Yes the IPA is in the process of addressing this internally to prepare for the inevitable. Industry experts are saying 10 - 15 years down the road we will see blended wing transports remotely piloted as a spin-off from DoD projects. DARPA and Boeing Phantom Works/Lockheed Skunk Works are hard at work on this area of aerospace industry rest assured.
Forwarned is forearmed.

 

CMA: You need to go back to your old avatar...........

As I recall both Luke and Princesses Laya were delivered by robots............

Now where did I put that light sabor to cut my chicken with. These plastic forks are killing me..........

 

"You guys are naive. I bet HKG-ANC routes will be done by UAVs within 20 years. Global Hawk is already in the US airspace system."

I'm a big advocate of UAV's, but the difference between military UAVs and civilian UAVs is the airports they land at and the environment they work in. We have 9 Globalhawks (roughly) and none of them operate out of LAX, Hong Kong, or even Anchorage. Nor will they. There is a HUGE difference in operating a UAV from a military field and slipping one into the taxi flow at Newark airport. That's not to say the technology doesn't exist. It obviously does. But the technology to operate unmanned trains has existed for decades. Trains ride on rails (not 3 dimensional airspace), if something breaks they can stop without taking out a city block, they move much slower than aircraft and travel for hours through some of the most desolate territory on earth without stopping...and still have human beings at the controls. Only airport tram systems and carnival rides operate without a human at the controls, and they function in a very controlled, and very small system. Similarly, ocean going freighters have operated on auto pilot for decades. Yet all remain crewed by humans.

There is a realistic application for unmanned aircraft, and there is reality. Manned fighters are going away. Manned freighters are not.

 

It's a whole lot more likely that international ops will go the way of the maritimes - third-world pilots working for lowest wages. It'd be a whole lot cheaper to keep the planes manned, just manned with Liberians/Indians/Haitians....

 

that is true but the ocean freighter companies do not employ 3000 or more pilots and have the associated expenses of hotels, recurrent training, many many simulators and the infrastructure to support all of that. I know these numbers are probably way off but lets assume an average salary of 150k per pilot at 3000 pilots. plus all the hotels and training costs and retirement contributions medical benifits, it must come to almost 1 billion a year. for a company such as UPS. If someone has the actual average salary per pilot please chime in. I am just wondering what the difference in cost would be in keeping pilots vs aquireing uav's and getting the ground staff and infrastructure up to speed.

of course this is all for fun and speculation at this time. Does anyone know what a Global Hawk costs?

 

I know that currently, it costs more to have a UAV patrol the US-Mexican border than it does to have a Pilot and a Single Engine Airplane, per hour.

I would assume that the ground crew required to operate a fleet of very large UAV freighters, flying around the world, would require a much larger ground crew than it does now. UAV's, atleast currently, are not more cost-effective. Also, these aircraft will be operating in an environment with non-UAV aircraft, I don't know how well they can handle that, seeing how they have TFRs out for the areas where UAV's patrol.

I think we will see trains and boats lose human crews before commercial aircraft.

 

I think it will happen when the technology to make it happen is cost effective. Just like the A380—it’s an engineering marvel but an economic disaster. In time it will be an outstanding aircraft even if it is French!

My bet would be 10-year before a UAV takes someone’s job. But right around that time the 80% population of the third world countries will be of age to be pilots and they will fly our airplanes from India for $260 a week! So UAVs will get shelved for another 5-years until the world population realizes that UAV are safer than the new pilots crashing cargo airplanes and congress will mandate that safer UAV be flow over our cities as an alternative to the dangerous humans.

 

Thats some forward thinking !!!

 

The plastic knives are better than the forks for cutting!

 

Don't forget to factor in all the "service failure" costs for the Global Hawk!