Manned USAF planes doomed?

[Dr Mordrid]

USAF Unmanned Aircraft System Flight Plan....

Says the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen;

“There are those that see [the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter] as the last manned fighter. I’m one that’s inclined to believe that.”

Not only that but between the "if's" and "maybes" in the report are all the signs of a nearly total replacement of fighters, bombers (including nuclear), recon, supply, tankers etc. etc. with robots.

There are even a couple of outfits working on robotic med-evac VTOL aircraft that can carry 2-4 patients and manage their care in transit. They're looking at both military and civilian versions.

[MultimediaMan]

We'll see. There are definitely pros and cons here.

Pro is obvious: no flight crew, which means you can build the plane or bomber without needing to worry about human limitations.

The Con is this: do you really WANT a Nuclear Capable RPV? Quite a few people think Ballistic Missiles are guided from the ground: not so, they are tasked from their silos, but once launched, they are internally guided and controlled... once launched, they are going to go to their targets - Period. The only other punctuation there MIGHT be to any of that is whether or not the Missile has a Range Safety Package installed (it has long been rumored that some operational Ballistic Missiles have had a RSP system installed - some going so far to say that the entire first flight launch of BMs are so equipped to allow for an "Oopsie").

Imagine of someone were to hack a Nuclear-Capable Bomber or a fully-loaded strike fighter and decided to re-task the platform? What if the Command and Control of the RPV facility were to be compromised? There are a LOT of cloak and dagger what-ifs here.

It harkens back to an Old Soviet PVO-Air Defense style thinking; and SAC has had enough of those War Plans declassified to make me think that it still isn't a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket like that - A couple of the declassified SAC plans I read from the early 1960s which played on that tactical thinking could have turned most Russian military targets into slag in the space of 8-12 minutes from the time the go-order was issued: no Ballistic missiles would have been used for the first strike - just B52s, B47s, ground-launched Matadors and Submarine/Surface ship-launched Regulus Cruise Missiles, and there was something like a 95% of first strike success based on the amount of "overkill" applied to the targets. This is something to consider fully before commiting to such a huge change in doctrine.

I think there could be a fully autonomous Strategic Platform in a couple of years - assuming that a B2 hasn't already been fitted with an RPV suite on the sly. Now, as far as Air Superiority goes, there is definitely going to be a move in that direction. CAS, SAR and Medevac are not certain: too much potential for LOS (Loss of Signal) events when you are doing the low level turning and burning common to the type. Air Transport however, could very well be fully-automated with minimal risks.

The Reaper is good enough for Theater CAS right now, it just doesn't have a heavy enough payload or low altitude capability for truly Tactical CAS (like the A10s). I don't see Wild Weasel missions being practical for RPVs unless you are comfortable devoting a squadron to the endeavor as part of a grand Kamikaze Attack on the SAM C3 structure.

Still, this is going to be very interesting to see.