The Discerning Texan

All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Coming soon: Fear the Reaper

Sunday I pointed to a story indicating that new remote control drones with full war-making capabilities were heading into action in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new plane is called The Reaper, and the buzz continues to be positive:

Of course, the Predator -- our current drone -- already does this, though it carries a much smaller payload than does the Reaper. So what's all the excitement about? The excitement is that the Reaper program indicates that the Air Force finally "gets it": While the Predator seemed a one-shot, a fluke, the Reaper indicates a serious, long-term, future commitment to remotely piloted drones (RPDs)... which will change the very character of future warfare.

[...]

Modern fighter pilots have developed a technique for aerial combat maneuvers: They pull turns so tightly that they lose just enough blood to lose color vision and for vision to "tunnel down" to a small-radius circle, inside which they can still see the instrument panel; this condition is called "greyout." The pilot holds the Gs at that point; if he pulls harder, there is a good chance he will go from greyout to blackout... and that's probably lights out, as the plane can go ballistic and tumble before the pilot recovers consciousness.

But suppose pilots were able to take a sustained G-force of 20 Gs, 50 Gs, without having to experience greyout, let alone unconsciousness -- without any impairment of their flying ability at all. Imagine how maneuverable such aircraft would be -- and what an advantage over enemy pilots stuck in clunky Su-37s!

Well, that's exactly what the Reaper promises... by taking the pilot out of the aircraft entirely and letting him (or her) fly the plane from a few miles or thousands of miles away. (I believe that female pilots would be allowed to fly a Reaper in combat, as they would not themselves actually be in the combat zone.) Suppose the connection between pilot and RPD could not be jammed or interfered with, or at least that it was extremely hard to do. And suppose that, if something went wrong and the plane did lose contact with the remote pilot, it had enough AI capability either to finish the mission -- or at least turn around, come back to home base, and land itself.

Make no mistake: Planes like the Reaper, and perhaps future versions that don't even need to be remotely piloted, are the future of military aviation; and this innovation will swiftly spread to warships at sea and armor on the ground.