http://www.youtube.com/embed/WC8U5_4lo2c?feature=player_embedded<http://www.youtube.com/embed/WC8U5_4lo2c?feature=player_embedded Video of a humongous drone taking off and landing from the George Bush carrier. The next question is why would we need a huge fleet of carriers that cost billions each? Why not smaller ships carrying drones?
That seems absolutely insane to me. Iâm nervous that all these drones will make people less casual about going to war since their own lives wonât be on the line though.
Interesting point I hadn't really considered before. Didn't our POTUS recently brag he was getting good at killing people? On second thought, can we get any more casual about war than we already are?
Thats exactly what they want A soldier is expensive, costs 1.3 to 2.1 mm to keep in Afghanistan per year. Plus add in all the PTSD & rehabilitation or widows pension costs etc. http://rt.com/usa/us-afghanistan-pentagon-troops-budget-721/ Drones are now being programed for more autonomous missions. The computing power is easily there. they don't need a 1:1 supervisor for each drone do they? They can be popped of a factory assembly line like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=libw1rV2McY&list=WL5A4310D2812A3FD1 Just look up the range of new dones for every environment they are developing & when there is no war they can be kept in storage at very little cost. Why keep paying the huge cost for keeping soldiers based over seas its f... scary the speed at which this is moving
Yes, and a human piloted aircraft is less likely to be hacked. I don't think it would take a huge effort from a major power to develop the ability to electronically thwart a drone attack via impulse devices.
Do you mean something that can deliver a highly localized nuclear explosion and (EMP) electro-magnetic pulse blast in close vicinity of a drone?
At the end of the day, the economics will be impossible to ignore, even for the Pentagon. We better hope the economics become impossible to ignore, else we could be in a world of hurt when China or someone else suddenly shows up with squadrons of drones and perhaps robotic soldiers. I have little faith in the Pentagon to think ahead. The brass love their toys, eg big fleets of big ships, big squadrons of big, expensive airplanes, etc, all of which require large numbers of troops to operate , etc, which means large numbers of officers are needed to manage it all. They are little different from bank CEOs, where we know the only thing that correlates to bank size is CEO compensation. And like big banks, big ships and planes are very vulnerable, only there will not be a Fed to bail them out. Our surface Navy could be decimated in the first day or two of a real war with someone with modern weapons. We were always wondering where the Japanese fleet was in WW II. The Chinese know precisely where every single one of our ships is, in real time. The world's militaries have a long and undistinguished history of being ready to fight the last war. We may actually have a big advantage with drones, because we may not be raising a lot of athletic, fit kids who are good with firearms, but by golly, we have a lot of them who can sit all day and play video games.