4 ms·

What do you think about replacing most fighter pilots with unmanned drones? Way of the future or will never happen?

bkohlmann 12y ago
I think unmanned systems will augment, rather than replace manned airplanes. In one way of thinking, we've been using drones for decades...a tomahawk missile is an unmanned vehicle with a warhead.
- wdewind 12y ago
  I'm sure this is a dumb question but why is it preferable to have a pilot in the cockpit if you could keep them on the ground?
  - bkohlmann 12y ago
    Drones are great in permissive environments, but not ready for prime time. Plus they have an astronomical mishap (crash) rate. In Manned airplanes, the pilot can troubleshoot. Also, air to air combat (dogfighting) and aerial tanking can't be done by drones...yet!
  - superuser2 12y ago
    Compared to a modern fighter jet, drone aircraft are cheap, dumb, and disposable. Satellite control involves many seconds of latency and sometimes communication is lost entirely, especially in bad weather. It is routine and expected for a drone to just lose contact / fail / crash and be written off. You can get away with that since there's no loss of life, but you probably wouldn't want to use a drone to carry a nuclear bomb, for example. You can always just assassinate the Taliban leader tomorrow, but an unidentified or hostile aircraft violating your airspace needs to be dealt with right now. There is research on planes that could be sent off with orders and not require continuous communication, avoiding some of these issues, but to my knowledge they aren't in widespread "production" use. An F-18, on the other hand, is an engineering marvel and extremely responsive, agile, and flexible. Pilots can react very quickly to situations and have a realistic chance of winning dogfights with other fighter jets, for example, which drones almost certainly couldn't do. On the other hand, if all you need to do is assassinate some people in a country without an air force, a drone will do just fine.
    - MarkMc 12y ago
      But in a dogfight a drone would have one big advantage: ability to withstand much higher G-forces. For now manned fighter pilots have the edge, but I would be surprised if that's still true in 20 years.
    - furyofantares 12y ago
      When was our last dogfight? Vietnam?
      - superuser2 12y ago
        There was a fair bit of dogfighting in the Gulf War, but as with many things in the military, it matters more that you could then that you actually do.
      - 001sky 12y ago
        You get this line from Top Gun? LOL. Seriously naive either way.
        furyofantares 12y ago
        I had thought I'd looked it up before but clearly I was mistaken. Luckily superuser2 was here to reduce my naiveté.

I think unmanned systems will augment, rather than replace manned airplanes. In one way of thinking, we've been using drones for decades...a tomahawk missile is an unmanned vehicle with a warhead.

wdewind 12y ago
I'm sure this is a dumb question but why is it preferable to have a pilot in the cockpit if you could keep them on the ground?
- bkohlmann 12y ago
  Drones are great in permissive environments, but not ready for prime time. Plus they have an astronomical mishap (crash) rate. In Manned airplanes, the pilot can troubleshoot. Also, air to air combat (dogfighting) and aerial tanking can't be done by drones...yet!
- superuser2 12y ago
  Compared to a modern fighter jet, drone aircraft are cheap, dumb, and disposable. Satellite control involves many seconds of latency and sometimes communication is lost entirely, especially in bad weather. It is routine and expected for a drone to just lose contact / fail / crash and be written off. You can get away with that since there's no loss of life, but you probably wouldn't want to use a drone to carry a nuclear bomb, for example. You can always just assassinate the Taliban leader tomorrow, but an unidentified or hostile aircraft violating your airspace needs to be dealt with right now. There is research on planes that could be sent off with orders and not require continuous communication, avoiding some of these issues, but to my knowledge they aren't in widespread "production" use. An F-18, on the other hand, is an engineering marvel and extremely responsive, agile, and flexible. Pilots can react very quickly to situations and have a realistic chance of winning dogfights with other fighter jets, for example, which drones almost certainly couldn't do. On the other hand, if all you need to do is assassinate some people in a country without an air force, a drone will do just fine.
  - MarkMc 12y ago
    But in a dogfight a drone would have one big advantage: ability to withstand much higher G-forces. For now manned fighter pilots have the edge, but I would be surprised if that's still true in 20 years.
  - furyofantares 12y ago
    When was our last dogfight? Vietnam?
    - superuser2 12y ago
      There was a fair bit of dogfighting in the Gulf War, but as with many things in the military, it matters more that you could then that you actually do.
    - 001sky 12y ago
      You get this line from Top Gun? LOL. Seriously naive either way.
      - furyofantares 12y ago
        I had thought I'd looked it up before but clearly I was mistaken. Luckily superuser2 was here to reduce my naiveté.