No one appears to have publicly connected the dots yet but drones are
the future of all aircraft except for hobby horses. If a pilot is
along at all it will be as an emergency responder and even that may
become nonviable. Our cars will move us and our aircraft will also
end up with the pilots somewhere else. We just have to get used to
it.
Jet fighters are about to become drones just to eliminate the
constraints of a human pilot. Can you imagine confronting a flight
of fighters able to do thirty G turns and to convert closing speed to
Mach 5 while locked in weapons independently decide to launch and
engage. We can build combat spaces which no human can survive but
can guide remotely.
This is obviously the first legitimate challenge to US naval hegemony
and encourages a rethinking. Fortunately we are already going
there. We are now deploying laser guns quite able to knock anything
coming in at line of sight. I suspect that the technology will also
soon achieve rapid fire.
With drones, it is no trick to use small carriers again and many of
them who have launch capacity. Thus we could get our drones to adopt
harrier configurations to allow recovery or we may even may need to
develop recovery vessels that hang back. The sheer potential volume
of drones that become possible encourage cheap platforms.
China's Drone
Swarms Rise to Challenge US Power
Jeremy Hsu
March 13 201
China is building one
of the world's largest drone fleets aimed at expanding its military
reach in the Pacific and swarming U.S. Navy carriers in the unlikely
event of a war, according to a new report.
The Chinese military —
known as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) — envisions its drone
swarms scouting out battlefields, guiding missile strikes and
overwhelming opponents through sheer numbers. China's
military-industrial complex has created a wide array of homegrown
drones to accomplish those goals over the past decade, according to
the report released by the Project 2049 Institute on March
11.
"The PLA now
fields one of the world's most expansive UAV [unmanned aerial
vehicle] fleets," said Ian Easton and L.C. Russell Hsiao,
researchers at the Project 2049 Institute and authors of the new
report.
U.S. military forces
still operate the largest drone fleet, with at least 679 drones in
2012, according to data from the International Institute for
Strategic Studies reported by the Guardian. But the new Project
2049 Institute report estimates that China had 280 military drones as
of mid-2011 — a number that has likely grown since then.
Chinese military
drones have already entered the frontlines of China's territorial
disputes with neighboring countries such as Japan by flying maritime
patrols over disputed areas. The Project 2049 Institute report warned
that China could be tempted to use drones more aggressively without
risking human lives, or even consider "plausibly deniable"
drone attacks blamed upon mechanical failure or cyberhackers.
Chinese strategists
have also discussed using swarms of drones to overwhelm the U.S.
Navy's carrier groups in the unlikely possibility of a shooting war.
The drones could act as decoys, use electronic warfare to jam
communications and radar, guide missile strikes on carriers, fire
missiles at U.S. Navy ships or dive into ships like kamikaze robots.
All the main branches
of the Chinese military field operational drone units. The new report
identifies those military units along with major academic, industry
and military organizations involved in building Chinese drones.
The report goes on to
examine the state of Chinese drone technology. China is developing
drones such as the rumored "Dark Sword" stealth drone that
have low radar profiles to escape radar detection. It also wants to
build "space" drones that could loiter at heights of 31
miles (50 kilometers) above the Earth to provide constant
surveillance. (Scientists typically consider 62 miles (100 km) to
mark the boundary for the edge of space.)
Chinese engineers have
even begun working on drones that have the software brains to fly in
formation, do aerial refueling and takeoff and land
autonomously — capabilities that the U.S. military has also
developed or begun testing for its own drones.
The risk of war
between the U.S. and China remains low. But the report cautions that
the U.S. military could prepare for the worst-case scenario by
hardening its existing air bases in Asia and developing energy
weapons (such as lasers) for better air and missile defense.
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