How is it much more deadly if it crashes? I thought since the pilot’s life wouldn’t be at risk it could possibly be less deadly if crashed.
I’m all for massive employment programs just not ones with no social value. Heck, lets build a better space program.
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You are forgetting that if it crashes- it will probably crash into something…
Small field-deployable drone loses control and crashes into neighborhood- someone’s living room might be taken out with hopefully none or minimal human loss.
Full-size military jet loses control and crashes into neighborhood- a block or more could be lost, depending on how much fuel it has onboard.
Yes- in either case- the pilot would be seated perfectly safe in a comfy chair, probably swearing.
Not much dogfight training happens over populated area’s. This would be being done over water or desert wastelands. The only issue you may have is a malfunction occurs on landing / takeoff but either way you are still screwed manned or unmanned.
What these are for is so that they can dogfight without the risk of going in to a flat spin or similar and requiring a pilot ejection. An ejection can be career ending for a milatary pilot as it often causes broken limb’s, spinal compression etc. When that happens you have just lost $$$ in training and also have to keep the pilot on medical/pension. If a drone spirals out of control and thuds into the desert who cares? The airframes are old and no longer fit for service due to too many flight hours etc.
Actually, use of “drones” goes back to at least the post WWII atomic testing for gathering data while flying through the immediate fallout.
Don’t worry! Thems robot planes ain’t so tough:
Why have a seat at all?
I’m guessing either for weight and balance purposes (it’s easy to add weights to simulate a person, not as easy for a seat which is quite a bit heavier), or it could just be that there was no point in removing it.
Into the 1920s actually, although I don’t think for anything other than proof of concept.
“…somebody could take out the US Navy without anybody genuinely knowing who to blame…”
Operation Reichstag II…?
The mannequin has to sit somewhere.
Well, that is one unlikely possibility. On the other hand, I can think of a few large countries that might be interested in the chance to neuter US Naval power with a strong dose of plausible deniability. Especially if they don’t maintain significant navies of their own.
That is the bizarre state of military development right now. For political reasons, the US and other "western’ militaries are very interested in developing drones and other autonomous hardware. No dead pilots means no telegenic grieving friends and families to oppose the war(s). But in doing so they are very effectively undermining their own technological superiority.
A multibillion dollar software and hardware project is expensive the first time. How long before someone can make (or mass produce) a reasonable analogue in their garage, with opensourced designs and software - then kludge it into an ability to swarm any major military asset at relatively little cost.
I suppose it would be a little uncomfortable doing an hour of preflight checks and INS alignments sitting on a plastic bucket.
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And I personally welcome our flying robot overlords…
That sound you just heard was every flyboy and wannabe-flyboy in the Air Force crying out in disappointment.
I also wonder about the possibility of cheap, solar powered ocean transport. Consider a sea kayak with photovoltaic cells and a couple of electric motors. Program it to drive from beach to beach. It would be uncomfortable and slow but you could get around without a passport.
It deploys automatically when the link to ground control fails. If it deflates then…well…
This a couple trillion times.
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Isn’t that pretty much our military development history? We create new weapons no one has a defense against, proliferate them like crazy, and then tell everyone that we’re going to be killed by these new weapons unless we spend an order of magnitude more money to develop a defense against them? No doubt drones will spread like wildfire and Congress will happily shell out trillions to create swarms of millions of counter drones. We seem to have the ability to keep upping the ante against ourselves and the only thing that will ultimately stop it is economic collapse.
Done by any number of different research organizations (and likely done by US military organizations as well):
<a href=http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=10078>Autonomous Underwater Vehicles @ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
