Keeping pilots in cockpits

[Fly Navy]

So, would you have the same concerns about Tomahawks, or standoff weapons? Make no mistake, the goal of war is to make things easy on yourself and hard on your opponent. I don't follow your logic.

Brett

Yep. I'd rather lob a missile at someone from 40 miles than engage them close-in. Sounds pussy? ****, I don't wanna die, I want THEM to die.

 

[HAL Pilot]

In other words, we can kill other people without having to worry about losing any of our own. Now don't get me wrong, I know that war is never fair, but that almost seems too easy.

I'm sure there are a great many combat commanders out there that would have loved to have the ability to complete their mission without having any of their men/women killed or wounded. Probably a lot of widows, parents, brother, sister and orphans that feel the same way.

Shakey, you need to grow up and mature. After you've "been there", haven't **** your pants as you run away in fear, and after you have proven you have what it takes - then you can come here and beat you chest while spouting what a warrior you are. For now you are nothing but a trash talking wanna-be that is coming off like an idiot. (At least you had the sense to take the not so subtle hints and tone down your profile a little.)

It's time for you to sit back and absorb the wealth of information this site has to offer. It will help you obtain your goals.

Will UAVs replaced manned aircraft. In a lot of roles - yes. But there will always be roles that require live pilots in the cockpit.

 

[A4sForever]

....... it takes off, fly's it's mission, and returns home (all by itself) .....

Sounds like a plan. At least that's always been my goal ....

 

[invertedflyer]

Whoa, didn't expect that kind of response. To address some of the other posts, I definitely see UAVs being useful in support of CIA/Specops missions and the like... but, specifically, I was speaking to UCAVs not UAVs. By "On Station" I was merely referring to eyes in the cockpit, heads on swivels, decision making machines at the forefront instead of looking through a straw-size POV camera, and a bunch of computer screens. And to go to what others have said, its gotta just be plain kick ass to be out there pulling Gs, who would wanna fly a glorified R/C aircraft? Not I.

 

[highlyrandom]

It's cheaper to get a human pilot to do the same things a UAV will. If you spend $300 million in R&D on a UAV program, plus $15 million for the drone itself, it will be able to take off, find a target, take pictures of it, send them back to base, and subsequently get shot down by some dude with a cheap SA-18.
Compare those hundreds of millions to spending $10000 in recruiting a guy and putting him up at flight school, maybe another $30000 in fuel over a few months, and say $1.2 million on a tricked-out OV-10 (for example, http://www.volanteaircraft.com/ov-10.htm) with guns and rocket pods. Procure about 100 of these, and paint them in cool tiger stripe camo.
Put another dude in back (we're up to $1.24 million) with a $500 Nikon, $4000 worth of flight gear and body armor, a few $1 Clif Bars, a sweet $500 in-plane stereo system, and a couple of $1000 pistols, and an endless supply of weapon stores, and you have your bad-ass terrorist-hunting MAV. What 18-year-old could resist? 200 feet, under the radar, and 300 knots, listening to "Thunderstruck" as you roll in on an Al Qaeda stronghold. ****, it's better than street racing your beat-up Civic...
Call it the Joint Air Assault Corps (JAAC 'em before they hijack us), have the Navy and Marines train the pilots, pull them out of high school and make them WOs like the Army does, and call it a 3-year tour with full benefits, college incentives, leave in the South Seas and a $10000 bonus for targets hit successfully. Tax-free, of course.

Grand total: maybe $1.5 to 2 million per plane/pilot/wso unit. Contract maintenance will do nicely, so long as they're careful with the rockets. I just saved 90% on my anti-terrorist insurance.

 

[BigRed389]

It's cheaper to get a human pilot to do the same things a UAV will. If you spend $300 million in R&D on a UAV program, plus $15 million for the drone itself, it will be able to take off, find a target, take pictures of it, send them back to base, and subsequently get shot down by some dude with a cheap SA-18.
Compare those hundreds of millions to spending $10000 in recruiting a guy and putting him up at flight school, maybe another $30000 in fuel over a few months, and say $1.2 million on a tricked-out OV-10 (for example, http://www.volanteaircraft.com/ov-10.htm) with guns and rocket pods. Procure about 100 of these, and paint them in cool tiger stripe camo.
Put another dude in back (we're up to $1.24 million) with a $500 Nikon, $4000 worth of flight gear and body armor, a few $1 Clif Bars, a sweet $500 in-plane stereo system, and a couple of $1000 pistols, and an endless supply of weapon stores, and you have your bad-ass terrorist-hunting MAV. What 18-year-old could resist? 200 feet, under the radar, and 300 knots, listening to "Thunderstruck" as you roll in on an Al Qaeda stronghold. ****, it's better than street racing your beat-up Civic...
Call it the Joint Air Assault Corps (JAAC 'em before they hijack us), have the Navy and Marines train the pilots, pull them out of high school and make them WOs like the Army does, and call it a 3-year tour with full benefits, college incentives, leave in the South Seas and a $10000 bonus for targets hit successfully. Tax-free, of course.

Grand total: maybe $1.5 to 2 million per plane/pilot/wso unit. Contract maintenance will do nicely, so long as they're careful with the rockets. I just saved 90% on my anti-terrorist insurance.

Just one hangup...how much does that HS kid's life "cost?" And then there are training accidents, et al to worry about.

Sure it's "cheaper" to just send people when you don't have the gear. Helped the Soviets hold the line against the Nazis.

In Soviet Russia, machines use YOU!

 

[highlyrandom]

First off, it was a joke...second, I'm not thinking like an administrator at all, so insinuating that I'd be an unethical one is kind of moot. Third, we're already sending plenty of people into harm's way (*note, not a political comment) who were "duped" into thinking their Guard duty would be at the local reserve center, and not in the sandbox. I see nothing wrong with either the airplane, which is bad-ass and has good ejection seats, or the concept of selling it straight to America's youth: "we need help, you'll be taking a risk, but the rewards are great and you'll be on the front lines as a decision maker and a flying soldier." Sure, it all sounds dumb, fire away.

But that high school kid's life costs no more and no less than mine or yours...which is to say it at once costs nothing and is absolutely priceless, and is only theirs to give. Not their parents', not their community's, not their guidance counselor's, regardless of what you may hear from sentimental journalists. If you buy it, combat or not, your country will mourn your loss regardless of whether you are the daughter of a millionaire senator, the class president, an English prince, or an orphan growing up in the ghetto...and they will celebrate your life and honor your name should you offer these up in return for their freedom. It doesn't matter if you're infantry or cavalry, ship's cook or fighter pilot. Dulce et decorum.

 

[KBayDog]

I gotta disagree with ya there man, and I think most pilots would. Ok, UAV's and manned aircraft are both machines, but there is not someone sitting in a UAV with their ass on the line. UAV's are effective and have there place, but I'll state the obvious here. flying is fvckin awesome, and I can't imagine piloting a UAV is anything close to the same thing.

"I think most pilots would" - Pilots are completely neutral in this discussion, right

Seriously, though, I see where you are coming from, but I'm trying to approach this from an impartial, practical perspective. I do not believe that pilots are "going away." Will we need less of them? Of course. We simply do not have the need for 100-plane formations going on bombing runs anymore. If we have the technology to put an RC plane, or satellite, or anything else "on station," positively ID our targets, and then kill our enemies from hundreds (thousands) of miles away, I'm all for it. I think even the Durkas have figured that one out - they seem to be hesitant to blow themselves up anymore (damn), so they have resorted to remote controlled/automatic "weapons."

Then again, I've never experienced how cool it is to go Mach 2 with my hair on fire like our seasoned warrior Shakey, so I will defer to his wise judgment.

 

[fc2spyguy]

YOU SAID IT! Now for another morale dilemma: With UAVs, we do not have to risk the life of a pilot to complete a mission. In other words, we can kill other people without having to worry about losing any of our own. Now don't get me wrong, I know that war is never fair, but that almost seems too easy.

No ******* ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb ******* die for his country.

I don't need to say anything, someone already said it better.

Edit: boo, patton is getting censored

 

[Flash]

Whoa, didn't expect that kind of response. To address some of the other posts, I definitely see UAVs being useful in support of CIA/Specops missions and the like... but, specifically, I was speaking to UCAVs not UAVs. By "On Station" I was merely referring to eyes in the cockpit, heads on swivels, decision making machines at the forefront instead of looking through a straw-size POV camera, and a bunch of computer screens. And to go to what others have said, its gotta just be plain kick ass to be out there pulling Gs, who would wanna fly a glorified R/C aircraft? Not I.

First off, pilots don't write the defense budget, Congress does. If our political leaders, on the advice of the DOD leadership, think that UAV's (or UAS's, for sytems, as they are now called by the powers that be in the Pentagon) can do the job well they are going to continue to buy them. It is not about what is sexy or cool, it is about what gets the job done.

If you don't think that a UCAV is not a good idea, then maybe you haven't thought things through. I would much rather have a UCAV hunting for an SA-10/20 site than me in my 30-year old Prowler with F-16CJ's backing me up. Send a stealthy, and much smaller, UCAV in to cruise around trolling for those trons coming the latest generation SAM site. SEAD in a manned aircraft can be dicey work, just look at the casulty rate for the USAF Wild Weasels and the USN Iron Hand guys in Vietnam. Ask the 25-30% of the Israeli AF that was shot down in the Yom Kippur War.

UAV's are not the be all to end all that many advocates claim they are but they are very useful in todays battlefield airspace. And with all the teething problems they are having, I seriously doubt that anyone on this board will live to see a military without manned airplanes, including combat ones.

 

[invertedflyer]

I'll never argue that UAVs or UCAVs couldn't be useful in the modern war-fighting environment. However, when it comes to a complete takeover I have to hesitate. What kind of decision making ability do you have? How much Situation Awareness do you have in your UCAV when that SA-3 lights you up? As far as the referrences to Vietnam, I don't think we'll be facing that kind of threat in the near future and I think that the Gulf War or Kosovo SEAD work would be a better reference. Losses were low, electronic warfare (props Kudos) was highly effective. My point being that decision making on the battlefield and SA would be significantly reduced in a UCAV, however stealthy it may be. It kind of tends to take the humanity out of warfare, referring back to another post, if we're just sending up unmanned machines to fight each other then we're fighting a war of dollars, not of human cost. Interesting food for thought, but I have done my research, and I agree that they could be useful, but replace pilots? I hope not.

 

[Brett327]

Losses were low, electronic warfare (props Kudos) was highly effective.

You're welcome. I agree with the assessment of the future air wars we're likely to encounter in the future. While it's easy to get lulled into a false sense of security since our recent combat ops have been essentially unopposed, this may not continue to be the case. Places like Iran, Syria, N Korea, and even China all have robust IADS and the proliferation of double digit SAM systems (especially 10s & 20s) makes the approach to SEAD all the more challenging. You can bet, especially with the hardball rhetoric coming out of Tehran this week, that any coalition action against Iran will bring their full compliment of F-14s and Soviet Cat IV fighters to the fight. If that scenario goes down, the US will be involved in the first real A/A environment since Vietnam. Food for thought.

Brett

 

[Gatordev]

You can bet, especially with the hardball rhetoric coming out of Tehran this week, that any coalition action against Iran will bring their full compliment of F-14s and Soviet Cat IV fighters to the fight. If that scenario goes down, the US will be involved in the first real A/A environment since Vietnam. Food for thought.

Brett

Here in lies a critical point that I haven't noticed anyone bring up as I've watched this thread go on (and on, and on, and on). The way UAVs are used and thought of right now is compatible w/ the current threat and theatre they operate in. But things aren't always going to be asymetric. Iran is an example, although I think not the best one. China or NK are perhaps better examples. If the time comes when a real force on force fight occurs again, having some model airplane pooping around doing SSC/Recon/Elint isn't going to win the war. You're going to need other assets in the air that can adapt to the changing threat that's going on that minute, whether it be Air to Air, SEAD, or both at one time. My $.02 anyway.

 

[invertedflyer]

Bret, If we got war with Iran it will be different than the Persian Gulf, but that doesn't mean the Iranians will be more combat effective. Departing american technicians disabled many of the Iranian F-14s key avionics components and recent satellite imagery shows that they are in continued states of disrepair and immobility. As far as new SAMs yeah, that sounds like a pretty decent threat but thats where you come in, right? Now N. Korea is a different story and I by no means think we should be complacent. I was merely referring to the Vietnam type threat as unlikely compared to other threats that are out there (Iran, N.K. etc.) If Iran does have a significant A/A capability I wouldn't say it would be too much more (in terms of skilled pilots) than those of the first Iraq war. I could be wrong, haven't done much research on the training of Iranian pilots so who knows. Like I said, I'm sure UAVs and UCAVs could be useful... just don't see them replacing flesh-and-blood under the canopy.

 

[bunk22]

Bret, If we got war with Iran it will be different than the Persian Gulf, but that doesn't mean the Iranians will be more combat effective. Departing american technicians disabled many of the Iranian F-14s key avionics components and recent satellite imagery shows that they are in continued states of disrepair and immobility.

Departing American technicians I believe that was quite a while ago and the Iranian F-14 force decimated the Iraqi AF from 1980-88. Something like 130-150 kills were creditied to them. There might only be a handful flying now but I don't think it was due to American techs.