
Fighter Pilots Face A Dismal Future - pg
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/20091102.aspx
======
mikedouglas
For those in the aerospace industry, are we seeing any movement towards
unmanned commercial airplanes? Are the impediments mostly technical or social?
Any rough timelines?

~~~
evgen
There are several problems for an unmanned commercial airplane. None of them
are insurmountable, but they add up to making it easy to see how this will
probably be the last sector that gets automated.

In a combat aircraft the advantages for getting rid of the pilot are numerous:
less weight & volume for the pilot and their associated support kit,
eliminating the pilot allows for plane geometries that are just not possible
with a human onboard, eliminating the pilot enables maneuvers that would turn
a pilot to jelly, etc. The pilot is probably the most expensive component of a
combat aircraft. Eliminating the pilot opens up new mission profiles (e.g. you
don't have to worry too much about the aircraft getting back to base.)

For a commercial aircraft the benefits of going unmanned are not as pronounced
and in some cases are non-existent. In addition to the lack of benefits, you
introduce additional costs related to liability (you can always blame pilot
error for a problem, but if there is no pilot then it is the airlines fault
for either not maintaining the system properly or for selecting the system in
the first place) and the fact that passengers are not going to trust this
system anytime soon.

The impediments are almost completely social, but the benefits are so slight
that it does not make much sense to bother aiming for completely unmanned.
What you are going to see (and in fact what has been happening for years now)
is the increasing automation of cockpit tasks. There will always be a human
being "at the controls" for the forseeable future, but what that actually
means and how much active control they are exercising is going to be slowly
changing.

~~~
joez
> eliminating the pilot enables maneuvers that would turn a pilot to jelly

I think this is a common misperception. I believe the operational risk is that
manuevers above 6g (varying on pilot and G-suit) reduces blood flow to the
brain (by forcing it into the legs) and cause a blackout. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-LOC> Blackouts, even for a few seconds, can be
devastating in the middle of a dogfight. I believe there is software in modern
fighter jets for just when pilots blackout but I can't find it on google right
now.

~~~
nostrademons
I didn't interpret evgen's comment as _literally_ turning a pilot to jelly.
(Hrmm, there's an interesting visual.) For practical purposes, a pilot that's
blacked out = jelly.

~~~
joez
Oh, I was responding in general. Most articles, the one (linked included) talk
about physical limitations about human pilots. I always thought it was
something more gory until I found out about blackouts a few years ago.

------
ajb
Sooner or later someone will make one cheap enough for police forces to buy.
We ought to put some thought into whether that is going to be a good thing in
the long run.

On the plus side:

    
    
      - faster response to 911 calls, since UAVs can avoid traffic, and if cheap enough, 

they could be salted about the place in a powered off state.

    
    
      - less need for police to risk their lives, and consequently 

better policing of gang-ridden areas.

On the minus side:

    
    
      - police become (even more) disconnected from the general

public, potentially developing a culture of impunity \- spread of surveillance

    
    
      - risk of abuse 
    
      - risk of (black hat) hacking

------
staunch
or Software Developers for UAVs Face An Exciting Future

It's fun to imagine that somewhere sometime a scrawny geek told a chiseled-jaw
pilot "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script"

~~~
mahmud
Not really. 200 software developers can write the code for every piece of
flying drone that the U.S. has. While pilots where employed almost 1:1 for
each piece of aircraft. Not to mention all the crew, flight controllers and
maintenance people; I don't think a drone undergoes the same rigorous safety
checks and standards as a manned plane. And as the military depends on more
drone, the cheaper they will become.

~~~
nir
One interesting development is that, with the growing number of UAVs, there
aren't enough pilots to fly them all, so new operators are no longer required
to have flying experience.

I heard an interview with "Wired for War"'s author who claimed that controls
for some of these systems are modeled after X-box/PlayStation controls, both
to capitalize on the ergonomics research done by console makers and to make it
easier for young recruits who are already used to operating them.

~~~
schleyfox
[http://bigthink.com/pwsinger/pw-singer-on-video-games-and-
wa...](http://bigthink.com/pwsinger/pw-singer-on-video-games-and-war)

indeed.

------
Dilpil
I would really like to see a competition where teams write opposing AIs for
UAVs and the UAVs duke it out.

~~~
ericd
There are actually already some UAV AI competitions that accept student teams,
though they're typically not competing in a dogfighting sense, more in a
"follow a path, search for an object like x and take a picture of it", etc.

~~~
zygy
That's interesting, would you mind pointing me to an example of such a
competition?

------
pibefision
Does anyone knows what kind of operating system UAVs have?

~~~
gaius
VxWorks: <http://www.electronicstalk.com/news/wia/wia277.html>

~~~
Dove
Typically. Occasionally you hear about one running Linux.

~~~
jordanb
They would never use Linux for Avionics, because it would be far too expensive
to get such a large and complex system certified for that kind of work.

Commercial planes use linux for non-critical functions like the in-flight
entertainment. I can't think of anything that would be on a fighter plane that
would be considered "non-critical" enough to not require a high-integrity
system though.

~~~
Dove
Vxworks is typical, but Linux does happen sometimes. Most often for ground
stations or auxiliary tools, sometimes for continuity between the development
and deployed environment, sometimes because it's just a research project and
certification isn't an issue.

I wouldn't claim it's common or that you'd be likely to see it in a deployed
environment, but it's not totally unheard of. Throw Linux & UAV in Google -
you'll see what I mean.

~~~
gaius
VxWorks isn't self hosting - the development may well be done on Linux.

I've definitely seen Linux (re?)booting on in-flight entertainment systems.

------
alexgartrell
I feel like my eventual children, or maybe my children's children, will see a
world where Americans don't go to was physically (or at least in large
numbers). This whole war thing is going to be really weighted against the
poorer countries who have to leave real people to die.

I see terrorist tactics (blowing up buildings, schools, etc.) as dominating
their efforts.

That said, I think that if I were to do a defense startup now, it'd be towards
detecting explosives, guns, etc. in large groups of people. If that technology
falls behind, war's about to get a whole lot uglier.

~~~
rms
I see my children's children living in a world without war.

Articles like this are interesting, but a little sickening in that they assume
that continually increasing defense spending is actually a good idea.

I'd work for Swoopo long before I would work for a defense startup.

~~~
pmorici
"I see my children's children living in a world without war."

Do you honestly believe that? I don't see how it's even possible unless we
sedate everyone in some kind of matrix like false utopian state. It's good to
dream though.

~~~
pg
Doesn't seem impossible. Within Western Europe that is close to a reality now,
after endless centuries of war.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Western Europe is a pretty small slice of the world, and they've had peace for
half a century, which on the scale of multiple centuries, is hardly cause to
celebrate the dawning of the age of aquarius. I'm sure this isn't the first
50-year period without war in Western Europe.

~~~
pg
_I'm sure this isn't the first 50-year period without war in Western Europe._

Name one.

~~~
apsec112
100-150 AD.

~~~
pg
The society Tacitus describes in the _Germania_ in 98 is one constantly at
war. See e.g. chapters 13 and 14:

<http://www.unrv.com/tacitus/tacitus-germania-3.php>

------
rdtsc
I am sure at the end of the 19th century horse drawn carriage makers faced a
dismal future as well. Some professions simply die down and become irrelevant.

Interestingly enough this already happened to the Airforce in the late 60s.
Airforce was running manned spy satellite missions, but because of the cost
and the danger involved, those missions were being canceled in favor of
unmanned satellite missions. So this is basically a repeat for Airforce.

------
gills
As someone who's worked with these systems, we faced quite a bit of this
pilot-as-luddite resistance at first. Unfortunately this article doesn't
really capture that many pilots are thankful that some flying computer will
get blown away by a popup SA-6, rather than them. Nor does it convey that,
while batches of UAVs can perform complicated tasks autonomously, they have
not yet achieved air dominance.

~~~
gaius
When I worked in the City we came across a lot of trader-as-luddite resistance
to new software too. Many feared being automated out of jobs. Those who got
with the programme tho' found they were able to single-handedly managed more
complex positions. I think we'll see the same sort of thing here, perhaps a
single pilot with the right technology (controlling multiple UAVs?) will be
able to carry out a mission that would previously have taken an entire
squadron. As the article says, the Pentagon can buy UAVs faster than it can
train fully-qualified fighter pilots.

------
kiba
I wonder how would you repell a state with sophisticated robot terminators war
machines.

Lawn-motor robots? Perhaps arduino-controlled pistol gun with belt feed
bullets?

I am worried about the future ability of a population's to resist a
technological tyranny.

~~~
rms
In the USA at least, the population has been completely unable to resist the
state since the Civil War.

~~~
philwelch
How do you figure that? The Civil War demonstrated nothing of the kind. It
only showed that if you split both the populace and the military establishment
in two, the side that has more railroads, factories, and soldiers is going to
win.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I think the fact that the National Guard consists of nothing but fewer,
lesser-trained soldiers with aging, outdated weapons/technology is a pretty
good indicator that the population would never be able to take on the full
might of the federal military branches.

~~~
krakensden
Why do you think it would work like that? The model would probably be the IRA
and gang warfare, not defined territory and set piece battles...

------
stanleydrew
This is a great article from the Atlantic profiling air force pilots and the
F-22: <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/air-force>.

------
marcofloriano
"t's not just that most of the those American air force generals began their
careers as fighter pilots. No, the reason is more practical. American air
superiority has largely been the result of superior pilots. The U.S. didn't
always have the best aircraft, but they always had the most talented and
resourceful pilots. And that's what gave the U.S. its edge. Will that
translate to software piloted fighters? Research to date seems to indicate it
will."

I really need some real non-american references to believe in such a thing.

~~~
gaius
In WW2 German fighters were technologically superior. In Korea Russian MiGs
were superior (the Sidewinder missile was developed specifically to combat
MiGs that could cruise at an altitude American fighters couldn't reach, swoop
down to attack, then return to safe altitude). Even in the Cold War, the
MiG-25 could out-run any American fighter.

Whether the quality of American pilots was decisive in any of those conflicts
is debatable, but the first part is certainly true. Many observers believe the
Eurofighter Typhoon to be the most advanced fighter in the world today.

------
nir
There was an excellent article in Esquire on UAVs, which focused on the daily
lives of UAV operators: <http://www.esquire.com/features/unmanned-
aircraft-1109-2>

Pretty amazing stuff. Most missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are flown via
satellite from the US, truly remote controlled war. (Submitted it to HN at the
time, but it only got 2 points ;))

------
asciilifeform
Remote-controlled war planes will probably return to being thought of as a
niche/specialist weapon after the first time they are launched against an
enemy with some actual engineering know-how. (Consider battery/solar-powered
Tesla coils lofted on weather balloons, by the hundreds. Hell, spoofing GPS
will probably do the trick.) Any signal can be jammed - especially a
critically real-time one.

~~~
ugh
Given good enough automation, critical real-time signals will become
unnecessary.

~~~
asciilifeform
Barring Strong AI, the ultimate command to fire will remain under human
(remote) control.

Navigation also requires a radio signal (unless you can shrink the mechanical
inertial guidance system used in submarines to a flyable size; this is not
only difficult but would likely raise the cost of the drones to heights
extraordinary even by US military standards.)

~~~
ghshephard
Navigation does not require a radio system. Terrain Contour Matching aided by
by Inertial Navigation Systems allows for fully autonomous navigation - They
had this working with 1970s era Technology (Try and recall what a computer was
like in the Mid 1970s and continue to be amazed at what engineers could get to
work in a missile)

It was a big deal in Canada in the Late 80s/Early 90s - the United States used
to test their (hopefully unarmed) cruise missiles over Canada - presumably we
had a terrain profile that was useful to them. Or maybe it was the long
stretches of unpopulated environment.

Now consider what your typical iPhone would be capable of doing. (Compass,
GPS, Terrain Maps, Camera, Radio Signal...)

------
peregrine
The article states that countries that want to attack the US are excited about
this. The article forgets to mention that the US is doing most of the research
into this field.

~~~
gaius
There's no data to support that. Who knows what China or India is working on?
Even Iran is in this game.

~~~
gloob
While you are correct that we don't have any actual information to show that
in this thread, it would seem plausible (if you compare the amount of money
that the U.S. spends on research and the air force vs. e.g. Iran) that
America's doing most of the heavy lifting here.

------
cesare
Posted a related link a couple of weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=898214>

------
davi
This is the beginning of a long-term trend, from a physically present combat
force to an army of remote teleoperators.

~~~
radu_floricica
Nope. Fighter planes are a special case because they're both significantly
cheaper and with better performance without a pilot on board. I don't see
infantry replaced any time soon.

~~~
gaius
Writer Lewis Page points out that the Infantry are the only branch of the
military who can do something _other_ than blow stuff up from a distance.
Demand for that type of operation is only going to increase.

Meanwhile the UK govt is cutting Infantry battalions and investing 10s of
billions of GBP in Eurofighter and Nimrod. Because the Taliban's airforce and
_submarine fleet_ are obviously the biggest threats we face...

Note also that it's only the USAF who require trained pilots to operate
UAVs... Everyone else uses automated landing systems (etc) and regular troops
fly them. It's one of the featured jobs in the British Army's recruiting
campaign, there's a guy with a handset similar to an Xbox controller scouting
ahead of his unit as they patrol.

------
MikeCapone
Thanks for posting this, very interesting.

More stuff like this on HN please.

------
joeycfan
Also there is no way a program would have pulled off that 'land in the hudson
river' thing that guy did a while back.

Everyone would have died on a computer plane.

------
joeycfan
I think the Korean War will turn out to have been the golden age of the
fighter pilot.

