A very interesting discussion from the gun martial arts thread.
The military has been ramping up its use of UVs for the last few years. We are now at the point that the Congress is funding UAVs as quickly as we can build them and field them. They want more...in fact, recently the Secretary of Defense stated that we are "halfway there" in terms of how many UAVs we need.
UAVs have a great many benefits - primarily, they take the people out of harm's way. They can do more things, for example, an F-16 is capable of doing at least 13 g's, if not more....but a pilot can only withstand 9. The feed from a UAV can be infrared, thermal, plain visual, you name it...a human would need goggles, which are still very limiting for field of vision and mobility. A UAV can give just as much range of vision and is just as controllable as a manned vehicle, if not more.
But there are a lot of disadvantages as well. As we add more UAVs we add more bureaucracy. Our senior leaders want more information and more control and with UVs, they can get it. They can see what a pilot sees and talk directly to them; micromanagement to the extreme. The use of UAVs is taking away the decisions of the warfighter and placing them at the hands of leaders who are too far from the battlefield to make an informed decision sometimes.
UVs are very expensive to develop, some are expensive to maintain, some are expensive to even operate. Although some are a cost savings over manned vehicles, the Total Life Cycle costs can get very high when development and technology is added.
So what is their place? Where is the balance? As CN said in the other thread: "I think it will be awhile before we see the large-scale use of UAVs in the military." How far are we? Are we going in the right direction.
This is a new weapons platform with no precedent and we are rushing to try to keep up with what the technology can provide....
The military has been ramping up its use of UVs for the last few years. We are now at the point that the Congress is funding UAVs as quickly as we can build them and field them. They want more...in fact, recently the Secretary of Defense stated that we are "halfway there" in terms of how many UAVs we need.
UAVs have a great many benefits - primarily, they take the people out of harm's way. They can do more things, for example, an F-16 is capable of doing at least 13 g's, if not more....but a pilot can only withstand 9. The feed from a UAV can be infrared, thermal, plain visual, you name it...a human would need goggles, which are still very limiting for field of vision and mobility. A UAV can give just as much range of vision and is just as controllable as a manned vehicle, if not more.
But there are a lot of disadvantages as well. As we add more UAVs we add more bureaucracy. Our senior leaders want more information and more control and with UVs, they can get it. They can see what a pilot sees and talk directly to them; micromanagement to the extreme. The use of UAVs is taking away the decisions of the warfighter and placing them at the hands of leaders who are too far from the battlefield to make an informed decision sometimes.
UVs are very expensive to develop, some are expensive to maintain, some are expensive to even operate. Although some are a cost savings over manned vehicles, the Total Life Cycle costs can get very high when development and technology is added.
So what is their place? Where is the balance? As CN said in the other thread: "I think it will be awhile before we see the large-scale use of UAVs in the military." How far are we? Are we going in the right direction.
This is a new weapons platform with no precedent and we are rushing to try to keep up with what the technology can provide....