UCAV II.

This is coolbert:

UCAV II.

Conclusion.

From an anonymous source a response to the original comment by Roger - - the UCAV. The Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle blog entry from way back when.

The gist of the response is that:

1. Combat aviators of MANNED aircraft are NO better at differentiating between a SAM site and a CNN crew on the ground. UCAV are not able to tell this difference with any precision, BUT then neither the pilot of a manned combat aircraft.

2. Costs of the UCAV as with other combat aircraft [manned or unmanned it does not matter] are not associated primarily with crew compartments and any and all systems associated with same. Rather the expensive costs of modern combat aircraft are a result of other factors.

From the anonymous source:

"Roger has one good point and one not-so-good one."

"tactical air pilots are no more likely to be able to distinguish between a SAM site and a CNN site for a variety of reasons. First, they have little time to observe, process and make decisions. Second, human processing abilities are not what they are cracked up to be . . . A psychological/physiological study . . . discovered that this premise was mostly based on anecdotes and hubris, and that humans were decidedly awful at making decisions based on partial information."

"The second point on which he is correct, is that uninhabited aircraft have the potential for greater range and payload once all the subsystems in them that provide a crew environment are eliminated. However, it is not all that stuff that drives the cost of aircraft like the F-22 and F-35. The principle cost drivers are the structure, materials, power and avionic requirements that enable those aircraft to be hyper-lethal and highly survivable."

Comment:

* The modern combat aviator, if flying at low altitude [Nape of the earth], is traveling so fast, inputs from a variety of sources cannot be processed quick enough to make sound decisions! ESPECIALLY in a situation where the enemy is in a deliberate manner trying to deceive you! Decoys in particular pose a real problem, the ability to make split-second decisions - - drop the bomb or not drop the bomb - - becoming very difficult. Reaction time under the tremendous pressure as faced by the combat pilot are beyond what is reasonable and then some!

UCAV as the are now "not good to go" for the ground support mission, the dropping of bombs or the firing of missiles at targets. BUT to a certain extent neither are combat aircraft piloted by HUMANS!

coolbert.