Originally posted by redrooster79:
Witht the birth of the SAM misslies in the 1950s people were
heralding the end for manned planes, well that didn't happen. UAVs
present a variety of problems especially sinces its unmanned it
would require an open comms channel to it controller at all times.
Wouldn't this channel be easily jammed by conventional means
already available. Furthermore wouldn't the controll staion for
such a UAV squadron be extremely vulnerable not only does the
equipment for controlling the UAVs need to be specialise but the
equipment for programing them needs to be specialized. Also for a
dogfight don't pilots rely on 360 degree vision by turning their
heard and all that, would the UAV be so flexible in terms of
vision, of course you could mount cams to cover all angles but that
would mean bigger uavs, also to mount weapons and all that the UAV
just gets bigger. After a while the UAV is not much cheaper then a
conventional fighter nor is it much smaller.
You are wrong on almost all counts. What is actual fact, is that
UCAVs are considerably smaller (30 percent) then manned aircraft,
and the elimination of the meat from the system means that it frees
up space used for life support and all that other rubbish for
sensors, weapons and engines.
But what is important, is not the size, but the ability of the UCAV
to remove the element of human risk from the picture and free up
mission capability to do things no humanely possible if there was
some meat in the system. If you have to select between two systems,
one that risks a pilot that takes millions to train, whose lifespan
in battle is measured in hours in an aircraft that at best can make
9+ gees and with a maximum speed of 2.5 mach and enduarance limited
by the pilot against a system which only risks the system itself,
can be pushed to limits that would kill any human, and not to
mention carry more space for engine, weapons and sensors that would
have been taken up for life support instead.
If managed, the vulnerabilities of UCAV systems actually present a
cast increase in tatical ability over the manned aircraft. Even
your supposed 360 degree view is highly misleading. The issue here
is not view, but situtational awareness. (BTW, adding cams dun
increase system size much at all, dunno where your flawed logic
come from). If the 21st century concept of sensor intergration is
put into the UCAV, which I'm sure the amerians will do, what the
UCAV operator will get is not a multiple screen view like a secuity
system, but a single, unified three-dimentional display of easy to
grasp information showing the situtational display in detail that
no oxygen starved pilot pulling gees can ever hope to grasp.
Air combat is fought like a video game. If you put the gamer in the
cockpit and force him to go through all of the motions his control
unit has to go through versus one that is sitting outside the
system and can see the big picture immediately without having to
look around and glance and displays and HUDs, logic tells you who's
going to win. The pilot has to see his target, read weapons status,
endure manuvers and at the same time digest all this in order to
fight. The UCAV operatior just has to look at the information
coming in from the sensor network (does not even have to be sesnors
on his system) point his aircraft and shoot. Game over.
