Unmanned Aircraft Makes Aircraft Carrier Landing

[klr]

I'm not sure that this is such a tactical advantage.
Men are expendable in war. It's the hardware that takes time and money to produce. So having a real pilot is probably better protection for the valuable hardware.

And if aircraft carriers are to be so decisive, then it's surely cheaper to counter that threat with submarine and torpedo technology that to join a tech arms race in drones?

The real advantage of drones is in peace time. It eliminates the danger of having one of your pilots shot down, and paraded in a humiliating fashion in front of the world's media.

In war time, nobody would give a shit about that.

Actually, this is not generally the case nowadays, and very likely not for "advanced" armed forces. No matter how expensive the technology, training someone to use it is still a huge issue.

The remake of Top Gun is going to be boring.

No more Tom Cruise can only be a good thing.

[Clinton Huxley]

Having the hoomans out of the loop may make aggression an easier option to take.

[Ian]

When's that going to happen? Humans are still thoroughly in the loop. These aren't Cylons.

Edit: unless you mean that pilot lives won't be in danger, which is probably what you meant. Understandable, but I disagree. Have combat mission planners up until now been too cautious because they've been worried about pilots?

[FBM]

No doubt the Chinese have already "acquired" the blueprints and other technical info for this and will soon be making their own.

Yeah, but an hour later you'll just feel the need to do another UAV assault.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Mistermack you're wrong. It took us two years to produce a fighter pilot during WWII.

We launched a Liberty ship in eight days once.

[Clinton Huxley]

When's that going to happen? Humans are still thoroughly in the loop. These aren't Cylons.

Edit: unless you mean that pilot lives won't be in danger, which is probably what you meant. Understandable, but I disagree. Have combat mission planners up until now been too cautious because they've been worried about pilots?

I think it could affect planning, as there's no chance of having a downed pilot paraded on foreign TV.

Obviously this is a response to the Chinese ballistic anti-ship missiles. Need to keep those ACs as far from the coast as possible....

[Ian]

Obviously? I think it's nothing more than making use of an obvious advance in technology.

[Clinton Huxley]

I think it's obvious that that is one consideration that's pushed the development.

We've not had a shooting war between 2 major, modern powers for a bit. Wonder what would happen.....

[Tyrannical]

I thought unmanned drones had landed on carriers plenty of times before. Maybe this is just the first fully automated self landing.

I bet they could design a small drone carrier, now that could be a game changer.

[Clinton Huxley]

Drone carriers, protected by drone destroyers and drone frigates and drone minesweepers, to keep out the enemies drone submarines, in a war played on X-Box controllers in Shanghai and Washington.....

[Tyrannical]

Drone carriers, protected by drone destroyers and drone frigates and drone minesweepers, to keep out the enemies drone submarines, in a war played on X-Box controllers in Shanghai and Washington.....

That would make a fun game

[mistermack]

Mistermack you're wrong. It took us two years to produce a fighter pilot during WWII.

We launched a Liberty ship in eight days once.

It took the US two years to even realise that there WAS a war.

Didn't take us two years to train pilots. Closer to two weeks at times.

The Liberty Ship might have been ASSEMBLED in eight days. But that's with a huge workforce, and materials that were already manufactured. If you compare the man-hours needed to produce an extra jet fighter, to the man-hours to train an extra pilot, there is no comparison.
The pilot is a tiny loss, compared to the jet.

[Clinton Huxley]

Hmmm....the programme cost for the 2 X-47bs built so far is about $800 million, according to Wiki. That would drop with mass manufacturing but its still not a trivial or cheap exercise to build so many of such a complex device. The F35s are creeping up to $200 million each.

The F35 could be the last manned western fighter aircraft.

[Coito ergo sum]

At least when it's robot planes getting into it, we can tell the good guys from the bad guys. The bad guys always have red lights and the good guys always have soft-blues and light greens and such.

[Clinton Huxley]

At least when it's robot planes getting into it, we can tell the good guys from the bad guys. The bad guys always have red lights and the good guys always have soft-blues and light greens and such.

Oops. I think that Taranis concept plane from Britsh Aerospace has a red light. They'll have to change that before it goes into production.