Precision and Persistence Trump Payload and Power
Don’t expect this to happen overnight, but there is increasing evidence that the future of aerial warfare belongs to the UAV’s. We have seen occurring gradually for decades, with unmanned combat aircraft coming of age in the War on Terror. The American’s are masters of this type of warfare, especially with her ongoing precision bombing campaign over Pakistan. The latter is not very popular but there are signs it is both lethal and effective. Smaller states are seeing the effectiveness of robot drones armed with precision attack missiles, which can stay aloft for days compared to hours for a manned jet limited by its human operator. A recent secretive operation apparently by the Israeli’s that destroyed Iranian missiles for delivery to Hamas in Gaza reveals much of this UAV capability. From Strategypage:
The January attack destroyed 17 truckloads of weapons, and killed the 39 men operating the vehicles. Since then, the smugglers have resorted to individual trucks, and the use of small boats moving up the Red Sea coast. There were apparently additional attacks in February.
The most likely UAV for this is the Heron TP. Equipped with a powerful (1,200 horsepower) turbo prop engine, the 4.6 ton aircraft can operate at 45,000 feet. That is, above commercial air traffic, and all the air-traffic-control regulations that discourage, and often forbid, UAV use at the same altitude as commercial aircraft. The Heron TP has a one ton payload, enabling it to carry sensors that can give a detailed view of what’s on the ground, even from that high up. The endurance of 36 hours makes the Heron TP a competitor for the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper (or Predator B). You would need several Heron TPs to make the kinds of attacks that hit those convoys. Each Heron TP can carry up to eight Spike ER or Hellfire missiles.
For a few million dollars and a little training (perhaps by playing video games!), any nation can have a instant unmanned air force without costly air academies, well-payed and expensively trained pilots, or huge air bases. For several billion dollars you can have the latter. In an era of strained defense budgets, which would you choose? So this goes without saying:
The UAVs are cheaper to operate than an F-16I or F-15.
As the US plans to spend a trillion dollars or more for new manned warplanes in the next decade, one has to question the logic, when its the smaller, cheaper, and increasingly smarter UAVs that are getting all the headlines, and winning our wars against the terrorists.
Lasers would be better if they could miniaturize enough power.
And as soon as we can figure out how to side mount a gatling gun onto a UAV with several thousand rounds of ammo and enough accuracy to allow for sufficient standoff distance …
Then again, they’ll probably figure out ways to load up a tactical laser onto a UAV before trying the gatling gun idea …
I don’t know. I’ve been impressed ever since the Predators have been plinking terrorists on a regular basis since 2001.
While UAV’s do have a bright future, they are not there yet, nor will they be there for years to come.
I am reading that too, NTV. Not sure if this is verified, but even so I keep my faith in UAV future for the reasons given in the post.
Actually, what I would expect to see in those circumstances is the rise of unjammable LOS communications (lasers?) and/or a shift from orbital relay of command/control to something more local and in theater (possibly even run by contractors). You’d wind up with something like a “local theater network” which runs a few (redundant!) nodes to connect things (by blimp/rigid airship perhaps?) to ground stations local to the theater of operations, so as to conserve on bandwidth … and thus leave “room” for controlling more drones simultaneously. It would be far cheaper to float up some blimps than it would be to launch satellites, and it would leave the satellite comm channels clear for other more important communications (because we ARE going to run out of satellite bandwidth if we keep treating it as an infinite resource).
The drones will “do well” at the sort of “point and click interface” jobs, such as bombing static and/or slow moving (ie. not evading) targets or C4ISR stuff. But as is always the case, counter-measures will be developed to “shorten the leash” of remote control drones over time. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of “fuzzbuster” type snooping system to emerge in the next few years to detect when a drone is flying overhead that can range/locate the drone by detecting its transmissions. Once the communications link becomes a weakness, then you’re back to wanting to put humans into the machines so that they don’t (necessarily) betray their presence/position by needing to “phone home” quite so often.
Measure vs Counter-Measure … and so the dance continues …
I am reading that the actual strike was carried out by F-16′s with the Heron providing intel support.
Time then to get out the sling shots, Big D! Seriously, we may then see more autonomous planes, for better or worse.
In general, I’ll somewhat agree with you, and that’s why we’re seeing things like Reaper in the first place.
However, who will fight our wars when the enemy has shot down our satellites and jammed our links, or just EMP’d the snot out of the theater?