manned to drone swarms may change. A drone swarm is really a sophisticated form of long loiter missile at this point. As we see with autonomous cars, the difference between theory and practical workable reality is vast. I dont think the manned fighetr is dead, drones may one day dominate but its not in the next generation, just as truly autonomous cars are now so far off we might as well not worry about it.
Also quite a few planes as I recall suffered damage from the empties being thrown over the side. Hoppers to collect empties became SOP.
Sort of like people who shoot guns up in the air to celebrate and forget about the bullets coming back down!
I think that I mentioned it in my book when P-40's would line up in a string of 12 and come over our little house near the beach and fire into the gulf to hit the foam from the burst made by the guy ahead of them. The noise and muzzle blast was unnerving when it was right over the house. Then there was a shower of brass and links that sounded like it was raining stones when they hit the house. When the sun was right you could see the sparkling stream of empties and muzzle gas from six cal. 50's trailing the airplane. Things were a lot better when they put in the gunnery range at the north end of Longboat Key. Sometimes B-17'***** the brass from other airplanes when they were under attack and had everything firing.
There are already more pilots for drones, than for any other type of aircraft: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/03/08/drone-milestone-more-rpa-jobs-any-other-pilot-position.html 2-3 million for the Valkyrie: https://www.aviationtoday.com/2020/01/10/fourth-flight-test-of-xq-58a-valkyrie-expected-soon-afrl-says/ Self driving cars are not 100% now, but they're making rapid progress. Once the neural networks are trained, they will be better than most human drivers.
Lets just say we disagree. While humans may be slow compared to a program, we're unamteched at asimilating multiple variables, and combat by deifnition is multiple never before seen variables. When an autonomus car can drive in the snow in traffic with humans you may have a point.
Using Tesla Autopilot is no different than using cruise control. If you leave the cruise control on and the car smashes into something, it's the driver's fault, not the car's fault.
As an F-16 pilot, I clearly hate the idea of being replaced by drones. That said, separating the messenger, Musk, from the message is rather important. I sure as hell hope Advanced fighter drones aren't a Musk enterprise, but I'm positive that unmanned fighters are in our future. When is the question. Not if. Tech capabilities surrounding all automated tasks is accelerating feverishly. As much as we love the warm fuzzy of having Sully flying our commercial planes, there will be a time when AI would do the same thing he did. Maybe he was one in a hundred guys that could have made that work, but 100/100 AI programs will one day do the same damn thing, or better. So it's on the horizon for commercial planes too. As a fighter guy, I never did an intercept exactly the same way, every time. They were always just a little different. When defending from a radar missile, I never notched exactly the same way. With training we get very very good at these things, but we are rarely as perfect as we say we are at the bar afterwards. AI and programming will make these tasks perfect every time. It won't be tomorrow, but it won't be in a hundred years either...it's on the way.
