F-22 Update, page 9

Originally posted by Murcielago

KyleChemist
3. Modern UCAVs DO NOT have an 'armchair pilot', rather they are intended to be totally autonomous, with no human even in the loop.

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whoa...I think your getting abit ahead of yourself. HUMANS WILL BE IN THE LOOP. You might be talking about UAV's, in which case your pretty close, like the Global Hawk, which only take a few clicks of a mouse by a person on the ground to complete a whole recon mission. But UCAVS will have people in the loop, WE decide when and where to drop bombs...not a machine.
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No. He is exactly correct. UCAVs will land and take off without humans, fly to the target area without humans and (in some cases) attack autonomously without human control.

1. Because takeoff and landing is one of the most dangerous phases for humans, even before you compromise them with a a pinhole camera effect that denies them peripheral clues to approach angle, slipstream noise and general perspective 'feel' for alignment. On a Carrier, this is critical and one of the reasons why the JPALS (differential GPS on a boat) is going to become the principle recovery system for ALL naval aircraft. Since it reliably maintains a 40cm/19 inch scatter margin which vastly exceeds the precision of any naval aviator.

Something particularly critical when you are dealing with small platforms that have a low installed thrust to weight ratio and some rather exotic control methodology (mixed effectors with very low rate saturation thresholds require continuous but micrometric lead-adjustment rather than 'responsive' overcontrol as humans are most apt to do).

2. In-flight, the best point to point navigators (time to target) have routinely been proven to be cruise missiles. Because their autopilots are again, SUPERIOR for maintaining waypoint accuracy of spatial and time increment approach.

3. The USAF has a /wonderful/ reputation of PGM accuracy. Largely because they bomb static buildings that any idiot with a map and a Cessna could tossed-handgrenade hit. Especially given the 'PTOD' (Pin Tail On Donkey) nature of IAMs the need to maintain any sophistication of (SALH designator limit orbit turn) is just not there. Because you know your own GPS coordinate. The order of battle planning which lead to the theater fraglist for targeting ensures that the helpless building 'knows where it is' (relative to the spy satellite mapping hundreds of such aimpoints, per overflight).

And the JDAM itself will have access to both onboard rate/positioning deviation data from it's IMU gyro and to GPS to help correct for the /minor/ changes from expected ballistic fall during the perhaps 50-70 seconds that it will typically be falling, inbetween the start and end coordinates.

NONE of these things, require a man in the loop the way a Predator has to have a pilot to fly it down into Hellfire envelopes. And a sensor operator to designate the target. (All with a 3-4 second lag in control response I might add, if you are shot at, you have no hope of 'evasion'. If the target moves, it will be a machine datainterface that continues the slew of the optics until a contrast or rate track is achieved, independent of MITL).

Indeed, because the UCAV's FLIR or XTRA based TESAR radar will classify the structure at ranges up to FOUR TIMES what an MFD can resolution allows a human to 'recognize' the target. Using internal thermal gradient registries (databases which replace a physical image with a mathematical model). Before cross-comparing what it's own position indication says is true for slant range vs. what a laser or radar ping provides for backup.

Said robot doesn't /need/ a human to say "Yes, this is good for the 2nd window from the northwest corner of the third floor."

For it is merely 'pin the tail on the donkey' as the UCAV tells the GBU-31 the start and end position (think final 'point you in the right direction' DMPI hands-on-shoulders update after your friends have spun you up in the game of the same name).

And let's fly.

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You also talked about the X-45, and said that you thought it would be operational in a few years...Wrong.
There are only 2 X-45's, they are experimental only, however they did really good and are now being improved, same goes for the X-47.
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Oh please. The /original/ 'SEAD Only' DARPA UDS (UCAV Demo System) was supposed to phase exit in 2006. Once it was realized that iron on the antenna could be iron on /any/ fixed point, the program was deliberately given new leadership and then a new role modification (ISR only) as the USAF finally got wind of another cruise missile type capability to further devalidate their precious existence as top thieves in the budgetary protection racket.

Having learned their lesson on TLAM and ALCM in the late 70's they then 'made sure' by changing the small X-45A spec to a 'fully gold plated' mod that would finish 'Spiral 1' development, as a USAF controlled program, sometime in 2008.

This being /after/ even the adjusted JSF SDD production decision.

The USAF is like any other RICO type criminal organization. They exist through infiltration and solidarity at all levels of the procurement, testing, operational and command a control elements of the warfighter.

And just like any dirty 'unionized' corrupt entity, they know that they can only continue as a budget eating thug force if they maintain the most basic of 'voted' control which is inherent to cockpits with men in them.

Remove those billets for 'expert operators' (a complete sham I might add) and much of the pushbutton mystique of military power becomes completely transparent to the extent that you can do away with about 60% of the infrastructure which sucks up 90% of the topheavy funding within the Five Walled Asylum.

Everybody knows it. They just are so afraid of being block obsolesced, as the civillian sector has been, with even /fewer/ 'other job skill' applicable experience that they fight as viciously as a Columbian Drug Cartel to maintain a position of dominance in a near Zero Threat Index world condition.

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DARPA is having Boeing build 3 X-45C's and they will be delivered in 2007, which is around the same time the Northrop will deliver its 3 X-47B's, all six of these future UCAVS are experimental only. The Airforce doesn't have any plans on buying them by the handfull. The Air Force will see how they do, and if they like what they see (which they probably will) then they will decide if to buy, and how many to buy, and same goes for the Navy and the X-47B. I highly doubt one will go operational in this decade.
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The idiocy of this statement is that it's all true. What is NOT made clear is the sure and certain truth that the USAF can ONLY afford to buy one or the t'other of the F-35 (currently at 257 BILLION and climbing) or the JUCAS programs.

The sadness being thusly:

1. 1,500 UCAVs, at 20 million each (no 'fighter' capabilities needed, design them like a light bizjet) with a 20 billion dollar R&D tag, would cost 50 billion dollars. If we started from scratch, right now.

2. Whether you are attacking a Tier 1 threat with a full integrated IADS or some hillbilly with an RPG and a Toyota Pickup Truck over the far back of beyond, the UCAV has HUGE advantages in penetration distance (almost twice that of the JSF) and in signature (no tails) and in loiter (2hrs at 1,100nm) and in 'sacrificability' (put the drones out front, let the SAM sites or interceptors fire away, and shoot the shooters using lofted HSARM or killer-MALD type weapons). i.e. these aircraft are /by nature/ superior for fighting the 21st century type of warfare where the U.S. is in decline as a stillborn empire. And the enemy uses assymetric tactics to avoid as much as engage us.

3. By 2012, the first JSF units will reach IOC. This is /far/ from fully multimission ready. It's just a basic ability to get the airplane to a theater and do ONE mission. By 2015, most analysts are estimating at least 3 primary threat nations will have access to 100kw (THEL/M-THEL) laser weapons. At that point, airpower will hit a KT Boundary beyond which the 'bravery comes with greedy fingers' the pilot corps WILL BE block obsolescent, like it or lump it. Because DEWs will proliferate like wildfire. That's a difference of three years for a program which, so Fitzgerald's First Law states: "To early to tell, too late to stop..." we will STILL BE FINANCIALLY INDEMNITIED FOR SEVERAL HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS.

CONCLUSION:
Say what you want, believe what you want. The reality is that the USAF and all the other 'four air forces for one nation' airpower exponents will 'just one more generation!' us (We The People) to /death/ so long as they think they can manipulate procurement and testing to maintain their own worthless job security. But the ROW is not technically equal if not better than U.S. in many areas, lacking only the political will to form multilateral federations of controlled trade to bankrupt our militant democracies spendthrift aggre$$ion right into the dirt.

What will then happen, when the JSF has bankrupt the U.S. military and the DEWs have destroyed the utility of manned airpower extant, will be that CATIC/IAI/EADS based UCAV/URAV technologies will BYPASS 'Gen 5 = JSF' (and thus their own, hopelessly antiquated Gen-4 Canard Clones) straight into Gen-6.

Which will be entirely robotic and so simple that every nation who wants one can have a fleet of Eric Hartmanns and Hans Rudels.

While we look on, 'astonished' at our own corrupt inefficiencies, in putting us so far behind the SOA thanks to our obsession with seeing fighter pilots as some kind of twisted sky knight feudal symbol (which they are, of utter stupidity).

KPl.