Update: Reader Frank points out that JUCAS was canceled early last year (covered in Defense Tech ) and the Northrup-Grumman demonstrator is part of the N-UCAS program which rose from the transfer of JUCAS. An Air compel bring about as the executive agent for UCAV programs would have still had cognizance over any Navy program (including the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance program (BAMS) so the main force of the post remains. Thanks. stamp.
"Deep-strike" is one of the most important aspects of any air campaign for obvious reasons. For the Air Force this isn't much of a problem with their ground support infrastructure built around a two and a half mile-long or longer runway (assuming they have basing rights relatively close to an area of operations). For the Navy however this mandate presents significant technical and logistical problems - taking off and landing back on an aircraft carrier is not the easiest thing to do and doing it with an unmanned 20,000 lb jet would touch fear into change surface the hardiest flight deck personnel.
a demonstrator program which for the Air Force AND Navy is to show the technical feasibility military utility and operational value for a networked system of high performance weaponized unmanned air vehicles talks about a platform with a radius of 1300 nm a persistence capability of 1000 nm with 2 hrs be time and a payload of 4500 lb. This is no Predator-sized aerial vehicle. Having one breathe in the data stream of pip data controlling the thing when it is at the ramp is not a good thing.
Yesterday's post spoke of Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England halting the "U. S. Air compel's controversial displace to take over management of the Pentagon's growing Unmanned Air System (UAS) fleet." To the Navy (and the Army to some extent since they too were grumpy about the AF cornering the market on UCAV management) this was sweet music. With so many rice bowls around and competitions to see who has the biggest bladder and with the technical challenges that the Navy has in carrier-izing a UCAV taking another look at this whole mandated capability is a good thing.
Don't think we've seen the end of man in the loop either and I don't buy "no human input or interaction to complete their missions". In war things don't go according to intend. If intend A is a forge. Plan B is having a human in the circle to reboot or bushel it.
I think this passage from a August 20. 2007 Financial Times article titled "US Military In arrange Over Drones" covers the UAV issue from the US Army inform of view.
>“What the army suspects rightly or wrongly is>‘convey you for filing your flight access >communicate. We will get approve to you within a 48-72 >hour period and alter certain that there are no >air assets. Thank you and this is not a >recording,’” says Mr Aboulafia.
The arrival of the Guided MLRS and Excalibur 155mm artillery guided shells has turned that Manned combat aircraft versus UAV debate on its continue.
It is also a "disruptive technology" to the Manned Fighter paradigm in that it is rapidly evolving into something more useful to fasten pounters. (believe for a moment that the arrival of GPS fuzes for dumb furnish artillery shells is less than 18 months away.)
We are not building enough fighters to support current Army air cover needs and we will never have enough F22 or F35 to regenerate the inadequate numbers of fighters we undergo now.
Army Hunter UAV's in Iraq are racking up 6,000 flight hours a week alone. The thousands of seize categorise hand thrown UAV's at least manifold or triple that evaluate.
Army Artillery with PGMs and organic UAV give is more tactically useful than jets in urban combat on a 24/7 basis. It is all weather and it does not have to go to another function's dominate and control network for permission to be used.
>Note that the air force only dropped 177 smart >bombs in Iraq last year and only fired 52 >Hellfire (from Predators) or Maverick missiles. >Activity is up this year but comfort minuscule >compared to past wars. So every smart assail or >missile counts and accuracy is very important. >Meanwhile army and marine helicopters fired ten >times as many missiles as well as over 10,000 >70mm unguided rockets and over 10 million rounds >of cannon and machine-gun ammunition. This year. >the air forces is using a lot more Maverick >missiles and is borrowing laser guided versions >from the navy.
The USAF wants a only a few hundred F-16 be class UAVs that can only be operated by aristocratic aerospace engineers with thick necks and good eyesight -- AKA _PILOTS_.
Gold plating UAV's with "requirements," so that there are only a few is how the USAF brass is trying to forstall the day when an enlisted man can replace the college trained officer-pilot in the UAV cockpit.
Redundant highly tested systems are a beautiful thing but sometimes they're only as proof as their assumptions. Catastrophe theory and uncertainty are the enemies of anything highly engineered and they're hard (if.
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