In the last few weeks as the fate of the F-22 is being debated, I’ve seen a number of articles predicting/advocating an end to piloted fighter aircraft and, possibly, to piloted bombers as well. This article in Wired is typical:
Is the day of the hot-shot fighter jock nearly done?
An Air Force study, released without much fanfare on Wednesday, suggests that tomorrow’s dogfighers might not have pilots in the cockpit. The Unmanned Aircraft System Flight Plan. which sketches out possible drone development through the year 2047, comes with plenty of qualifiers. But it envisions a radical future. In an acronym-dense 82 pages, the Air Force explains how ever-larger and more sophisticated flying robots could eventually replace every type of manned aircraft in its inventory — everything from speedy, air-to-air fighters to lumbering bombers and tankers.
Just for the sake of argument and inquiry why shouldn’t we be using automated tanks as well? For example, here’s an article about the Rip Saw UGV, “fast as a motorcycle”? Take a look at the video above.
That sounds extremely optimistic on the part of the Wired report. Right now (and from what we can tell, the foreseable future), drones tend to be relatively slow and dependent on large-bandwidth communication networks, meaning that they are highly vulnerable to jamming.
It might not work in combat but it would rock on the 405.