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WILL AIR FORCES STILL NEED PILOTS IN THE FUTURE?

The recent spurt of similar events is no chance occurrence. At the end of September Boeing's Phantom Works celebrated the roll-out of the X-45A (UCAV), an unmanned fighter aircraft. Around the same time Dassault Aviation disclosed that not only was it working on an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) but that a proof-of-concept model had already been flown. A few weeks earlier Saab had lifted the veil of secrecy which had hitherto enshrouded its Sharc project, a stealth drone equipped with internal weapons and sensors. And the German Armed Forces are currently working with the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) to test how UAVs would fit into the existing air traffic control environment. UAVs are relatively light and cheap, and their operation does not require many years of training as a pilot.

There is virtually no doubt in the minds of the military requirements planners that UAVs will play an ever more important role in conflicts of the future. They will replace manned aircraft on dangerous missions over territory where there is a high concentration of anti-aircraft weapons. The Kosovo conflict was the latest example of the successful deployment of drones, even if initially there were teething problems that needed to be overcome.

If in the past reconnaissance was the classic mission on which drones were deployed, the next generation of unmanned aircraft will have a radically altered mission capability. The name Boeing uses internally for the X-45A, Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV), is indicative of the new direction: intelligent UAVs are set to become more active in the near future and be deployed as multimission-capable weapon platforms.

Technologies available today are making such an operational scenario feasible. Enemy air defences can be suppressed without exposing one's own forces to danger or they can be completely taken out to clear the way for manned aircraft. UAVs can be sent in against heavily defended strategic targets without endangering one's own aircrew. So the theory goes.

Despite the euphoria over the prospect of unmanned air vehicles, there are still some unanswered questions which appear to rule out doing away with manned aircraft altogether in a conflict. A battle is a highly complex situation which unfolds extremely dynamically. First of all there is the question of the reliability and capability of the UAV sensors. Can they actually distinguish between military and civilian targets as reliably as a human? How susceptible are they to malfunction or jamming, and would it be feasible for them to operate alongside manned aircraft?

These are not the only questions which must be satisfactorily resolved before one can realistically think of deploying "intelligent", armed unmanned air vehicles. A glance back to the past can help focus one's gaze towards the future. Before the Vietnam War, missiles were viewed, like today's UAVs, as the ultimate solution. But US Air Force pilots quickly discovered during aerial combat that dispensing with aircraft cannon was a mistake. Only after cannons were restored to their fighters again on top of the missiles were they able to successfully survive an air battle. In the case of UAVs it is not quite so simple. Should it transpire only in a conflict that manned aircraft are actually superior to unmanned, it will be too late to take action, as it takes years to train a pilot.

From page 4 of FLUG REVUE 12/2000