Like with contractors, drones have been the ‘new thing’ that the military has been trying figure out. Now a kid who is really good at video games, could essentially fly these drones. Hell, I think drone piloting will only become easier and more user friendly in the future. We will also see drones that are more intuitive, that will actually help out the drone archer in their missions. Of course we will also see autonomous drones come on to the scene, but I believe the military will still want some kind of human interface to be that ‘elephant chisel’ for that drone.
I don’t think human flight will go away in the Air Force per se. It’s just now commanders have the choice between risking the life of a pilot for a mission versus using a UAV. So human powered missions will more than likely be the stuff that requires the utmost in human discretion. Humans can also feel out a situation and provide more random strategies in the air, that machines would have a hard time deriving patterns from.
But yet again, a human in a small box in Nevada, could apply the same strategies with a highly maneuverable UAV. There are no physical limitations for the drone archer either. They can go to the bathroom, eat, work in shifts, and the G Forces or altitude of the aircraft will not impact the mission. Most importantly, there is no fog of war for the pilot.
That leaves another question. For some pilots, physically being in the battle, is a good thing. It empowers them by heightening their senses and really pushing their strategies and desire to kill the enemy. In other words, there are high stakes involved with human piloting, and that causes a person to really perform. The drone archer in the box, just looks at it like a video game. There might be a strategic edge to a pilot that is ‘more connected’ to the battlefield. Who knows, and this stuff is a little out of my lane. Either way, drones are here to stay, and they are causing a significant shift in military aviation mindset. I wonder what Col. John Boyd would have to say about drones? –Matt
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Combat Generation: Drone operators climb on winds of change in the Air Force
By Greg JaffeSunday, February 28, 2010
The question, scrawled on a Pentagon whiteboard last fall, captured the strange and difficult moment facing the Air Force.
“Why does the country need an independent Air Force?” the senior civilian assistant to Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the service’s chief of staff, had written. For the first time in the 62-year history of the Air Force, the answer isn’t entirely clear.
The Air Force’s identity crisis is one of many ways that a decade of intense and unrelenting combat is reshaping the U.S. military and redefining the American way of war. The battle against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq has created an insatiable demand for the once-lowly drone, elevating the importance of the officers who fly them.
These new earthbound aviators are redefining what it means to be a modern air warrior and forcing an emotional debate within the Air Force over the very meaning of valor in combat.