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That's why they really need to eliminate on board pilots. There's always going to be a need for humans in the loop. In any sort of major wartime scenario coun
by kirse 9y ago
That's why they really need to eliminate on board pilots.
There's always going to be a need for humans in the loop. In any sort of major wartime scenario countries will be shooting, disabling, and jamming any form of comms and guidance they know about.
- goldenkey 9y agoWhat about autonomous drones that fallback to using stars and the moon positions for navigation if comms/guidance are jammed? I know this wouldn't work during sunny daytime hours but it's an interesting technique isn't it?
- castle-bravo 9y agoWe're at the point now where you could put all the software required to control such a thing on a single-board computer the size of a credit card.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> I know this wouldn't work during sunny daytime hours It would; you just need to filter out the sun. Apparently this is already a thing: http://www.trexenterprises.com/Pages/Products%20and%20Services/Sensors/opticalgps.html http://www.trexenterprises.com/Pages/Products%20and%20Servic....
- goldenkey 9y agoWow, I was not aware that we could do such a feat with small(ish) equipment. Thanks for the link.
- x220 9y agoIf communication or guidance is disabled, aircraft still need to function in a complex combat environment: they need to be able to intelligently identify targets, follow rules of engagement, engage correctly, and weigh the costs and benefits of different courses of action. An automated system will never be able to both practically do these things and also emotionally satisfy the humans in charge of militaries (you will never be able to convince a human officer that a drone will be able to autonomously follow rules of engagement and correctly discriminate friend from foe).
- asteli 9y agoyou'd have issues during instrument conditions (stars not visible regardless of daylight), but this could be interesting, especially combined with, say, SLAM fed by terrain-scanning radar.
- penguat 9y agoat which point you're into extrapolation, I wonder how accurate it could be. I'd guess good enough for most situations.
- derefr 9y agoAnd this, actually, is why those "hundred-million-dollar boondoggle" fighter jets are really so expensive: they're extremely fancy routers, connecting the (cheaper) planes around them into redundant mesh networks (well, redundant when you have more than one fancy plane) and connecting that mesh network to ground control with redundant-per-fancy-plane ground relays/satellite uplinks over several different physical media (broadcast RF, directed microwave, some kind of laser, etc.) Since at least one of the fancy planes is pretty much guaranteed to stay connected to its flight, you can—if you have the room—stick your CIC in there, rather than on the ground. Then, rather than remote-controlling your fighters from the ground, you can remote-control your fighters from another fighter. Which means that now you only need one crew to pilot, say, 8 aircraft. (Well, for now, doctrine would still require humans in the cockpits of the subordinate aircraft; you just don't need to train them nearly as much on how to execute precise group maneuvers. Like driverless cars on highways!) This is oddly easier in the air (because aerial maneuvers are something fighters need to do as a unit); the hard part is takeoff and landing, because there's not enough hands in an aerial CIC to pilot all the planes up and down. So you want these hypothetical subordinate drone fighters to be able to be passed off automatically between aerial CIC and ground control. (It's convenient if they mostly launch and park themselves, because you then need less ground-control staff on your aircraft carrier or whatever, but it's important that they can be passed off to humans on the ground when necessary.)