Hacking:

UAVs:

Enjoy…

As an air superiority platform, this is a bad thing.

Human pilots can’t be jammed.

UAVs are useful against low tech opponents only.

GPS satellites are up around 12,000 miles.I would be very surprised if the Chinese have a weapon that can strike in that something in that orbit

The Chinese have already committed tests striking an aging weather satellite at an orbit of 500+ miles, and that was in 2007. If their range capacity has not expanded since, then China would not be a very warlike nation bent on destroying those evil Americans right after we pay back the trillion dollars we owe them.

GPS satellites are up around 12,000 miles. I would be very surprised if the Chinese have a weapon that can strike something in that orbit. Of course it’s doable from a technical perspective – I just don’t think they’ve made the investment.

Geostationary comms satellites, I would suggest, are not practical for drone control, given the round trip latency.

It depends on what you’re trying to do. I agree they’re not practical if you want to start dog fighting. But if you’re giving orders like “go to these coordinates” and “attack this building/vehicle” a quarter second round trip isn’t going to matter much.

Another consideration is over the last few years the USAF has been putting communications links into just about everything that flies, so as long as you have an aerostat, spy plane, tanker, or AWACS in the area you can control your drones even without satellites. Though of course that means the control is coming from someone in theater.

However as sophisticated as modern aircraft are, are they hundreds or thousands of times as complex as yesterdays aircraft?.

It isn’t just the design of the aircraft. Materials used are cutting edge and need researched and paid for. The computer systems need developed and built. The sheer mechanics for controlling the aircraft need developed from the ground up. We’re at the point now that they aircraft can kill the pilot during manuvers from G forces alone.

Beyond that, there’s the ever-changing demands fromt he DoD. I read somewhere that the product specification proposals sent out to the contractors for the F-22 was something like three feet thick of 8 1/2×11 pages. That’s just what the DoD wanted at the time and specificed very specific needs/dimentions/requirements/etc. And then there are the late changes due to new technologies, battlefield mission changes, doctrine changes, funding changes, and so on. We’ve come a real long way from the time that the Army Air Corps simply put out a one page list of requirements for a new airplane and then selected the best one.

Something else to consider is the survival of the company. There are very few companies in the US that can do the work of Lockheed Martin, McDonell Douglas, and Boeing. They might spend a billion dollars developing the contract just to lose it in the end. The free marketeer in me might say, “good, then go out of business,” but the realist in me says. “but there isn’t another company able to do what they do and we need airplanes for defense.” So the contracts get inflated so the company can survive losing the contract for F-X but will still be around to make F-Y a few years later.

As far as the drones taking over, it will never happen. The Fighter Mafia is far too powerful in the Pentagon, too many members of Congress are ex-fighter jocks, and too many jobs will be lost. It is too much of an ingrained culture in the services to just accept obsolecense.

China has demonstrated satellite destruction and it is foolhardy to presume they do not intend to have US GPS in their sights.

Geostationary comms satellites, I would suggest, are not practical for drone control, given the round trip latency.

Wait until the first blue-on-blue incident involving a drone flown from Nellis AFB dropping ordnance on friendlies.

Why? Because manned aircraft don’t do blue-on-blues?

Probably not. There are a few countries that have demonstrated the ability to take down satellites in a 200 mile orbit, but communication satellites are more than a hundred times higher up. I don’t think anyone has the capability to take out satellites in geostationary orbit without going nuclear.

As far as GPS goes, the military has put a lot of thought into making sure things still work when it goes down. JDAMs have back-up inertial guidance – not quite as accurate, but it gets the job done. Cruise missiles have terrain contour matching systems. The trend is toward laser guidance for precision munitions anyway, since they’re a little more accurate than GPS (albeit more expensive) and you can use them against moving targets.

You sound like an old cavalry man explaining why these new fangled “tanks” would never replace the horse