UCAV's and UAV's for the US Airforce, Navy, and Marines

Why not replace every military aircraft with UCAV's and UAV's now? Cancel all other aircraft, make connection from pilot to aircraft unhackable (make as good as possible). Create hmd for ground pilot's helmet to see 360 degree veiw around aircraft (many cameras) and can dogfight better than manned planes. Aircraft can be better than manned version and cheaper, maybe all stealth force. Imagine unmanned tankers and bombers and fighters and AWACS and transporters and jstars etc. I think that sounds better than present. But never any AI, always man in loop. Maybe preprogram bombers and have pilots on ground fly fighters for for protection, maybe even preprogrammed support craft(AWACS and transporters and tankers and jstars etc.) but always able to over ride and pilot from ground. Maybe even unmanned helos (transport and attack and medavac with medics on-board). While aircraft on ground anyone can talk to pilot(s), make communications much more secure. Also posted on f-16.net (more aircraft oriented forum).

Why not?

Because no matter how good your code is, the enemy can break it.

Against third-worlders, UAV seems great. But give me enough money, and permission to engage, and I will find a way to disable or even turn your UAV's against you.

There is nothing as adaptable, determined, or capable as a meat pilot.

Originally posted by Chakotay
Because no matter how good your code is, the enemy can break it.

We have many things now that have yet to be hacked. Enough constant work and money could stop it from being hacked.

There is nothing as adaptable, determined, or capable as a meat pilot.

Still have meat pilot, just not in aircraft.

You can't hack the stick between my legs, son.

Anything else is vulnerable.

The technology overall is not there yet and still needs substantial investment. The future lies in automated UAV's mostly, less bandwidth issues, no pilot training, and they can still complete the mission if the datalink is jammed. We're slowing getting there though...

[edit on 19/8/2009 by C0bzz]

reply to post by C0bzz


While what you say is essentially true it rings of selling short the current state of the art autonomous vehicles.

In April of 2001 a Global Hawk flew autonomously from Edwards Air Force Base on the west coast of the U.S. to RAAF Base Edinburgh, South Australia.

Since that time technology in autonomous air vehicles has made exponential gains. Sensor fusion and synthetic vision has enabled uav's to have very accurate and hard to fool target recognition alogorythms, more accurate in fact than human naked eye observation since the sensors are able to see in multiple bandwidths.

This ability coupled with trajectory/flight path planning internally system confirmed by a multi-tiered gps and landscape recognition subsystem can and has made for some uas's to be "hardened" in a potentially hazardous air piracy hacking environment. (read jammed control signal)

While media accounts are common of Reaper pilots sitting in Nevada controlling attacks and surveillance on flights over Iraq or Afghanistan - there are almost certainly autonomous attack drones in use at some black op level even as i write this.

In answer to the original poster however, it will be a long time before UAV's take over the air battlespace exclusively - perhaps never.
Man is far too adventurous to allow himself to be left out of the loop in air combat... just ask any fighter jock - and what do they become? the Generals who make decisions...




[edit on 8-22-2009 by intelgurl]

Originally posted by Chakotay
Why not?

Because no matter how good your code is, the enemy can break it.

All modern aircraft are fly-by-wire - they are already controlled by computers, with the pilot simply giving the systems 'hints' on what he wants to do. His actions no longer control the movement of the control surfaces, he merely tells the computers that he wants to go 'in that direction, at that speed' and the computers do what is necessary to both keep the aircraft within its flight envelope and go where the pilot wants to go.

The F-22, F-35 and modern refits of the F/A-18, F-15 and F-16 are all designed to share information, and to make tactical decisions in combat based on that shared information.

Most of you are aware of this, so why am I mentioning this? Because its not the software that needs to be defeated - you aren't going to have some elite hacker sat on the ground with a transmitter, hacking the F-22 as it flys overhead. Why not? Because hacking is hard.

But thats not even the hardest part. The hardest part is cracking the encryption on the data signals between aircraft - that is the hardest part. You can use the most insecure internal designs you want, so long as the data is validated before it ever hits those systems, and if the data signals do not come with the correct encryption authentication, then the data just gets dumped.

Now, encryption is not impossible to crack, but it is improbable. We are talking about days, weeks, months or even years to crack one transmission. Which makes breaking that one transmission absolutely pointless, because aircraft missions do not last days, weeks, months or years.

And that act of breaking one transmission does not help you on the next one, or the one after that, or even the one after that. Each and every transmission can be uniquely encrypted, each with its own key, making your life as a hacker immensly hard.

The only time encryption hacking works is when you find a flaw in the algorythm you are using - flaws are indeed found from time to time, but even then they very very very rarely break the algorythm in such a way as to make it possible to read messages in real time, usually they simply reduce the 'search time' from thousands of years to hundreds of years.

All of this applies to UCAVs and UAVs - the data communication between base and ship is encrypted.

Add to that fact that the data communcation methods will include frequency hopping (to avoid jamming) et al, and the vehicle control is pretty much guaranteed.

But that is not why we will not see UCAVs and UAVs replacing manned aircraft for a long time yet.

The real reason is simple. Latency.

The further the pilot is away from the controls, the longer it takes for him to firstly get the information necessary to make a decision, and secondly for the result of that decision to be carried out by the vehicle.

Every step in the process adds latency - this is ok while the actions to be performed are measured in multiple seconds, such as telling a current UAV to 'go here, circle like this, then go here', or even controlling current UAVs in direct link.

But this becomes a whole different ballgame when you expect that pilot to get into a dogfight, where you expect subsecond reaction and response times. The latency in the transmission may get that UAV killed, as they may be half a second or less behind the actual events in the air.

Once the latency issue is resolved, then replacing manned aircraft becomes a possibility. Until then...