Our new airplanes have already been in production for at least 20 years (777,757,767). Once the 787 lines and orders start thinning out we'll cut a deal for that one. I won't see wide body UAVs in my career.

 

I've heard that.

From someone who would know.

 

CENTCOM shut down ALL flight operations in a part of the world recently due to 2 near-midairs in the span of 12 hrs ("tens of feet") between manned and unmanned. It's only a matter of time when the wreckage of 2 aircraft (1 manned, 1 unmanned) will be falling to the ground in some ROZ. We're just starting to introduce them during our exercises and have already had a close call...

We all know it's the future... That said, how many times have you avoided a midair because 1 set of eyes saw it and maneuvered? My answer is "more than 1, less than 20...". Take away 50% of the "eyes", now what?

UAV's loose in the National Airspace? All good until 2 unmanned heavies hit each other over Chicago.

Diatribe complete, back to writing UAS-manned deconfliction SPINS for our next exercise so I can walk away without this happening on my watch.

 

Not long ago it took five guys in front to make a transport category plane fly. I imagine that in the future the plane could be ground controlled with a half asleep pilot up front as back up. Kind of like how it is now.

Skyhigh

 

Maybe one day even pilots can work from home. Just log in from a home PC to fly the leg.

SKyhigh

 

After the UAV's have been flying for a while with one ground based pilot per UAV, the bean counters will cry for even more efficiency. Why not two, three, four or move UAV's under one "pilots" control?? Give that a little time and Apple will have developed a computer to do all the flying (and thinking ) and you will only need a high school graduate computer tekkie to occasionally reboot an insolent computer!! Oh the future!!

 

We already got the train technology figured out. we get on those pilotless ones all the time at airports. Unmanned plane technology already here. Uavs aleady taking off and landing, thats probably why it will take the 10-15 yrs to convince public. That and inventing, revising, updating the way so noone can take over thats not supose to have control over plane. They will. Hope they at least keep 1 crewmember on board even on cargo flights.

 

That's my point. They've had the technology for years. But it is not EFFICIENT. Not as efficient as crewmembers.

 

I would think 5% is probably high, but that's just a WAG. In any case, bodes well for me.

 

Great point, I'm in the OEF theatre as I type this and have had a near miss with a UAV the other day. I can imagine that as soon as Al Q.. realises no one is actually flying those big jets that some tech genius terrorist will try every possible thing to jam or remotely gain control of these large UAS jets and crash them into targets. Now that would be a total disaster. They'll tell us "Don't worry that won't happen we've thought of everything. Then all of a sudden there will be an app for that...