Unmanned Cargo Aircraft System To Be Deployed Next Month In Afghanistan

In some ways though, and yes I realize that this is cargo, but if there is no risk to a country when they go to war, then where is the natural hesitation to discourage a country from going to war in the first place. The more we take the risk out of the equation, the more likely we are to commit another Iraq, because as we know, its only money, and we don't see the negative cost impacts until later. In fact we see positive cost impacts as a war acts like a stimulus package.

On the first issue (post #1) I'd say that the lethality of modern air defenses already makes manned fighters an extremely high-risk proposition. The main reason we refuse to field them is cultural rather than technological (there are some technological issues, but the main thing is that the Air Force has a culture still largely based on the fighter pilot ethos).

As to the threshold for war question, we've already seen the first bits of that, with the war on Libya being pitched as low risk because it was conducted with manned and unmanned aircraft that had limited risk to pilots. I suspect if we had to send manned aircraft into Pakistan or Yemen in order to conduct airstrikes there, that we by and large wouldn't be doing it.

So I can see the point of post 1.1. On the other hand, as a deployed Air Force member, I've obviously got a vested interest in things that reduce the casualty rate. So I am in general a fan of unmanned systems.

random,

yeah but the US hasn't really had to face any Surface to Air attacks (there have been a few, but mostly enough, and oddly enough, to cargo planes, which have less of an ability to evade them.

It also changes things when the US refuses to go to war with any entity that can even remotely defend itself. Of course the US could defeat iraq, in record time. That's what you get when you have M1A1's going up against T-55's. There is a 50 year design time difference.

About your last point, it wasn't about the soldier, it was about the reasons why you are deployed. For someone who is in the military, (And I used to be in the Air Force, though not the US Air Force) you do what you are told. You follow orders, because that is what your commanders tell you, and those orders essentially come from a civilian leader; in the case of the US, the president, in my case, a prime minister. But if that civilian leader has no natural restraint in deploying those troops because there is no risk to human lives on 'his side', then that is just going to create more war.

Think of it this way, all out nuclear war never happened, why not? well first off we saw the effects of it with two bombs over japan at the end of WWII, but we also knew that it would impact US just as much as it would impact the other side. How is that for a deterrent. By creating a situation where there is no impact to the lives on your side, you have removed that deterrent. There are no negative consequences to any military action that you may undertake. That is a VERY big moral issue to me.

War is a dirty business, and it should always remain a dirty business, because keeping it a dirty business gives you a natural thought process to ask yourself, should we be doing this. Nobody really wants to contemplate going to war with china, or russia, or even North Korea (to a lesser extent), even though North Korea is a real threat, unlike the imagined threat that Iraq was. Why not? because we KNOW that the casualties will be high in those conflicts. There is a natural hesitation that even though Kim Jong Il is 10 times more evil, 10 times more disastrous to his people, we know that the casualties will be high if we were to invade, so we don't.

Luckydog,

the bases that they control the UAV's from is in the US, so yeah, I would say it is protected. As far as I know, they wear jumpsuits, not flight suits.

Howdy, Jonathan: I understand the theory of how it lowers the bar to engaging in violence (and I think we've already seen national decisionmaking impacted by the lack of threat to American lives). The temptation to save the lives of your own forces by going for a more automated, remotely-piloted approach is likely to be irresistable to policymakers.

What country, by the way? I've worked a fair amount with the RAF (in fact, there's an RAF officer sitting about 12 feet from me right now) and French Air Force (though the last time I worked with them was 1999).

The guys at Creech AFB wear standard AF flight suits, by the way. It's the same nomex suit that everyone from fighter pilots to loadmasters to (inexplicably) the guys who sit in an office and send software updates to GPS satellites wear. Regards,

The UK.

I don't think I would have a name of Jonathan (which is not the name I use, it is my middle name, but my other name is just as non francophone) if I served in the French Air Force.

True, but my given name isn't randomreturn either :-)

yeah well I wouldn't expect that to be your name, you see a name like Jonathan as the user id, then that is more than likely a real name of some sort.

My real 'working' name isn't used anywhere online.

lucky,

Oh didn't you hear the story that came after that?

The 'virus' was actually the US Air Forces own software that the AV program detected as being a virus because it behaved like one (It was a rootkit, but a rootkit is just something that puts itself into the core of the OS, it isn't bad or good).

I would just think that if those systems are connected in any way that would make them vulnerable to a viral attack, then somebody needs to be lined up against a wall and shot.