Robot naval stealth fighter takes to the air The disappearance of swaggering pilots from the flight decks of US naval aircraft carriers came a step closer on Friday with the first flight of the X-47B robot tailhook stealth jet. The X-47B is intended to demonstrate that unmanned aircraft can take off from aircraft carrier catapults and land back on deck again using …
Fleshies... tend to get in the way with their need for oxygen, pressurised environments, heating/cooling and their abject failure to withstand violent high-G maneouvers.
I would say that I welcome our robotic plane overlords but due to their stealth tech I can't see them to welcome them...
reminds me of an entry in the comp.risks newsletter years ago of how on one of the first generation computer controlled jets a test pilot decided to see what would happen if he selected "raise undercarriage" while stationary on the ground ... needless to say the next generation of software added an "if (undercarriage_loaded) ignore_command();" clause to the relevant routine.
Actually that's exactly why I find this believable. The operator, being a pilot, would expect that this safety was there ("hahaha, lets test the load-switch," "uhhh"), but often these types of safeties get removed from "software controlled" equipment, because "computers don't make mistakes."
I've seen this happen oftain enough that it's certainly believable.
I remember being told by a maintenance engineer with BA that while running diagnostics on an aircraft someone for some reason cycled the gear, resulting in a rather sick looking aircraft. In general, safeties can be by-passed.
Another one was somebody working in the bypass section of a turbofan engine, the reverse thrust louvres should have been deactivated but weren't, again somebody for some reason moved the throttle levers. The end result not being very pleasant.
I think Paul Ehrlich is wrong, to really foul things up you need a human, not a computer.
I'm sure the boffins have thought of that and will use one of the many military satellites as the primary or secondary comms link to the aircraft. I think signals coming from orbit will be difficult to block from ground based devices. Unless maybe a nearby ground based station can track the aircraft and direct an interference transmission towards it? I'm not sure if that would be effective if the receiver is mounted on top of the aircraft facing upwards(ish). [shrug] I will ask a Sky TV installer. ;-)
"I think signals coming from orbit will be difficult to block from ground based devices. Unless maybe a nearby ground based station can track the aircraft and direct an interference transmission towards it? "
This is about strength of signal versus reception, my big ass jammer with towed generator 10 miles from drone is going to swamp out the pathetic signal strength your sat is going to generate from it's solar pannels 200 miles away.
You don't need to direct the jamming (although this is more elegant), you just use Brute Force and Ignorance (BFI).
"I imagine they would have thought of that."
You would be surprised at what does not get thought of in military procurement, like having Laser Guided Bombs, but no in service TILAD pods to aim the things.
"I would use some kind of channel hopping algorithm."
Frequency hopping radio and radar are pretty standard these days, so is the ECCM to stop it
"Rouge carriers are not really a problem for this unless somebody jams the whole band"
This is the oldest form of jammer, much new stuff invented since 1940.
The least jamable comms system is Laser, but that requires Line of Sight, and is buggered by atmo distrubance (e.g. dust, something found in Afganistan and elsewhere)
So we have a big RC plane with bombs and no way of ensuring communication, that seems like a safe idea!
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Yup, that's difficult, which is why the USAF uses a probe flown by a guy in the back of the tanker aircraft, who's really good at it. The receiving plane just has to stay mostly in one place.
When the exhausted pilot has just come back from getting shot at in a 6hr mission, it leads to far less bent metal.
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