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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (36043)	7/24/2009 10:14:59 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I agree with your post, but I'm not sure you understood mine. I wasn't comparing high end and low end drones, I was comparing drones to human piloted aircraft. Drones can be more maneuverable (no human G limits to worry about), and if they are shot down you don't lose the pilot. And the lower end ones (which may not be more maneuverable), would be less expensive than piloted planes, perhaps even high end highly maneuverable drones would be cheaper (you would have to put a cockpit, ejection seat etc. in the plane, and redundancy could be slightly lower, even if some would still be required on any relatively high end aircraft). But a remote pilot has less situational awareness than a local/in-plane pilot, and also there is the risk of jamming the control. As for fully automated drones, were not quite there yet even for recon flights, and I think we are a long way away for combat flights. A first step would be to have a number of automated recon flights, with a lower number of pilots to take over should a potential combat situation arise, and with enough local intelligence to "get out of dodge" if the control circuit gets jammed. Even when actually fully automated robotic combat vehicles are possible there will be some reluctance to let a robot "pull the trigger".