The World as Free-Fire Zone
June 17, 2013 7:13 AM   Subscribe

Foster was a longtime model-airplane enthusiast, and one day he realized that his hobby could make for a new kind of weapon. His idea: take an unmanned, remote-controlled airplane, strap a camera to its belly, and fly it over enemy targets to snap pictures or shoot film; if possible, load it with a bomb and destroy the targets, too.
An accessible but detailed overview of the history and current implementations of military drones.
More and more, the drones are used for “signature strikes.” The officer or official approving a strike might not know who its targets are, but their behavior—as picked up by drone cameras, satellites, cell-phone intercepts, spies on the ground, or other “sources and methods” of intelligence agencies—strongly suggests that they’re active members of some organization whose leaders would be the natural targets of a drone strike. For instance, they might be moving in and out of a building that’s a known terrorist hangout, or they might be training at a known terrorist facility. In other words, their behavior bears the “signature” of a legitimate target.
...
There seems to be no formal list of the criteria that a suspected terrorist must meet before he can be targeted by a drone. Nor is there some quantitative technique for measuring an official’s degree of confidence in this signature. Those who pick the targets have a database of correlations between certain types of behavior and the presence of terrorist leaders. But it’s a judgment call, and there’s usually no way—or desire—to check afterward whether the judgment was good or bad. The practice evolved gradually from tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. It made sense in a war zone. An officer sees a sniper on a rooftop, or someone planting an IED along a road, or armed men moving in and out of a known bomb factory. Almost certainly, they’re enemy combatants in a war. He doesn’t need to know their names; nor does it much matter whether they’re killed by a bullet, a mortar, a smart bomb from a helicopter, or a Hellfire missile from a drone.

But outside a war zone, such questions do matter. Attacks in those areas amount to assassinations—which, besides the political backlash they may inspire locally, are prohibited by U.S. and international law.
posted by latkes (46 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Iteresting how he also went back in time and told Nicola Tesla about his idea who apparently immediately started blabbing about it.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 7:20 AM on June 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


I always have a terrible time choosing a pull quote. Now I've apparently chosen the one that will cause a derail about who invented the drone. I guess whoever invented the flying toy helicopter should also get some credit.
posted by latkes at 7:22 AM on June 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Oh interesting. I've been reading "signature strikes" as those directed from a higher authority in the Drone force, whose signature appears on the order.

This sense of signature -- if it walks like a duck, shoot it -- geesh.
posted by notyou at 7:25 AM on June 17, 2013


The problem is that the article (and the post's lead sentence) starts out by saying this guy invented the drone. If you want to talk about real, deployable drones used in combat, Israel was deploying them before this John Stuart Foster Jr. came up with the idea.
posted by eye of newt at 7:26 AM on June 17, 2013


Yeah, sorry about that, but it's sort of the premise of the article. Drones have been around and in use by the military since at least WWI when they tried to make flying bombs. Foster is apparently taking credit for a concept that had been around since the 1890's and a practice that had been in place since the world wars, so I wouldn't blame your pull-quote for that.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 7:28 AM on June 17, 2013


Every weapon started out as a toy
posted by Renoroc at 7:28 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yeah, the attempt to turn this into a human interest or "blame this other guy" story is pretty blatant. Regardless of who invented it, the US is using it and Obama is the Command in Chief. That's where the buck stops.
posted by DU at 7:34 AM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


And so a weapon designed at the height of the Cold War to impede a Soviet armor assault on the plains of Europe evolved into a device for killing bands of stateless terrorists—or even an individual terrorist—in the craggy mountains of South Asia.

This is where I think the rubber hits the road. These weapons were concieved to hit the Soviets if they invaded Western Europe. They are like any other weapon that strikes from a distance, like the bow and arrow.

The argument against drones as it has played out has focused on the fact that the weapon can be used without exposing the operator. But if that is true, then the tank, the airplane, artillery and a thrown spear all do the same thing.

Indeed, an F-15E can deliver the same exact weapon, yet no one is furious about the F-15E. If the drone had not been available, F-15's would have dones as drones did--taken off from Pakistani airbases with the approval of the Pakistani government. However, casualties would have been far higher amongst innocents due to the short loiter time and high altitude of the jets.

The argument that's largely ignored is the legal one--that for one reason or another, Al Qaeda does not qualify as a non-uniformed, non-state actor under Geneva and therefore military force cannot be used against them.

My guess is that is for purely emotional reasons relating to the idea that US soldiers should be exposed to enemy fire on some sort of fairness basis, the opponents of drone warfare have focused on the remote nature of the weapon.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:34 AM on June 17, 2013 [6 favorites]


Sigh.

It seems to me there are different ways to mark the arrival of the "modern" drone. Sorry if the first paragraph of the article (and my choice of pull quote) triggers people's accuracy alarms, but from my place which is admittedly a lay person, not a military technology historian, this seems like one simple way to frame the entry of modern drones into common military use.

In any case, this is hardly the premise of the article, just an accessible way in.

The article's focus is to break down in lay-language some of the legal and moral problems with how drones are being used by Obama and the US military today. It also raises the issues addressed in Ironmouth's comment above: why do drones, "bother" us in a way that manned aircraft do not? Also, the legal questions about non-state actors and also the very bow and arrow analogy used above.

Feel free to comment about what else stinks in the article now, I'll butt out.
posted by latkes at 7:43 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I thought the main argument with drone warfare has been its secrecy and lack of accountability and resulting potential for executive department abuse.

The Foster hobbyist story is more or less an anecdote deployed as a hook. In the context of the US' development of the weapon, Foster certainly appears to have been an important figure, whether or not one agrees that he "invented" the concept.
posted by notyou at 7:45 AM on June 17, 2013


By the fall of 2009, toward the end of Barack Obama’s first year as president, the Air Force was training more drone-joystick pilots than airplane-cockpit pilots.

Given the visibly large number of pilots and planes operated by the U.S. Air Force, this gives me some idea of how large the drone fleet actually is.

Attacks in those areas amount to assassinations—which, besides the political backlash they may inspire locally, are prohibited by U.S. and international law.

Prohibited by U.S. and international law. How quaint.

Obama is the Command in Chief.

The Drone Ranger you mean. Hi-yo, Silver, away.
posted by three blind mice at 7:48 AM on June 17, 2013


I remember some conjecture a few years ago that the last manned fighter pilot (as in: person in the cockpit) for the US had already been born. Anyone know if that's still the train of thought out there?
posted by jquinby at 7:49 AM on June 17, 2013


Drones have been around and in use by the military since at least WWI when they tried to make flying bombs.

President John F. Kennedy's older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, was killed by a drone in WWII. They filled B-17s and B-24s with explosives and tried to fly them onto target via remote control. However, the controls were too rough for conventional takeoffs, so there would be two pilots on board to get the planes off the ground and up to 2000 feet, where they'd pull the safety pins on the explosives and parachute out. Kennedy was killed after arming the explosives, but before they reached the place where they were to bail out (over an RAF base), the plane exploded, killing them and almost wrecking the Mosquito flying with them that was going to control the drone.

USAAC and USAF aircraft that were drones had the letter Q in the identifier. The B-17 in this configuration was the BQ-7, and the B-24 was the BQ-8.

It was, and is, very common for obsolete aircraft and missiles to be converted to target drones.
posted by eriko at 8:01 AM on June 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Question.

What's to prevent some guy from making like 500 of these, each loaded with half a stick of dynamite, and aiming them at the Goldman Sachs building? If they have long enough range he could start them flying in the boonies and it would be nigh undetectable (also provided he built them with over the counter parts and filed off any/all serial numbers). Is there any real defense against these?
posted by ishrinkmajeans at 8:07 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Ironmouth: "My guess is that is for purely emotional reasons relating to the idea that US soldiers should be exposed to enemy fire on some sort of fairness basis, the opponents of drone warfare have focused on the remote nature of the weapon."

That's a line of reasoning that has come up before here on mefi, but I think it's only partially true. That US soldiers are not exposed to enemy fire has been internalized by proponents of drone strikes too, and it has informed decision-making quite clearly. If soldiers (or pilots) had to go in to make these daily attacks, there would be a lot fewer of them and they would have a much more significant political impact both in the US and in Pakistan. At the moment, they're acting with additional impunity because there is no human cost or danger to the US military.

As it is, media in the US only really noticed the political effect of US strikes in Pakistan after the attack on Osama. Not just because it was Bin Laden and Abottabad, but because there were real humans on the ground - people can identify with that as a sovereignty violation at a level that it seems they cannot with drone strikes.
posted by vanar sena at 8:10 AM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Modern drones make blowing people up so easy, cheap, risk-free, and just plain cool!! that we will never ever stop doing it. And right now they're probably the most efficient terrorist-creating machines going - every Suspected Militant (i.e., male adult) we explode has sons, brothers, or friends who are not going to have warm feelings about the United States. But I guess I'm just being emotional.
posted by theodolite at 8:14 AM on June 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


The article doesn't say Foster invented the drone. It says:
The drone as we know it today was the brainchild of John Stuart Foster Jr.
[emphasis added]. "As we know it today" is a clear acknowledgement there were antecedents, but at some critical juncture there emerged the "modern drone". There is a documented chain of events from Foster to the Predator.
posted by stbalbach at 8:19 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


theodolite: "Modern drones make blowing people up so easy, cheap, risk-free, and just plain cool!! that we will never ever stop doing it. "

Yeah, I guess that's what I was saying. What proponents (or people calling opponents "emotional") are suggesting is that the calculus looks like, "we need to make X strikes, and we can do that with drones, or with humans." What is actually happening is, "We have drones, so we can make 2-3X strikes." At this point, it's easy to believe that this will never, ever stop.
posted by vanar sena at 8:19 AM on June 17, 2013


What's to prevent some guy from making like 500 of these, each loaded with half a stick of dynamite, and aiming them at the Goldman Sachs building?

I've been wondering about this scenario, too. It's difficult for me to believe that the powers-that-be haven't considered it, as well. I suspect there are probably some heretofore unknown defenses in-place to deal with this threat. Maybe areas designated as potential targets have facilities to jam all consumer radio frequencies when needed? it would be an interesting experiment to try (sans dynamite) just to see what happens.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:22 AM on June 17, 2013


What's to prevent some guy from making like 500 of these, each loaded with half a stick of dynamite, and aiming them at the Goldman Sachs building?

The sorts of armed drones the article is talking about are full-size aircraft running millions of bucks a pop. So there's that.

If you mean what's to stop some guy from strapping half a stick of dynamite each to 500 model airplanes rigged for GPS control, then the answer is not much. If anything, probably just economics -- I have to think it would make more sense, from the point of view of a terrorist group, insurgent group, etc, to spend that money on car bombs instead.

If they have long enough range he could start them flying in the boonies and it would be nigh undetectable

The longer range you want the bigger and more expensive they'll be. And they won't be undetectable without work -- even if they don't show up on radar terribly easily, they'll be noisy as hell and people are like to notice 500 model airplanes flying over them.

For that matter, someone pulling over a u-haul and setting up 500 model airplanes is liable to attract some attention just for that.

Is there any real defense against these?

At the level of "model airplanes with half a stick of dynamite," I'd wager all you need to do is have hunters shoot them with shotguns once you've noticed them. They won't be doing anything evasive.

If you were defending a specific place against a credible threat -- so if you weren't Goldman Sachs but were, say, a military outpost somewhere -- you'd want to give the lookouts you probably already have some shotguns, or slap together an old-style AA emplacement.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:34 AM on June 17, 2013


I thought the main argument with drone warfare has been its secrecy and lack of accountability and resulting potential for executive department abuse.

This is what I don't understand. Secret use of a weapon has nothing to do with what that weapon is. You could secretly order an F-15E or Seal Team Six to do the same thing a drone does. And last time I checked, militaries kept their airstrikes and targets secret as a matter of policy. When Grant secretly crossed the Mississippi beneath Vicksburg, no one complained that Lincoln was a war criminal because the decision was secret.

The key question in these analyses is can we take action? The vehicle used in the attack isn't really relevant to the argument itself.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:38 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


"As we know it today" is a clear acknowledgement there were antecedents, but at some critical juncture there emerged the "modern drone".

So even though Tesla in the 1890's talked about a future where unmanned, remote control aircraft would drop bombs on the enemy ending forever warfare as we (still unfortunately) know it, it was this guy 70+ years later that came up with the concept while out playing with his hobby that also happened to use Tesla technology? And of course that the United States military as well as the military of several other nations, since the beginning of military flight have tried to think of ways to minimize friendly casualties by developing remote control aircraft for observation and payload delivery, this guy was the one who really invented it all? I'm sure Foster has been very instrumental in getting us from concept to reality, but I think the antecedents and the early concepts were just as instrumental and that is what appears to be left off and that's all I meant by my derail.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 8:40 AM on June 17, 2013


If soldiers (or pilots) had to go in to make these daily attacks, there would be a lot fewer of them and they would have a much more significant political impact both in the US and in Pakistan. At the moment, they're acting with additional impunity because there is no human cost or danger to the US military.

Good luck with the "we should make our military more able to be killed and make it harder to be hit argument." Explains why approval of drone strikes is 65%-28% for, as of March 25, 2013.

Human beings have been trying to lessen risk to soldiers and kill the enemy at a distance since somebody first threw a stone at someone else. The idea that we should make it easier to have soldiers killed so that we are less effective militarily makes no sense.

What people are opposed to, I think is war itself. That's a very logical and consistent position to take.

But to argue that drones should be stopped but not JDAMS, cruise missiles, or even bows and arrows while still saying war is necessary makes no sense to me. If a weapon helps, then it will be used in war. Where weapons have been successfully limited is where they turn out to provide limited military value. Poison gas provides a great example. Every major power had them in WWII and nobody used them because they are hard to use, invite similar use by the enemy, and do not provide the results needed to provide victory. Similar arguments against nuclear weapons have kept them from being used today.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:50 AM on June 17, 2013


this guy was the one who really invented it all

*sigh*
posted by stbalbach at 8:55 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I remember some conjecture a few years ago that the last manned fighter pilot (as in: person in the cockpit) for the US had already been born. Anyone know if that's still the train of thought out there?

Not sure about the actual pilot, but I've heard a lot about the F-35 being the last piloted fighter to be designed. For economic reasons, it seems unlikely that human pilots will really be phased out that quickly; the development time and costs for these platforms are enormous.

Might be a textbook example of the sunk cost fallacy, but I can imagine generals and military planners feeling the need to justify program costs for decades to come.
posted by graphnerd at 8:56 AM on June 17, 2013


What's to prevent some guy from making like 500 of these, each loaded with half a stick of dynamite, and aiming them at the Goldman Sachs building?

Well, the Palestinians and Hezbollah have scored huge success with crude katyusha rockets having a small small explosive charge. A little more accuracy, a non-ballistic trajectory, and a bigger explosive would be a total game changer. You wouldn't even need 100 of them if you could target schools and shopping centres with accuracy.
posted by three blind mice at 8:58 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


ROU_Xenophobe

Good point about the range and the expense. I guess I don't think people would really shoot them down or even investigate them if they thought it was a publicity stunt or some sort of commercial thing. It's one of those one trick ponies that will work the first time and then we'll have TSA people making model airplanes illegal.

I could even see someone releasing a swarm in Queens and having them fly over the financial district and drop bombs at random. That would prevent the grouping that would result in someone noticing them and would probably be a better terror tactic.

Honestly it's crazy the stuff we're going to see in 5-10 years. I see all plastic weapons, plastic guns with gunpounder that shoots plastic bullets, being made in 3D printers. It could even have a fuse to a small amount of gunpowder so 2 minutes after you fire the gun it melts getting rid of the fingerprints. Walk up to a guy, "BANG!", walk away, gun melts, no evidence. And the gun would be like $10 or so.
posted by ishrinkmajeans at 8:59 AM on June 17, 2013


vanar sena : suggesting is that the calculus looks like, "we need to make X strikes, and we can do that with drones, or with humans." What is actually happening is, "We have drones, so we can make 2-3X strikes."

That's what's actually happening? As in, you can personally verify this? Two-three times as many strikes as what? We don't have anything to compare this to. Any critic of American foreign policy worth his salt should be able to point to hundreds of military actions they disagree with before drones took place.

Drones are a tool. The legitimate questions are:

-what is an enemy combatant?
-when, where and how can an American be one?

The focus on drones qua drones is an "OMG killer robots!" emotional appeal. You might as well argue to go back to swords, because guns make it too easy to order military action.
posted by spaltavian at 9:08 AM on June 17, 2013


I thought drones were invented under the Emperor Yuan
posted by iotic at 9:33 AM on June 17, 2013


Never mind who invented drones. The point is that the military and the President are acting as judge, jury and executioner against civilians in countries that the US is not at war with. What's going to stop some future President from using drones to kill alleged narco-terrorists in Mexico, or California?

Everyone knows Da Vinci invented the drone.
posted by monotreme at 9:47 AM on June 17, 2013


spaltavian: "That's what's actually happening? As in, you can personally verify this?"

Sure, I mean I'm RIGHT HERE asking a drone. If they were ground troops instead of humans, would the Pakistani government been able to look the other way? Would the troops been able to work as deep into Pakistani territory as the drones have? Drones have added capability and reduced cost and risk, and the US government and military have happily exercised it. I am in agreement with you, it's the policy that's the issue here, not the drones.

I suppose I could believe the US government's assertions that this isn't the case, but their track record of truth-telling and decision-making re: these recent wars has not been stellar.
posted by vanar sena at 9:48 AM on June 17, 2013


The point is that the military and the President are acting as judge, jury and executioner against civilians in countries that the US is not at war with. What's going to stop some future President from using drones to kill alleged narco-terrorists in Mexico, or California?

Some authority with enough to clout to stop it ? After all, America hasn't used drones in France since early 1940s...
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:50 AM on June 17, 2013


this guy was the one who really invented it all

*sigh*


Yes, I'm clearly too stupid for you to actually bother. Thanks for at least acknowleging me by publicly disdaning me, that's certainly more than my ilk deserve. Of course, "as we know it today" is so different than how they would have invisioned it in say 1943 or 1960 when Gary Powers went down in his U2. "His idea" was so totally modern and different from "take an unmanned, remote-controlled airplane, strap a camera to its belly, and fly it over enemy targets to snap pictures or shoot film; if possible, load it with a bomb and destroy the targets, too." I'm not sure where I would have gotten that impression from reading this article.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:00 AM on June 17, 2013


Every weapon started out as a toy

Let us never forget the sad lessons of lawn darts.
posted by mecran01 at 11:12 AM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


If I were to say who first invented the drone, I'd say it was the guy who first made a useable drone, not DaVinci or Tesla, who stated the obvious, but who did not put the pieces together to make them work.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:39 AM on June 17, 2013


What's to prevent some guy from making like 500 of these, each loaded with half a stick of dynamite, and aiming them at the Goldman Sachs building?

Speaking as an RC hobbyist and now drone hobbyist I have some insight on this. To put up a huge swarm like that with hobbyist level equipment would be really, really difficult. The first problem is payload, you would need a good sized airframe to carry a half stick of dynamite.

The other problem is range. Hobby grade stuff is designed for flight times of 5-15 minutes. There are long range FPV pilots who get a lot more by packing their models with big batteries, but the tradeoff is the more battery you carry the less payload you can carry.

To do a swarm it would all have to be completely automated. There's no way you could manually fly multiple drones. The hobbyist stuff in the sub $1000 range is all GPS guided - i.e. Ardupilot Mega. It's pretty accurate - mine is accurate down to a couple of feet or so. But once the authorities realize what's going on the clock is ticking for them to disable GPS in one of several ways.

Last year, NORAD was staging exercises where RC aircraft were launched from Quantico, just south of DC, and were intercepted. So we have to assume there's some kind of defense in place already. Anything electric powered would be slow enough to be easily intercepted by a helicopter. Or even a few officers on rooftops with shotguns loaded with birdshot. Turbines are available but expensive, I think the top speed is somewhere in the 200-250mph range for those. An F-16 could catch that.

I'm going to say that a swarm of 500 small drones as terrorist weapon is pretty unfeasable. Less than 10 is more plausible but the damage inflicted would be fairly light.
posted by smoothvirus at 12:00 PM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


I can't get to page 2 in firefox. I think it's some kind of glitch.
posted by LogicalDash at 12:35 PM on June 17, 2013


What's to prevent some guy from making like 500 of these, each loaded with half a stick of dynamite, and aiming them at the Goldman Sachs building?

Stanislaw Lem wrote a short story about something like this. He envisioned warfare on a microscopic scale, which would be almost imperceptible to conventional forces until they attacked. He described a weapon composed of thousands of tiny flying autonomous insectoids made of plutonium, which would converge on the target point at high speed and detonate.

Of course as smoothvirus says, this sort of weapon has to be autonomous. And there are plenty of Arudino projects for controlling autonomous flying vehicles. It doesn't matter if they're slow and easily shot down, if you lob enough of them at a target. And they don't even need to be self-powered. I know some guys working on a balloon lifted rocket glider with a Arudino guidance system. I have been telling them to abandon this project because they don't realize they're building a cruise missile. They intend to loft the glider to a high altitude by balloon, then fire a rocket upwards so the glider attains maximum altitude, then it is GPS guided back to the recovery location. But they could just as easily drop the glider, GPS guides it to the target, and then the rocket fires at the last moment. Nobody could shoot it down if it was rocket powered as it approaches the target. You could send up a balloon that drops dozens of these rockets, and they would drop down from above, so it would be almost impossible to defend against. The payload could be relatively heavy since you don't need powered flight to the target, you just have to drop it from a big weather balloon and it glides in. It's a poor man's JDAM. I figure you could build one for maybe $500, or probably $250 in quantity (explosives not included).
But these fools aren't listening to me, and all their project is publicly documented, the airframe was built on a 3d printer, and the Arudino systems are open source. They are creating the first Open Source cruise missile. Hey who cares about 3D printed guns when you can build your own 3D printed missile?
posted by charlie don't surf at 1:21 PM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


A short list of overlooked but significant events in drone history: posted by jjwiseman at 1:25 PM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]




Human beings have been trying to lessen risk to soldiers and kill the enemy at a distance since somebody first threw a stone at someone else. The idea that we should make it easier to have soldiers killed so that we are less effective militarily makes no sense.

What people are opposed to, I think is war itself. That's a very logical and consistent position to take.


If the drone strikes are creating more extremists than they kill, which some evidence suggests, than all you are doing is protecting your soldiers at the cost of putting your civilians at greater risk. It's not a very good bargain.

The argument isn't that we should put soldiers at risk to be fair. It's more that not putting them at risk makes making the decision to bomb easier. Missions that were previously not taken because of the risk are now taken. Sometimes those are good missions, sometimes they are bad. The bad should have been stopped in the past and they should be stopped now, but now they are more likely to happen since one of the things that prevented them from going ahead is gone.

That is a consequence of the technology, but not an inevitable one.

Human history is full of people using advantageous new weapons regardless of long term costs, but it's also full of aggressive warlike morons who overextended themselves militarily and ruined themselves in the process. The United States and the USSR almost obliterated themselves with their new toys. Biological warfare getting out of hand down the line has the same sort of potential, even if you just start out with smart germs that carefully target one person. The further developments down the line from there are terrifying. Genocide can become far easier the less human and more automated it becomes.

So, there are some practical concerns with how the program is being run and some more philosophical long term reasons to really be scared of remote controlled or automated warfare in general. It is a complex issue and to reduce the position of the opposition to a strawman, "They are just being emotional about this." is of course ridiculously oversimplified and unfair.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:15 PM on June 18, 2013






Brookings: Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington's Weapon of Choice
Air & Space Power Journal: The Swarm, the Cloud, and the Importance of Getting There First (PDF)
This article advocates an aviation future of manned–remotely piloted synergy in which automation amplifies rather than replaces the role of aviators in aviation. In this vision, aviators are judged solely by their effects on the battlefield. Amidst this new standard of decentralized execution is the “swarm,” a flock of highly sophisticated unmanned combat aerial vehicles that serve as “loyal wingmen” for manned strike aircraft. Here, every striker is a formation flexibly primed to concentrate effects at the most decisive times and locations. This future also includes the “cloud,” a mass of persistent remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) that provide vertical dominance through wholesale fire support from airspace cleared by the swarm. Fusion amplifies the human capacity for judgment by delegating routine tasks to automation and “demanding” versatile effects in response to fog and friction rather than “commanding” inputs.
both via CIMSEC - NextWar: What’s at Stake in the Remote Aviation Culture Debate
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:29 PM on July 11, 2013


Drones and the dilemma
posted by homunculus at 12:43 PM on July 12, 2013




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