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The Air Force. The biggest limitations aren't practical, they're political.
by zipwitch 12y ago
The Air Force.
The biggest limitations aren't practical, they're political.
- TheCowboy 12y agoGoing into more detail on this would have been more useful, but it is part of the problem. I believe it has to do with the culture of promotion that favors pilots, not to mention the revolving door. The other major part of the problem is that drones are cheaper and present real competition to juicy manned contracts, so defense contractors don't like them. Drones might be an example of actual disruptive technology: a cheap alternative that also creates a new market (planes that can stay in the air longer than a pilot ever could). Losing one drone, or even a dozen drones, is always smaller than losing the life of a single pilot or their plane.
- tsotha 12y agoDrones are far more expensive than people realize. The reason the Air Force and CIA have held off on retiring the U-2 is that it's cheaper to operate than its unmanned competition. Sure, small drones with a video camera and LOS control are cheap, but once you start talking about drones with nontrivial amounts of ordinance and satellite quality sensors you're up into the tens of millions of dollars. For the most part they are cheaper than manned alternatives, but by more like a factor of two than a factor of ten.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoI wonder how much of the cost of drones would drop if they went to mass production. For manned aircrafts, the limiting factor is trained pilots.
- tsotha 12y agoYou have to be a pilot to fly drones in the USAF. Not really sure it's necessary, but that's the policy unless they made changes since I looked into it.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoIt's true, but this is a political, not technological limitation. Politics can change, and there's nothing that precludes creation of semi-autonomous drones (i.e. a single pilot operating a whole fleet) or fully autonomous ones.