Okay, perhaps Skynet is not just around the corner. That will take some doing. But the infamous, artificially-intelligent mastermind behind the Terminators just got one step closer with the launch of the naval UCAV X-47B from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush on May 14, 2013.  Eventually, major weapon systems will be autonomous, uninhabited machines, whether aerial, naval, or ground combat units. Right now, the major advantage of a human-crewed machine is the brain of the person inside it. Human warriors are much more adaptable and creative than machines, and can react faster and more appropriately to changing situations.
The future will be different. In time, the technical challenges posed by genuine artificial intelligence will be overcome, and an uncrewed vehicle will be as capable, or perhaps more capable, than a crewed craft. A significant portion of a modern fighter aircraft’s weight, for example, is taken up by the systems needed to allow the pilot to fly the warplane and to keep the pilot alive. If you can remove the human from inside the cockpit, you won’t even need a cockpit anymore, and can save a huge amount of weight, such as the ejection seat, which can be devoted to extra ordnance or fuel. That will be an enormous advantage over a piloted machine, assuming that all else, such as outright combat capability, are equal.

Marc De Santis

Time’s always awesome Battleland has just run a fantastic article by Mark Thompson about the endlessly troubled F-35 program. As you will recall, the F-35 Lighting II is intended to be a stealthy, multirole fighter for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and U.S Marine Corps. It is this attempt to be all things to (almost) all services that has held back the program, and perhaps even prevented the F-35 from ever becoming a useful fighter airplane.

Among other interesting tidbits of information in the article: The design blueprints for the aircraft are changed ten times every day of the week; the plane has a short range and the carriers it flies from will thus have to move dangerously close to enemy territory before they launch them; the 133,000 jobs currently tied to the F-35 program exist in no fewer forty-five of America’s states; the F-35 may not even outperform earlier aircraft in the U.S. arsenal, such as the F-15, F-16, or F-18, even though those planes are several decades older and less expensive; the bill for the projected 2,457 F-35’s to be procured by the U.S. will cost an eye-popping $396 billion, which is double the initial assessment when the program began; the three models of the F-35 now under development will be slower and less maneuverable than originally planned; the stealthy characteristics of the F-35, which have increased its costs and development problems, may not be of much use in evading air defenses after all in a world with better sensors and better computers; and the lifetime cost of maintaining the fleet of F-35’s is estimated be an astonishing $1.5 trillion.

After reading this article, which should be required reading for all American policymakers, I wonder if the United States has just spent a fortune developing the most advanced dirigible airship or sail-powered ship-of-the-line when the weapon type itself itself fading rapidly into obsolescence.

Marc De Santis