Francis Urquhart
Well-known member
The honest answer to the last question is everybody including the opposition. We've already lost one large and expensive drone when its flight control system was hacked in mid-air and the aircraft diverted to a now-friendly airbase. The way to look at this is by need and that is the way things are going right now. If a service can demonstrate the need for a capability that is best provided by drones, then it gets it as soon as funding is available.Now what about drones? Remote-controlled or fully-autonomous? Who gets to play with them?
The last six words are crucial. No matter how good a case is for a given system, it won't get a share of the available funding if somebody else makes a better case for their requirement. This is an on-going situation and it won't be solved by increasing funding still further. Under PDJT, we've gone from $500 billion to $733 billion and there are still serious deficiencies that have to be fixed. Then we have the problem of Congressional add-ons. Basically, every time Congress adds something the services don't need to the budget, something they do need has to be cut out. This is why service budget managers and analysts get really irritated with outsiders who try and interfere with the budget. Such people never do any good and often do a lot of harm.
On remote controlled or fully autonomous, the best answer is probably "yes". It depends on the role and environment. We're all very suspicious of the fully autonomous solution and the truth is those systems don't work very well. As a simple example, imagine a fully autonomous anti-tank drone. So far so good. only in a certain conflict, both sides drive identical models of the T-72. Now the poor drone has a target identification problem. Ah well, that's easy to solve. Give the tanks IFF systems like aircraft. Well, we've done that. Only back in Vietnam days, we had a bit of kit that triggered the IFF system installed on MiGs. So, we have an unidentified contact out of visual range. We trigger that bit of kit and up pops the IFF code for that MiG. We've now identified it as hostile, pickle off an AIM-7 and paint up the kill mark. It doesn't end there of course.
IFF has a lot of other problems, one being that it has a failure rate and a non-IFF response can be a friendly system with its IFF system down. It has happened and it has killed friendlies. The only real cure to that is a fully-integrated battlefield management system where if one element goes down others take its place and that's largely already here. Only, to make it work we need to get rid of legacy systems that don't carry the kit. Guess the prime candidate there.
In a more general sense, drones and UAVs have passed their peak now. They had their great burst of success in Iraq, primarily because we had a very urgent surveillance requirement and no assets to fill it. Drones were available and so they got used and once they were in use, people made the best of what they had. Then people outside what was really going on got all enthusiastic and made the things fill roles for which their application was dubious. As I said, its subsiding now and people's interest has moved on to other things.