Tyagi, former Deputy Chief of the Air Staff feels, “There is a clear shift in favour of unmanned systems. “It is a long range strategic vision,” he added. The US Army’s dramatic shift to a nearly allunmanned flight over the next three decades is embedded in the UAS roadmap unveiled by General Peter Chiarelli, Vice Chief of Army Staff on April 15, 2010, at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual convention in Fort Worth, Texas. The new long-range strike bomber is likely to be optionally manned. The DoD is working on hypersonic air devices to strike a target within one hour from detection at Mach 6 to 20. Dassault Aviation of France is developing Neuron, a supersonic unmanned stealth bomber. Dual use aircraft will greatly reduce development costs and increase operational flexibility. The US has already modified F-4s and F-16s to fly them remotely, to enter dangerous areas. “Autonomous air refuelling would leave them on station for months and allow them all roles from combat to cargo handling,” says analyst Dan Parsons. Unmanned aircraft are already taking-off and landing by themselves including on a moving aircraft carrier (X-47B). The USA nearly lost a friend in Pakistan when a large number of civilians were killed in one such attack. Collateral damage from UAV attacks continues to be high at 32 per cent. 450 crore), the Global Hawk, a Class III HALE UAV, is costlier than many a modern fighter. UAVs also require significant manning for their operations. The United States Air Force UAV accident rate at 0.9 per 10,000 hours is much worse than 0.2 per 10,000 hours for manned aircraft. A fighter aircraft has the positioning and speed advantages and better chance of an air-to-air kill. The UAV was shot down and the same could be seen through the video downlink. The first recorded air-to-air engagement was in December 2002, between an Iraqi MiG-25 and an American Predator UCAV armed with Stinger missile. Even with a disruptive technology like UAVs, one doesn’t let go tried and tested systems, analysts feel. The same is true for all major air forces of the world. Of the 25 most expensive programmes of the US Department of Defense (DoD), none is unmanned. As the focus of the US military shifts to the Pacific, the Air Force could be confronted by enemy fighters in unfriendly skies, a mission UAVs aren’t yet designed to handle. All UAV data is still analysed and interpreted by a human.Īs it stands, till date, unmanned aircraft have flown only in uncontested airspace. Delays in commanded guidance could be crucial if not lethal. Threat of cyber attack today is more potent than Al-Qaeda. The data links can be denied or deceived. Today’s technology is insufficient to allow unmanned aircraft to make independent, complex judgements in an unknown environment and so must be linked to human judgement, albeit on the ground. “UAVs have a great future, increasing popularity and usefulness, but no machine can replicate the human gift of discovery and situational awareness,” says Air Marshal Vinod Patney, former Vice Chief of Air Staff, Indian Air Force (IAF). An unmanned aircraft has no aircrew to limit its range and endurance or has the risk of loss of life or the fear of being captured. A manned aircraft can be used in contested environments where command-and-control is limited, autonomy is required, or policy restrictions exist. Purely manned or purely unmanned aircraft possess various inherent advantages and limitations. Bulk of the fund allocations for major aircraft projects around the world are for manned aircraft. Budget crunch and turf wars with old-guard pilots could impede UAV progress. But it isn’t going.” UAVs have become a potent segment of the US Air Force (USAF) inventory and an indispensable weapon in the global war on terror. That doesn’t mean advocates of today’s manned aircraft won’t try to put it back in the bottle. “There’s not going to be a way of putting this genie back in the bottle,” said Vice Admiral (Retd) Joseph W. However, unmanned systems and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies were on their list of items that may see funding boosts rather than cuts. In a press conference on the Obama Administration’s new defence strategy in 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other officials put off all questions about the costly F-35 aircraft until the fiscal 2013 budget proposals. In 2010, for the first time ever, the Pentagon bought more unmanned aircraft than manned. This has been more so due to defence budget cuts and competing demands for scares resources. The proliferation and success of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have caused some to question the relevance of manned aircraft systems in future. With unmanned technologies starting to prove themselves, the debate between manned and unmanned has heated up.
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