I have heard this theory as well and while I think it would be a shame, it does sound like the direction the government would be pushing the military toward. Reason being is $$$, it always comes down to the almighty dollar. If you think about it, replacing manned planes with UAVs that have the same tactical capabilities would save the Navy and Marine Corps millions in pilot training costs and probably reduce the over all manning requirements in the aviation sector, which would save them millions more in salaries for those pilots and others associated with the aircraft. Granted this is just MHO and merely spectulation!!
It's not the "government" pushing the military at all. Air Force and Navy embarked on the J-UCAS path (with DARPA) all on their own. As it stands now, the upper tier UAVs (at least in Air Force "doctrine") are flown by rated aircrew (that includes Navs) so you're not saving on salary side. You do save on being able to construct an airframe without any volume or trades for human occupation.
Of course, USAF was making pronouncements about JSF being last manned fighter until they bailed out of J-UCAS (not because they didn't believe, but they needed to put priority on funding F-22 fixes and replacing their tanker fleet). Navy is now continuing the J-UCAS legacy with UCAS-D, which
IS NOT INTENDED FOR OPERATIONAL USE, but will undergo CV trials in FY11to demonstrate:
- Carrier Air Traffic Control Area Operations
- Launch Performance
- Arrested Landing Performance Including Approach, Waveoff and Bolter
- Deck Operations
- Supportability
- CV Integration of Mission Control Segment (MCS)
- UCAS interfaces to Primary Flight Control (PriFly), Landing Signal Officer (LSO), and Carrier Air Traffic Control Center (CATCC)
Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman submitted proposals for the $1B+ demonstration effort in Spring of 2007 and the decision was made in late summer to go with the Northrop Grumman proposal. UCAS-D RFP did not even specify weapons capability, but both teams included weapons bays in their designs (each is leveraging their work on their J-UCAS demonstrators). ICAS-D will have an inherent ISR capability, but it is only intended to be a demonstrator to see if technology is mature enough to work the areas listed above and the mission need exists to proceed to a full mission capable UCAS-N platform that would bring survivable and persistent strike/ISR capability to the Carrier Air Wing environment.
So, watch that space for developments.....and consider whether you would want to go on cruise as a UCAS pilot yet never leave the ship to "fly" your missions......
