Message posted by Magoo on February 22, 2001 at 08:30:39 EST:
Andre I agree, hence my comment "at least one more" manned generation. You may remember (or have studied) that it was thought that manned aircraft were soon to be a thing of the past in the late 1950's. The British cancelled promising aircraft like the TSR-2 and the P1154, Canada cancelled the awesome Arrow, and the US cancelled the F-108 and the B-70 to name just a few. Fighters such as the early model F-4s were built with no gun, because it was thought that air-to-air missiles were going to be the only way to kill other aircraft, and that the era of the dogfight was over. Vietnam soon put paid to many of those ideas, and external gun pods soon began appearing on early F-4s, the F-4E with an internal gun was hastily developed, and true gun-armed dogfighters such as the F-16 and F-15 were born! I agree that it makes sense (humanely AND politically) not to send men into harms way when an unmanned aircraft could do the job with (say) 90% effectiveness. Missions such as SEAD and Tac Recon will ultimately be performed by UAV/UCAVs, with perhaps some manned aircraft in attendance to provide 'man on the spot' input to the UAV controller. However, stand off strike and air-to-air combat (in my opinion) will continue to be performed by manned aircraft for at least the next 30 years (i.e 2+ generations - JSF/F-22 AND their follow-on). For the foreseeable future, it will remain politically unacceptable to NOT have a human at the end of the chain of command, to make that final decision based on moral or tactical grounds. It's certainly an interesting debate, one I'm sure the people at the DoD, and the contractors involved in UAV/UCAV development have had many times. Magoo
In Reply to: Re: New Northrup UCAV posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on February 22, 2001 at 05:47:27 EST:
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