Thursday, May 13, 2004
The wave of the future?
Given the higher and higher adversion, in society, to smaller and smaller human losses during war, I expect unmanned combat vehicle development to accelerate over the next 20-30 years. Of course, all sorts of Borg/Berserker/Terminator scenarios come to mind especially as processing power/AI/Software advances in parallel. 2050 could be an interesting year.
From sci.military.moderated --
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) "have at last come of age," according to an enthusiastic new assessment from the Defense Science Board (DSB).
"There is no longer any question of the technical viability or operational utility of UAVs," the authors wrote. Yet "the overall pace of introduction has been slow. Indeed, as of early summer 2003, only 175 UAVs of Pioneer/Shadow-size or larger were operational throughout the DoD...."
Some UAV performance goals remain elusive.
"High altitude, long endurance, deep penetration, stealthy ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] is the most difficult of all possible UAV missions," the DSB observed.
"This 'holy grail' has been pursued in many different, classified programs over the past 25 years and, for one reason or another, each program has been terminated."
See "Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles," February 2004 (80 pages, 850 KB PDF file):
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/uav.pdf
Given the higher and higher adversion, in society, to smaller and smaller human losses during war, I expect unmanned combat vehicle development to accelerate over the next 20-30 years. Of course, all sorts of Borg/Berserker/Terminator scenarios come to mind especially as processing power/AI/Software advances in parallel. 2050 could be an interesting year.
From sci.military.moderated --
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) "have at last come of age," according to an enthusiastic new assessment from the Defense Science Board (DSB).
"There is no longer any question of the technical viability or operational utility of UAVs," the authors wrote. Yet "the overall pace of introduction has been slow. Indeed, as of early summer 2003, only 175 UAVs of Pioneer/Shadow-size or larger were operational throughout the DoD...."
Some UAV performance goals remain elusive.
"High altitude, long endurance, deep penetration, stealthy ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] is the most difficult of all possible UAV missions," the DSB observed.
"This 'holy grail' has been pursued in many different, classified programs over the past 25 years and, for one reason or another, each program has been terminated."
See "Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles," February 2004 (80 pages, 850 KB PDF file):
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/uav.pdf
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