[anologwintermut]

Remote controlled drones have limitations due to electronic warfare/jamming (not to mention security, see the one the US lost in Iran). There's also an issue with lag.

Actually autonomous ones are as far as I know only good for static targets (effectively they are reusable cruise missiles).Close air support or deciding whether to engage an enemy airplane or not gets tricky.

[SEJeff]

As a former military member and trained pilot of both the Hunter and Shadow 200 TUAV UAVs for the US Army, I believe you're slightly misinformed.

There are different types of UAVs "drones" for a more buzzword-y term, for different uses. The bigger boys such as the Predator, Global Hawk, etc use satellite navigation. There is most definitely a "lag" of sorts for those types of UAVs. The Shadow and the Hunter however, are line of sight. It limits their range severely (I got one out to 166km from the control station), but they are just as dangerous, albeit smaller and with less endurance for extended missions. It doesn't matter, they are cheap and you can launch lots of them :)

I've got 480 combat flight hours from Operation Iraqi Freedom II, from 2003-2004. We CONSTANTLY were targeting moving things and never had any real issues with it. You just use the right drone for the mission at hand. The military has dozens of different types of drones, but only the bigger ones make the news on a regular basis. The Shadow is being phased out for those types of missions in favor of the MQ-1C Gray Eagle.

Now for air/air stuff, they call those UCAS (lookup the X45-B / X47-B), the tech is still fledgling enough to need another 5-10 years before it will ever become a reality. On that, there simply isn't good enough software... yet.

[alexeisadeski3]

The crux of the issue seems to be electronic warfare / jamming though, correct?

UAVs are great against opponents with limited electronic warfare capabilities, but wouldn't they lack credibility against China or Russia? They'd simply jam them and that'd be that, yes?

[SEJeff]

Honestly, jamming a system where all of the communication happens over frequency hopping radio is very very difficult. Normally speaking, the command links are encrypted (they were for sure with the Shadow) and the video links are unencrypted. Video is starting to be encrypted now that hardware crypto acceleration is more prevalent, but in general, it isn't as big of a problem as you'd think. Now UAVs that are on satellites have a lot less spectrum to use compared to LOS (like of sight) UAVs which can use the entire RF spectrum should they choose to.

Blocking the entire RF spectrum all at the same time is possible, but unbelievably difficult. When you're hopping a random # of MHZ every few dozen microseconds, it is super tricky.

[g8oz]

and the video links are unencrypted.

I guess that was what was behind the story of insurgents grabbing drone video feeds.

Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB126102247889095011

[poof131]

Thanks for the link. I was in Iraq when Task Force kicked down the door and found this stuff. Didn't realize it was declassified. An amazing example of incompetence and under estimating your enemy. Don't bother encrypting your video feeds?!? Oh, they'll never figure it out. I often joke that the U.S. Military is just slightly less incompetent than everyone else. Stuff like this makes me laugh at conspiracy theorists who postulate that the U.S. Government was responsible for 9/11. We can't even have the default setting for secret video feeds in a war zone be encrypted, but we can organize a massive conspiracy. Spend a day in an organization where you're hoping the decisions of your superiors don't get you killed and you quickly realize the omnipotent puppet master is no where to be found.

[hga]

"the video links are unencrypted"

As I understand it, that's so you can show them to anyone quickly; if encrypted, various security issues are invoked.

It was considered to be an acceptable trade off because the greater part of their usefulness is so ephemeral. On the other hand, an adversary who routinely monitors them could figure out a lot of things about our general methods.

[SEJeff]

It was a bit of both actually. We had this thing called an RVT (Remote Video Terminal) which was essentially a badass hardened laptop encased in steel running a lightly modified Redhat Linux 9 that attached to a small directional antenna. You could send 1 UAV operator who was trained in the RVT down to an Infantry TOC (Tactical Operations Center). He could hook it up and have it find the UAV in the sky and then show video to the infantry commander live. Yes it could be encrypted but the issue was that the bandwidth requirements of high res video + encryption were too great for the current hardware. Again, I believe that has been solved now that the tech has gotten much better, but I've not been in the military since 2005.

[cardiffspaceman]

It's interesting that this statement could be true and at the same time every satellite and cable box in the US and in so many other countries routinely receives encrypted video, and a big portion of those receive HD. The SD version of the ones in the US went on line in 1996.

[TheOtherHobbes]

How many cheap, disposable, locally-networked drone-bombs could you make for the price of an F-35? How many could you make by spending 1% of the $1Tr tag the F-35 program has cost?

Manned planes are the cavalry of the 21st century. They're glamorous and dashing, but also insanely high maintenance.

On-board AI will only get better. And you only need one kill from a disposable unit to take out a manually-flown enemy.

[lukifer]

> On-board AI will only get better.

The fact that this terrifies so few people terrifies me.

[rsync]

Careful ... that's a dangerous line of reasoning ...

Pretty soon, some one will ask "how many teachers could we hire" or "how many roads could we fix" for the price of "the war" ...

[touristtam]

or maybe how many families could get full health insurance ....

[alwaysdoit]

Aren't the missiles they fire subject to the same jamming problems?

[aeturnum]

Depends on the mechanism used by the missile to follow the target. My impression is that most missiles don't have guidance systems that require direct communication after launch,

[hga]

A whole bunch of missiles actually do, like the Sparrow and Standard.

The longer range ones really can use it to increase hit probability. Or so I've read is true for the Phoenix and AIM-120 missiles, classed as "fire and forget". and the newest Standard missile uses a AIM-120 derived head with a bigger antenna. And I'm sure still depends on mid-course corrections (for that matter, I've read the current models self-destruct if they doesn't get guidance fairly soon after launch).

[bobmoretti]

The Sparrow and Standard are "semi-active radar homing missiles", meaning that they have a radar seeker head and no emitter. They require an external illumination radar (from the aircraft or launch platform) to light up their target.

The AIM-120 uses a datalink to guide the missile close to the target, after which the missile's internal radar emitter goes active, and the missile locks onto the nearest target that it finds. This is because the radar on the missile is not nearly as powerful as the radar on the aircraft. So it's not truly a "fire and forget" missile, at least if a high probability of kill is desired. I believe the Phoenix is similar.

[hga]

Per what I've read elsewhere, and the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_missile), for long range attack the Phoenix has a rather unique flight profile, it climbs to 80,000 or so feet and cruises there, then dives down. Per the article, at 11 miles it activates its radar, and I'll bet given the distance and its bigger size, bigger antenna, it gets a bigger view than the AIM-120. Still, it has the capability of and uses course corrections from its plane.

[poof131]

I believe the Phoenix usually falls off its plane (the F-14) directly into the ocean. The Tomcat pilots then RTB to the bar and tell each other how great they are. The Phoenix is the Yugo to the AMMRAM's Ferrari. They are different generations of weapons.

[3327]

no most missiles have internal guidance systems. Inertial guidance, preset guidance etc.

[tormeh]

Nope. Missiles are usually fire-and-forget. They are autonomous. Can you ram their radar? Maybe, but many have visual and heat sensors as well. If you want to see something scary today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcx8Xke9It4

[branchan]

Fire-and-forget does not mean that you can just launch a missile and it will do its own thing. The missile still needs to be guided to the general vicinity of the target before it can do its job.

[tormeh]

It is in the general vicinity in air-to-air combat. I'm not talking about cruise missiles here.

[branchan]

Since most engagements are going to be at beyond visual range, they might as well be cruise missiles.

[robryk]

I wonder if someone's trying to make semi-autonomous drones controlled by optical links or very directional radio links.

[alexeisadeski3]

I believe these are already in late testing stages.