The outfit looks like something from Hollywood. It's interesting -- SciFi movies have been taking cues from stuff like nanotechnology & virtual technology for a while. Video games, too, have been putting the player in the position of a soldier of some sort with similiar armor and sensory capability.

I wonder if now that the tech has developed to the place where working prototypes can be made, the design of the prototypes is being influenced by Hollywood, the gamers etc.

Look for the left to start arguing in the near future we don't need to fund and build these things because nobody else has them or is in the position of getting them in the future, and it's only the U.S.'s fanatical militarism that makes us even want to build these new weapons and body armor in the first place (an argument which would go hand-in-hand with the left's mantra of doing nothing to Social Security because nothing's happened yet to it, either, and its only being done because the Republicans want to give old peoples' money to Wall Street).

Having flown a fighter-bomber (F-111), I have no problem with the assertion that there is decreasingly little need for such manned aircraft; Close Air Support and attacking fleeting targets notwithstanding.

But should we ever be faced with anything like a peer competitor (China counts, here), the Air-Air environment is far too dynamic for unmanned aircraft to keep up.

The latter problem is vastly more time constrained then the former, and the targets are unknown ahead of time.

peer? good one!

Jeff: Unmanned doesn't mean unpiloted; an unmanned plane can be smaller, faster and turn/climb in such a way that no manned plane can keep up; and if we are less concerned about which planes to avoid hitting, doesn't air defense become much easier?

John, supra, makes a good point which invites elaboration. The fact that no one else can match American power strongly supports pursuing technology. The goal is peace, the goal is not being just weak enough to tempt enemies to make the German-Japanese miscalculation.

David:

In principle, you are absolutely correct. But I suspect there will not be sufficient bandwidth to accomodate the extremely dynamic air-air environment. Which is what I should have said the first time.

Also, the problem is just as much offense as defense--over their territory jamming is a non-negligible threat, particularly given the aforementioned bandwidth demands that don't affect the air-ground mission to nearly the same extent.

OJ:
There is more than one way to have a peer competitor. China has enough money to, should the country so choose, to buy near-peer aircraft from our good friends at the EU.

Lou:

You and John made the other point I forgot to: there is no better way to win a war than to convince the enemy disaster is inevitable going in. Which is why spending as much as the ROW put together, so long as that isn't sufficiently great to put a drag on the economy, is money well spent.

Jeff:

You're assuming the robot planes won't be intellegent enough to dogfight on their own. I wouldn't bet on that for too much longer; we'll have robot fighter pilots long before we have robotic infantrymen...

Some on the left have already talked about the supremacy issue: remember Howard Dean's comment on not always having the strongest military? And how only Joe Lieberman (among the Democratic contenders) really criticized him for it?

Twn;

I would be surprised if the militar wasn't talking to hard core gamers and game designers for ideas and usability issues. Intelligent gamers who spend thousands of hours in virtual combat environments would be a valuable source of information about things that don't work, even if they might not know what would. That's still very valuable information. I'd also note that games are starting to go to voice activation as well, so that you can wear a headset and issue game commands verbally.

It's also cheap, as I've yet to run in to an advid combat game player who didn't think real military people were cool. They'd all jump at the chance to contribute. It seems similar to what a good relationship between professional media and webloggers should be.

I'm a bit disappointed. I was looking not only for better armor, sensors, and communications, but also a powered suit that enables a soldier to run faster, jump higher, and carry more ammo.

I guess we'll have to wait for fuel-cell technology to develop -- since I don't think a micro-nuclear-reactor is in the works.

Mike:

You are right--I am assuming they won't. Computers aren't a patch on humans when it comes to target recognition, or dealing with the unexpected.

Not only that but AI has been just around the corner for at least fifty years.

Jeff, Uncle Bill:

Maybe, maybe not. Don't let your intuition about what's easy and hard for humans fool you. We're more than 10 years away from a robot that can change a diaper, but "loiter around this area and shoot down any aircraft that doesn't display a friendly IFF signal" is very probably within the reach of modern AI.

Mike:

Defensive Counter Air (DCA) is one thing; Offensive CA is something else altogether.

Something else to keep in mind--a singleton is a target; a formation is a weapon. Getting robotic aircraft to work in fluid four ship formations requires a great deal of skill for humans, and is precisely the sort of skill at which even the most advanced computer is no more use than a boat anchor.

Jeff:

Again, yes and no. Flying is easier than walking for computers, and they're good at coordination. I'm not saying it isn't hard, but it isn't like the AI speech problem, where we hardly even have a clue where to begin. People are doing serious work on this:

During the Dec. 3 mission, the 27-foot-long air vehicles flew successfully in several different formations, demonstrating the ability to autonomously enter and exit coordinated flight based on pre-identified points and showing the ability to dynamically alter the formation in all three axes simultaneously. The previous Block 3 multiple vehicle flight on Nov. 12 demonstrated "4-D" navigation, which allows the vehicles to accurately control time-of-arrival over specified geographic locations in addition to maintaining relative position

David - As soon as radio signals are jammed, unmanned becomes unpiloted.

And thus Saddam spent all that money buying GPS jammers from the Russians. How'd that work out for him again?

Jamming is just putting up a big sign saying, "I'm an enemy. Come bomb me."

Mike:

That's wonderful, but it that is no closer to engaging a multiple bogey dynamic enemy than talking to a computer is to actual conversation.

When they can autonomously sort the targets, trade threats among formation members, and decide whether to take on a threat, or maneuver for mutual support, then there is potential.

The stuff you are talking about isn't employing a formation as a weapon, it is only about going the same way on the same day.

David:
Unless autonomous, the bandwidth requirements dward what GPS demands. I was never an electronic warfare guy, but that seems to equal jamming vulnerability to me.

Jeff:

They'll have to be semi-automous anyway. The lag-time on communication will make long-range remotely-piloted combat vehicles mostly infeasible.

I suppose we'll see. I really do think that air combat plays to the computer's strengths, and they may be miserable at strategy, but they're brilliant at tactics. Possibly robotic members in a partially manned formation will be a halfway step...

Shoot, the Aegis system, which was designed to manage 48 simultaneous targets, in actual operations has never succeeded in managing 2.

Until they make that one work, the rest is all moonshine.

Back in the late '30s, the B-17 was going to make all other defensive and offensive weapons superfluous.

The day of the battleship was over.

Well, put to the test, the B-17 and its successors never managed to sink, or even annoy a battleship steaming in war conditions.

Orrin keeps saying we don't need infantry.

OK, so why are we using infantry?

Harry:

That';s the point--we use it because we have it. Had we gotten rid of it sixty years ago we'd have saved a lot of life, money and effort by relying on nukes.

OJ:

Wrong. We were well into the process of reconfiguring our military around nuclear weapons when Korea happened. As it turns out, there are wars we are willing to fight, but they aren't of such magnitude that we are willing to use nuclear weapons to fight them.

Relying on nukes disarmed us, emasculated our training, and it took a couple bloody years to undo it.

Mike:

I recently saw a video of an LANTIRN F-16 retargeting from a house where a cell of insurgents had been located, to the moving group itself. They had, coincidentally, decided to move from the house en masse during the LGBs time of flight.

The pilot talked to the FAC, confirmed the group was the target, and shifted the weapon from the house to the group.

All in about 7 seconds.

That is not particularly unusual, and I just don't see computers successfully accomplishing that sort of thing anytime soon.

Jeff:

Yes, had we used them tens of millions of North Koreans, Chinese, Russians, Vietnamese, etc. would be alive today, trillions of dollars saved, and the 60s and 70s avoided.

OJ:

I take it you advocate nuking Tehran and the Norks, then?

Well, before we get off into the Cloud Cuckoo Land of regret for nuclear opportunities not taken, let's stick closer to home.

The 20th century was the century of promises of military technological revolutions that nevere -- not even once -- panned out in practice.

We are not so far from the 20th century that we can confidently assume things have changed.

I just finished an Australian history, 'A Bastard of a Place' by Peter Brune. I defy anybody to read that one and then continue to say we don't need infantry.

Jeff:

We should have nuked the Norks fifty years ago. Teheran is low hanging fruit, but the nuclear facilities should be irradiated.

Harry:

We had the revolution--we just failed to take advantage of it.

OJ:

I have far more experience with nuclear weapons than you. I find your approach to them cavalier practically beyond comprehension.

Harry:

As much as I advocate airpower, I realize we need infantry. It obviously needs to be as light and lethal as possible, but our ability to discern the enemy's reality is nowhere near what is required to avoid having boots on the ground.

Jeff:

There's no noticable limit to what you find beyond your comprehension.

Orrin believes it doesn't make any difference whether you can discriminate between legitimate targets or not.

Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.

I don't have a problem with that in national wars, but it has proven somewhat difficult when you're are claiming to 'liberate' people.

My boss, who fought in Vietnam, had a column about that last week. Bottom line: right war, wrong battlefield.

He was an infantryman.

One nuclear weapon dropped on Hanoi in the late 50s would have ended the war and spared millions of people and trillions of dollars.