Thanks dtfl. Believe me - I understand the benefit of forward deployed forces and I've had it beat into my head the benifit of carrier and Expeditionary Strike Groups. At the same time - some of the UCAS/V have extremely long ranges and could suport the needs from other locations. So....have they actually experimented with bring a UCAS aboard the carrier?

USMCFLYR

You're still thinking inside the container. If the UCAV went Winchester 10 minutes into the VUL, long range and hours of endurance wouldn't matter - quick replenishment would.

....maybe YOU are the one thinking inside the container LM. What type of weapons are YOUR UCAS employing that need replenishment? But that is OK - I like my container.

USMCFLYR

One observation you might want to take into consideration is that the F-35 is not yet deployed and both that aircraft and the F-22 are expected to have long service lives. While the B-52 is expected to be flying when the youngest airframe is 70, and the planned replacement is also manned.

Also, as far as UAVs and automation go... plans change in the US military quite a bit, if I read my history books correctly there was a time right before and during the Vietnam war when we were convinced that guns on aircraft were obsolete, yet the most modern fighters being deployed still have them (and the F-4s had them put back in). Seems to me like the techies are the ones hyping the UAVs as a primary mode of defense while the pentagon heads are seeing them as more of an "auxillary" or "supplementary" type platform.

Also, I think that the physical presence of a person in the battlefield to "control" the action and make localized decisions is very important.

aviatorhi:

I agree. Technology has its advantages: calculators and computers don't make math errors. The Cat-3 autoland I have seen in airliners can do a better ILS than I can, and to legally lower minimums. The autopilot holds altitude better than I can (usually) . A digital flight computer can make thousands of corrections a minute to allow relaxed stability airplanes (the A-320, F-16, F-22, and F-35) more aerodynamically efficient. Frequency-hopping radios and radars, digital datalink, ECM...the list goes on and on.

But there is a distinct human advantage on the battlefield: adaptability and imagination. When something new is presented, that was never envisioned when the system was designed or programmed, a human can Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act....the infamous OODA-loop of John Boyd fame.

An easy way to illustrate this is Emergency Training. In the Air Force, and a lesser extent the airlines, EPs are usually not presented as "compound emergencies." They give you a single failure...say, an engine fire...and you follow the checklist, and recover the airplane.

But multiple-unrelated emergencies are different. Now you may have to decide how to prioritize the EP, or how to recover from its consequences, because the checklist may not spell it out for you.

As in combat. The most fun I ever had in fighters was fighting air-to-air against 'superior' adversaries by using tactics that they had not considered, nor had the ability to comprehend. It allowed my stone-age fighter to humiliate an enemy with greater equipment capability.

The difference? Imagination and adapatability. Mine was better. Likewise in unmanned systems. Their ability to deal with the unexpected will only be as good as the imagination of the programmers and designers, or the capability of their remote operators.

Autonomous vehicles will never make mistakes. But they will never have the capability of a manned--or man in the loop--system, even though that man will make mistakes.

And that is why I believe UAVs will be an adjunct to manned combat aircraft, not the replacement.

Unclassified programs:
Reaper: 2 x GBU-12's and 4 x AGM-114's. Predator: 2 x AGM-114's
More to come (sts), I am sure.

Classified programs:
Who knows?