The End of an Era?

[martinistripes]

I was just thinking (deeply!)...

 

Some of you may have seen that the military are developing unmanned strike aircraft/bombers and even helicopters. Things such as the Predator but with a much more capable range, payload and targeting equipment. I don't know the details, I just saw a short snippet on Sky News. Well lets imagine, say another 20 years in the future, manned military aircraft may no longer be in production at all. We may be in the last few years of manned aerial combat. After this there may not be any more new pilotable aircraft exciting enough to simulate. Who wants to play a simulator where you control an aircraft from a seat in an office? It would be almost like playing a simulator of a simulator! All sims of the future may have to base their game on the designs of the present and the past. Current leaders such as the F16 and Su-27 may be the last of a species soon to be extinct. Will all combat flight sims (for as long as flight sims remain) be modelled within just the one century of time. Just some food for thought.

[Avimimus]

The question is really whether response times for target engagement will get so close that air combat will be relegated to bombardment from long range or without LOS and high speed SAMs...

 

Another question is whether datalinks can be established from platforms that cannot be jammed or detected.

[RedTiger]

I was just thinking (deeply!)...

 

Some of you may have seen that the military are developing unmanned strike aircraft/bombers and even helicopters. Things such as the Predator but with a much more capable range, payload and targeting equipment. I don't know the details, I just saw a short snippet on Sky News. Well lets imagine, say another 20 years in the future, manned military aircraft may no longer be in production at all. We may be in the last few years of manned aerial combat. After this there may not be any more new pilotable aircraft exciting enough to simulate. Who wants to play a simulator where you control an aircraft from a seat in an office? It would be almost like playing a simulator of a simulator! All sims of the future may have to base their game on the designs of the present and the past. Current leaders such as the F16 and Su-27 may be the last of a species soon to be extinct. Will all combat flight sims (for as long as flight sims remain) be modelled within just the one century of time. Just some food for thought.

 

 

I say: Good!!!

 

Leave the bombing to the robots and let the pilots shoot down other pilots and the robots.

 

"The duty of the fighter pilot is to patrol his area of the sky, and shoot down any enemy fighters in that area. Anything else is rubbish."

 

Baron Manfred von Richthofen

[RedTiger]

I say: Good!!!

 

Leave the bombing to the robots and let the pilots shoot down other pilots and the robots.

 

"The duty of the fighter pilot is to patrol his area of the sky, and shoot down any enemy fighters in that area. Anything else is rubbish."

 

Baron Manfred von Richthofen

 

(Not the full and correct quote, but its the best I could do on such short notice.)

[kapuhy]

We still don't have cars, tanks, trains w/o driver, not mention how many people would like to fly in plane without pilot? We had technology breakpoints that were supposed to replace old solutions (missles vs. gun artillery and planes, spy sattelites vs. "human" spies, great AT weapons vs. useless tanks), but none of tht things happend. One new invention (ie. something like large area communication/steering jamming) can make most of unmanned aircrafts useless, in some missions is very difficult to replace human senses by cold electronics, so I think that we'll enjoy manned planes for long time.

[RedTiger]

Yeah, and the food chain comes full circle when the robots bomb the "pilots" ;)

 

Won't happen until we develope energy weapons. If its a physical projectile, it can be dodged. Doesn't matter if its a robot or a person shooting it.

 

Develope an unmanned plane that has several fast tracking beam weapon turrets where lasing and incinerating a target mean the same thing (think Star Trek ships). Even so, I'd put my money on a human pilot acutally flying such a thing up against someone flying it from computer monitors. Unless the UV guy cheats and uses labels. :sly: :lol:

[badaboom]

Nothing can replace the human element of reasoning.You know....that "GRAY" area.

[ThunderChief]

We still don't have cars, tanks, trains w/o driver, not mention how many people would like to fly in plane without pilot?

 

Actually its much easier to build fully automated planes than cars or tanks (because the sky is almost empty). But there are some major problems with drones that are controlled without "human in the loop". You need some degree of artifical intelligence to decide what to do. this is already feasible for "normal" flying like recon or cargoplanes. But when it comes to fighting / bombing it gets very complex and thus very dangerous.

Another problem is that it would be easy for humans to predict what such an AI would do next and so you could exploit its "weak spots" (e.g. if you wear civilian clothes -> a.i. will not bomb you).

That is why I belive that combatdrones will be controlled with human "in the loop". This means that the human machine interface is the weak spot (lag, jamming, range) and so you still need piloted aircraft.

[Flanker15]

Eventually all military tasks will be replaced by "The Machines" aswell as civilian tasks. Then we will inevitably by wiped out by an error in the program or a robot rebellion. We must strive to make our robots as kick ass as possible since our technology will be our legacy to the universe and when aliens stumble over the remains of our civilization I want them to say "Damn these guys built some kick ass robots"!

[Eagle Driver]

I don't think it is an immediate concern regarding flight sims. Remember that most aircraft that can be done accurately are over 20 years old. Think about how long we will be having stuff getting declassified - Raptor, JSF, Eurofighter, PAK-FA, Rafale, Su-30MKI, etc.

[mvsgas]

I can not wait until we have only UCAV. It will be so much easier to fix aircraft without the pilots. With UCAV hopefully we only have to deal with the specific system, a programmer or an engineer. Pilots tend to call a system bad specially if they are getting evaluated and fail a task. Then he come back with FLCC problems, engine problems, targeting pod did not work or the bomb did not guide, but is never their fault.

[Sundowner.pl]

Not yet. In our life time, the UAVs will perform only the mission people would be totally bored or to dangerous - Recon, SEAD, Strike. Everything needing shorter response time, like CAS and A2A combat, will be performed by crewed aircraft, because it simpler, cheaper, more reliable and... there is always someone to blame in case of SHTF.