X-47B drone makes first carrier landing.

[zack1234]

All fun and games until it becomes self aware.

What AH players who fly Rook?

[Rich46yo]

We've been pushing buttons for a long, long time. Nobody is arguing war is ethical or glamorizing war. Its all the same whether a human is pushing a button from a plane or from a desk. Theres no difference other then one doesnt put one of ours into harms way. Anyone thinks different I can name some recruiters to march their kid down to to get them some down home trigger time.

Its not as if we havnt had our fingers on the Doomsday button for many decades already. And whats the difference between a Tomahawk missile flying a preprogrammed course to blow up a bunch of terr's or a drone doing so? Again, other then not putting your neighbors kid into harms way? We've already saddled these guys in Afghanistan with moronic rules of engagement while dehumanizing their own lives and safety with this GD PC style of warfare. Do remember these clowns attacked us!

Dont worry. None of us will live to see AI drones out hunting on their own. None of our kids or grandkids will either. The F35 itself will be operational until about 2070.

But the fact that our enemies are using their United Nations mongrels to try and brain screw Americans into thinking drones are evil tells me that drones are working and they fear them. And thats bloody good news. We, and our allies, are not peoples who go to war lightly and our enemies SHOULD fear us. Our problem is we as a society dont share the danger anymore. If all our kids had to serve, as they did in WW2, we wouldnt give a horses rear end about foreign propaganda about drones. So you see with the voluntary service  most already have

removed ourselves from actual war and death

Im betting the ones most afraid of the system the X47 will end up as are the Chinese. This will be a big game changer in the pacific, a 1st day attack by stealth drones and TLACMs that allows our CVBGs to stay far out to sea out of harms way and will allow us to soften their AD network before sending pilots in.

The more we remove ourselves from actual war and death, the more inhuman we become. It's why wars are lasting for 10 or more years now. War should be just that...war, Painful, deadly, horrible. War should be a last resort, not pre-emptive, or for imagined threats. The problem with "pure" science, ambition, whatever, is that it lacks ethics or the true consideration of the consequences, possibly off in the future. To do something just because you can, may be "cool", but often it leads to calamity. I we have this technology, now, others will, and who's gonna be the first to push the button?

[GScholz]

Ethics and war... I've always wondered why some people (well... many in fact) believe that there is such a thing as an ethical way to wage war. I'm also bewildered by the presumably obvious hypocrisy, and the blindness to it, that some people express when condemning one group of combatants as cowards for using mines and IEDs, while at the same time praising another group of combatants who's sitting half-a-world away launching missile attacks from drones while having their morning coffee. There is no such thing as ethics in war; people who think so invariably lose to those who do not.

[Zacherof]

kinda eerie isn't it? 

(Image removed from quote.)

love that movie

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Of course the drones are also a liability, imagine what a hacker could do to an armed drone...

[Skuzzy]

<snip>
Dont worry. None of us will live to see AI drones out hunting on their own. None of our kids or grandkids will either. The F35 itself will be operational until about 2070.
<snip>

As I understand it, the next phase of testing includes autonomous search and destroy missions.

[eagl]

No matter what you think it looks like, it is an impressive feat of engineering.

First autonomous aircraft landing, on an aircraft carrier.  Impressive.

Not really first autonomous carrier landing...  F-18s have had a fully automated system for years now, and it works pretty well.  But of course the Navy pilots don't like using it because it doesn't let them maintain currency.  Plus the current navy system emits so it gives away the position and launch/recovery timing of the fleet.  Some F-18s were used initially as surrogates to test the new X47 landing system, if I read the AW&ST articles correctly.  The new system doesn't use radar or other high power emissions from the carrier, rather it uses low power GPS enhancing transmissions and better carrier movement prediction algorithms.

[eagl]

As I understand it, the next phase of testing includes autonomous search and destroy missions.

It's probably in development, but they've been working on automatic target recognition for decades now.  Lots of the work so far has been for weapons seekers to enhance terminal guidance but those applications will likely expand.  The problem of course is the final decision process for prioritizing targets and discriminating between targets, fakers, and civilians still needs human input.

We got a briefing recently, and a topic of discussion was what the next USAF drones will look like.  The answer that came back to us was that we are still developing the requirements.  That pretty much tells me that if the predator/reaper designs were generation 1, anything being built now is simply gen 1.5 and the basic requirements for gen 2 haven't even been written yet.  I'm not holding my breath.

[mthrockmor]

This is the future. How it integrates with humans overall, as in manned birds is up in the air. Progressives speak of replacing humans altogether. History speaks of a mix. Clearly these drones have first strike written all over them. Loiter missions should also be a big part. Can they be refueled in midair?

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/07/10/navy-northrop-score-historic-first-with-successful-x-47b-drone-carrier-landing/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl9%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D342270

boo

[gyrene81]

This is the future. How it integrates with humans overall, as in manned birds is up in the air. Progressives speak of replacing humans altogether. History speaks of a mix. Clearly these drones have first strike written all over them. Loiter missions should also be a big part. Can they be refueled in midair?

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/07/10/navy-northrop-score-historic-first-with-successful-x-47b-drone-carrier-landing/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl9%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D342270

boo

you need more coffee...       

[eagl]

The X47 concept was envisioned to prove that a stealthy shaped unmanned aircraft can be fully capable of the gamut of naval strike missions, including inflight refueling.  But instead of using the X47 itself for refueling, they put the software into an F-18 and used it to prove the concept.  I think it worked, but haven't seen any reporting on it in months.

The X47 is supposedly a total kludge, not really stealthy at all.  Over-built and can't really be converted to any sort of operational test aircraft.  It was just used to prove concepts including the ability of a stealthy shape to remain controllable in the turbulent wake of a carrier during autonomous landings.  That problem has killed off several tailless naval designs in the past but it looks like they figured it out this time.  I think it's probably a good thing overall for the navy, but I'm sure both the Navy and Marines will be able to reasonably prove their continuing requirement for manned aircraft.  The dynamic environment they work in sometimes makes a simple peek out the window worth more than any other consideration.

[Skuzzy]

eagl, I guess I should have said "pilotless" autonomous landing.  I thought it would have been implied.  If that has been done in an F18, I was unaware of it.

Seems they have been meeting their schedules.  The autonomous search and destroy test missions are supposed to happen late this year.  What I have gathered is they are going to conduct these first tests at sea with the mission object to find and destroy a ship and return to base without any human intervention.

I agree they are simply testing all the various concepts in this "mule".  It is interesting to watch it evolve.

[eagl]

eagl, I guess I should have said "pilotless" autonomous landing.  I thought it would have been implied.  If that has been done in an F18, I was unaware of it.

Seems they have been meeting their schedules.  The autonomous search and destroy test missions are supposed to happen late this year.  What I have gathered is they are going to conduct these first tests at sea with the mission object to find and destroy a ship and return to base without any human intervention.

I agree they are simply testing all the various concepts in this "mule".  It is interesting to watch it evolve.

You're right skuzzy, I don't think they've done this with an unmanned aircraft and I don't think the F-18 has been automated to fly unmanned (yet).  Still, it's only a few years until fly by wire generation aircraft begin to see widespread use as unmanned (or optionally manned) aerial target drones, and when that happens I think we'll see a whole bunch of projects leap ahead due to the resource availability.  I think they're converting the first F-16s to target drones already, which could make a lot of interesting experiments and research possible.

[Skuzzy]

F16 as a target drone could be fun.

[Wiley]

autonomous search and destroy test missions

2 questions-  Where are they going to be conducted, and what is the maximum range of one of those drones?

I don't have a problem with using drones in combat, I'm really not comfortable with them not having a human element of control.  It's a little too much like a booby trap or landmine.

Wiley.