Forum: Air Power

Good points, Wildcat. Here's some more to think about.

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Even most of political leaders daily show that Clausewitz and Sun Ze are perfectly unknown to them. Or at least the idea that war, its goal and the way it must be done, needs intensive and dispassionate thinking!

I agree with this statement, and I think it can be seen in several ways. While in the middle of a war, what if the enemy finds a way to disrupt the control link to the UCAV, causing it to go to failsafe? It would sure suck to have all your UCAVs circling and awaiting orders until they hit bingo and had to RTB. Or if the failsafe was to continue to the target, couldn't the enemy purposely disrupt the control signal while filling the target with civilians? See what I'm saying?

If you ever wonder just how much public opinion influences a war, just look back to Vietnam. The Tet Offensive was a tactical failure, but a strategic victory for the North. They were defeated militarily, but the public in the US couldn't see that.

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Si vis pacem, para bellum: "If you want peace, prepare war"

Couldn't agree more. It's funny how Muammar Qaddafi handed over all his WMDs after the US went in and kicked Saddam out of power.

One last thought. Human beings are emotional. War may need intensive and dispassionate thinking, but do you really think most people can set aside their feelings, especially civilians?

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Nope, that is what I wanted to point, sadly... Crying or Very sad

Anyway, if most of people were plainly logical, wars would probably not break out...

Like you, I am very wary about radio-commanded UCAVs. Military scientists say they are totally confident in the whole safety of the radio link. However, I must be pessimistic because I doubt that keeping a steady and secured radio network against a well-equipped adversary would be that easy.
The solution is automatic UCAVs, but it makes the ethical concern back. I must admit that I don't have any clear answer so far. Anyone more clever than me?

I see what you're saying. You're english is great, but sometimes something still gets lost in the translation. Wink

I can't think of anything I disagree with in your last post. Is anyone out there more clever than Wildcat and me?

Secure encrypted data links are well established and mature technology. If an enemy had the capability to defeat or interfere with such a data link then wayward UCAVs would be the least of our problems... Neutral

I agree with you up to a point habu2. I have one word to respond to that with - ESPIONAGE. We despise spies, but they are a fact of life. I didn't realize just how many we've caught until I went to http://intellit.muskingum.edu/spycases_folder/spycasesustoc.html. The datalink is only as secure as the codes that run it and those codes are vulnerable to human weakness. I do agree with you that wayward UCAVs would be the least of our worries if that information were ever compromised! Shocked

There are other problems with using datalinks to control combat aircraft, especially attack aircraft.

First of these problems is the issue of multiple areas of vulnerability with the problem of single points of failure. For example, what would happen if a satellite failed or any other link in the chain? A nuclear detonation in low earth orbit would seriously damage any satellite in the vicinity with just the effects of the EMP. Before anyone discounts this as a possibility, remember that Kim Jong Il probably has a few nuclear devices and some rockets that, while inaccurate against far away land targets, will do just fine to lift a device to the proper altitude.

Secondly, secure datalinks require a clear line of site to the endpoint of the signal (such as a UCAV). This may be fine for stealthy recce birds up high and air superiority birds that don't go down in the weeds, but attack jets sometimes need to go down there. What happens when a daylight air to mud mission is required? You have to fly fast and low if you don't want the enemy to spot your stealthy aircraft with his mark 1 eyeballs! Sometimes that means flying through mountain passes and canyons. The terrain would certainly block the datalink signals, most likely for extended periods of time.

So without the secure datalink, we're back to the AUCAV. See the posts above for some thoughts on that subject.

Thank you for making me think, habu2. I really enjoy a spirited discussion with people as intelligent as the members of this site. I know I've said this many times, but I feel I must repeat it again - your time, effort, and thoughts are truly appreciated! I don't mean to offend or to sound like I'm trying to be superior, I'm just trying to debate the subject and have an enjoyable exchange of ideas. Smile

Have fun and I'll see you around the site! Very Happy

parrothead wrote:

I've been thinking about this subject for quite a while now, but it's always been at the back of my mind. UCAVs keep coming up in different topics, but I haven't seen one just for them. I have a few thoughts on the subject and would appreciate any thoughts the rest of the membership might be able to contribute.

While I understand the idea behind UCAVs, I have some serious questions and concerns regarding the deployment and use of them. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the thought of sending men into harm's way any more than anyone else. UCAVs have that going for them. I see this as a trade-off. While you remove the risk of a human being injured or killed, it also removes a very important link in the chain.

IMHO I don't see any decison making process being removed. The disadvantage is there are some tasks that a human can think about quicker and react to certain things being in a manned jet as opposed to looking through a video camera and looking at a 2D situational awareness display. It just all depends on the mission. There are no absolutes. We appear to be going at it slow and methodical. I don't see a whole wing of killer A-45s being fielded within 2 or 3 years.

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While I know that the UCAVs will have a datalink to a "pilot" on the ground most likely backed up with superb fail-safe programming, I feel there is something lost in not having an actual pilot in the aircraft. Humans have an unmatched ability to think on the fly and adapt to changing situations. What if the datalink is lost and the target turns out to be friendly or civilian?

There are already limits on the thought process on this and as you are leading to, making the tech work kinda good isn't the problem, the problem is working out good operating procedure. For strategic strike the first few nights of a war, it is all about DMPI lists of known targets. Netcentric warfare seems to be making excellent progress and I believe that targets of oportunity can be taken care of many many times. Think of it this way: We let a cruise missile drop and proceed to it's target. Same here, Except an A-45 with two BLU-110 JDAM 35 ( the BLU-110 penetrator ( 1000lb ) probably has the same or better hitting power than the cruise missiles in a lot of situations. ) Anyway..... and in this case the A-45 is "reuseable", and a BLU-110 JDAM-35 costs a lot less. Just using that one example. Again, not an absolute.

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Allowing computers to make life and death decisions is a very dangerous proposition.

Well we aren't letting them do that and there has been risk before with cruise missiles. At least now they are getting to the point where the cruise missile can be talked to and retargeted. ( JASSM, Tomahawk, SLAM-ER )

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Forget about theoretical scenarios like "Terminator", I'm thinking of the allied aircraft shot down by Patriot missiles while returning to base after missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom. I know "blue on blue" has occured in every conflict and will almost certainly occur in every conflict to come, it seems that a few radio conversations might have saved those pilots' lives. Instead, the computer in the Patriot Missile system "decided" that the aircraft were hostile and launched.

The Patriot community ( not to disparage the Army ) is pretty much f*****. If you gave them M-16s they would still come up with poor decision making ability. That whole program is screwed up. So IMHO, a bad example there. We are after all..... the USAF. ( sorry to sound arrogant, but in this case it's true ). One thought being carried now is that the Tornados IFF was not setup right or malfunctioned. But still, I find it interesting that we payed gigabucks for that nice joint command post for CENTCOM, yet the Army Patriot guy and USAF(F-16HARM vs. Patriot ) and/or USN ( Patriot vs F-18 ), and UK ( Patriot vs. Tornado ) can't talk to each other and coodinate. So to me, I don't care what the weapon is, if you can't coordinated stuff with these weapons, people will still die, piloted or no.

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Isn't there the possibility that a UCAV could go "rogue"? If one UCAV does go rogue, or mistake friendly forces for enemy while continuing to transmit the correct IFF, could another UCAV still be tasked to disregard that particular aircraft's signals and destroy it, assuming that there are no manned aircraft to handle the assignment?

I am sure they have thought of that, I would think that if at least 3 or more things aren't manually commanded to a UCAV, that a wep isn't coming off of it.

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Am I the only one who sees an ethical problem with sending robots to kill people?

I don't have a problem with it. We have been doing it for a while with cruise missiles. War isn't really high ethics anyway.

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I know that every advantage should be exploited in combat, but to what degree? I personally don't think it is proper to send an unmanned vehicle out to shoot down and kill the pilots of other aircraft.

I do. If we have to fight, I want it to be so unfair for the enemy that their face is put down into the mud and stepped on.

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Truth be told, I don't like the thought of the Predator being equipped with Hellfires. I think a human should be in the aircraft to push the button that launches the weapon. War is hell, and I see the possibility that the distance from our actions afforded by "telepresence" might also distance us from the thoughts of the consequences of those actions.

What I want to see is A-45, with JDAM-32, 35, 38, SDB, JCM and oh BTW there will be an ECM bird too. Bring it on.

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I guess my problem with UCAVs is really about the loss of humanity. The human in a combat aircraft (or in combat in general) is the last line of conscience in the chain of command. Assuming a loss of communication, a UCAV is a flying computer. It has no sense of duty, honor, or humanity. There are many stories of men flying combat missions and deviating from "Standard Operating Proceedures" to save the lives of those in the air or on the ground. I'm sure Gums and some of the other guys here know a few of those stories. Computers can only do what they've been programmed to do. They can not deviate from the SOPs for any reason. This would cause me serious concerns as an infantry troop. Humans can improvise, adapt, and overcome. We are still human, and make mistakes, but we can't rely on computers to be perfect, either. After all, it takes a human to program a computer.

One last thought. What if the enemy gains access to the controls of the UCAV through espionage and hijacking the signal? I hate to think of the possibility of this happening, but without a person in the cockpit, can it truly be ruled out as a possibility? If they can control one UCAV by these means, why not all of them? I can guarantee that by no means whatsoever is it possible to remotely control the "stick actuator" in an F-16 or any other current fighter, let alone all of them at once!

Maybe these concerns are the result of ignorance. Maybe they're just a reflection of the fact that I'm "old school". Maybe I'm just nostalgic and don't want to accept the new reality. That's why I'm asking everyone here for their opinions. We have a great group of people on this site, and I appreciate the opportunity to take advantage of everyone's knowledge and experience! Thanks in advance!

Com security will always be an issue. I believe we have that figured out more than any other guy. Nice thing about encryption is that there are so many varied and rapid methods of changing things today.

Manned aircraft in combat aren't going away. They will only be enhanced. Super Hornets launching off of a carrier with a wave of decoys, Tomahawks, JASSM, SLAM-ER, and UCAV EA-45 / A-45 sounds pretty sweet to me. Give me the DMPI list !

Thanks for such a thoughtful reply, ELP! I think I should've been more specific in my earlier posts. I also think I'm starting to agree more and more with you and the rest of the dark side, er, uh make that the UCAV crowd. My biggest concern is with giving fully automated UCAVs (AUCAVs) the authority to designate a target as hostile and prosecute it without a person giving final consent for weapons release. A person decides what a Tomahawk will kill before it's launched and consents to weapons release by launching it. The Tomahawk doesn't loiter over an area and make its own decisions about what will be hit. That's what I meant when I questioned sending robots out to kill people. Aside from that I have no problem with the idea of a reusable cruise missile with the capability to hit multiple targets per mission. I also see no problem with using AUCAVs in an area denial role. Just give them a "kill box" and declare anything in that area hostile. The friendly forces would be safe as long as they didn't wander into the area. Makes sense to me! When it comes to datalink controlled UCAVs, I guess I'll have to agree that they're OK, as long as the datalink is secure. A person is still giving the final consent for weapons release.

I still have some technical concerns about datalink controlled UCAVs aside from those found in my earlier posts. For example, an aircraft needs stealth to survive in today's heavy AA environment. A datalink controlled UCAV still has to transmit video, etc back to the pilot on the ground. Wouldn't this transmission give away the UCAV's position? After all, it's emitting a signal, and a signal can be triangulated, right?

Thanks again, ELP, for such an intelligent, informed and interesting debate!I'd have to agree that UCAVs have great potential as force multipliers and enhancements to flights of manned aircraft. With a few qualifications, I say "Give me the DMPI list and the designated killboxes!"

Some of the questions you asked were asked by the big high pay decision makers years ago and they still think about them, so you aren't asking unimportant questions. Just a few of many thoughts on the subject of UCAVs below:

Part of this is of course the buzz word "netcentric warfare". It is being used more and more today. Signal transmision; it shouldn't be a problem. They work those things out good, when the UCAV uses the stored waypoints, when it doesn't, criteria for RTB when not connected to the node etc. The command and control concepts aren't always hard ( sometimes they are ) just the nuts and bolts stuff of making procedure work in a consistant way. We are starting to have a lot of experience in doing netcentric warfare. A lot.

Nodes: Just like a wireless computer network that is becoming popular for personal computers. You need relays sometimes. Sometimes those nodes or relays are anything that is flying. They are starting to put packages up on the cargo area of tanker aircraft for nothing more than being a relay ( a cell tower so to speak ). for the rest of the airborne combat network. Tankers orbit around in tracks...why not?

Unfortunately a lot of these concepts are easy public consumption, but the short story would be this: You launch a gaggle of A-45 UCAVs off of a carrier as part of common bomb truck duty... for this example, not a first night of the war strategic strike, just common stuff after critical strat strike work is done .... They go and show up in a "stack" near a JSTARS. The JSTARS coordinates targets of opportunity. What ever is in the stack. ( manned or unmanned ) gets the assignment to hit the target directly or report overhead to a FAC ( ground or air ) for lets say thining the herd duty.

For example in OIF we used a Super Hornet in the following manner, "thinning the herd" ( multiple air strikes to kill off heavy equipment/personnel in a conventional fighting division before it made contact with our troops ). The 2 seater F-18SH with its great air to ground kit ( and other airborne FAC methods ) did nothing but line up ( target cordinates ) of juicy targets. An endless stream of aircraft would come in over time. They come out of the stack from JSTARs and report to him as available, the F-18SH hands off the target cords to the incoming bomb truck ( USAF, USN, USMC, doesn't matter ), the bomb truck comes in, drops its PGMs or what ever and heads for home ( good use of time). Think of that same scenario if the Super Hornet was just passing off target cords to an endless freight train of not only manned aircraft,... but A-45 UCAVs also.

SEAD, DEAD, ECM is especially exciting prospects for the A-45 UCAV. Imagine a team of EB-52 ECM, F-16 Block 5x, EA-45, and A-45 UCAV all working together ( of course all the other netcentric players in SEAD, DEAD etc ). Also remember that big advanced SAMs like the S-300 and 400 series ( and their clones ) are very very expensive. Depending on the threat, once you wear down a small number of these, it is possible that you wore down all of them. Big SAM threats more times than not will be older gen ( heavily modified ) stuff. Platforms like A-45 UCAV sounds real exciting to me and real useful.

I am going to pump some new life into this thread, since it was brought up in another thread.
One of the large selling points to UAVs and UCAVs are that they are cheap and expendable (original selling point) But this is not the case anymore. Look at Global Hawk. In no way is this expendable or cheap. One large question that I want to raise is that right now, with the limited capablities of UAVs and UCAVs, do we want to invest the vast amounts of money into these programs, or should we stick to more purtnent issues, like upgrading our numbers of capable combat assets. Face it our Fighters are getting old. The Jet I crew is only 2 years younger than I, and some in the squadron are as old as I am. Where Politicans and other likes, won't fly in a private jet if it is more then 5 years old, why are our pilots flying in 20 year old machinary? And why is Washington sitting on every program and taking their time. Are there no threats out there?

Back to the UAV, saw the other day that a preditor tracked a guy driving a truck in D.C. that committed a crime. Now the cops even got UAVs I guess. I don't think that UAVs and UCAVs are bad. But I think there is this public perseption that its going to replace everyone. Is our culture moving to autonamous war fighting. What would happen in the future if No man was actually fighting in the United States Military. Is there such thing as taking the human aspect out of war? I don't want to sound like a moran, but if two militaries have machine armies fighting each other, would war work? Would we throw back to a total war concept? I just am very leary about all automation. Yes, smart weapons, and GPS guidence, more and more mechanized, but if soldiers stop dying (that sounds horrible) will it make things better or worse. (If that senetence made any sense!)

Enthusiast Joined: Nov 21, 2005 - 12:24 AM Posts: 65

The major concern on UCAVs deployment is HACKING, a well designed system must be hacker proof.

An UCAV can do almost everything a manned attack plane can do, plus more, when an UCAV is seriously damaged you can program it to do a Kamikazee attack as last resource.

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

Not really. As ELP said in an earlier post, secure datalinks are common these days in the military and if an enemy has the ability to disrupt or decrypt them in real-time. And think about this, there is public software that can generate key pairs that take the most powerful supercomputer on the planet going full bore many weeks to break.

A more realistic worry is what Parrothead mentioned: espionage. If a spy can get some information that can allow an enemy to disrupt UCAVs, that really would be bad. The system needs to be designed such that there isn't some secret Achilles heel to be exploited.

For a suicide UAV, see: cruise missile. With the small size and high system density of something like the X-45, battle damage will be a binary thing. Either it isn't damaged and it's flying, or it is and it's crashing. Heroic last-ditch struggles to throw its robotic self into the enemy is the stuff of Hollywood.

Enthusiast Joined: Nov 21, 2005 - 12:24 AM Posts: 65

Not at all Guysmiley, a.e. the Predator currently can be programmed to try to ditch on a target if the engines are damaged, Yes, The espionage is the major concern because it provides to enemy hackers the info they need to do their work, I knew about PKI, and I must to said you something: Public Key Pairs aren't used on UAV/UCAVs/UGV/UCGV, despite if they can't be craked in thousands years, if you lose your private key (due espionage a.e.) you need a new keypair and need to distribute it (remenber the enigma machine), that's isnt very easy in e-war enviroments. Rignt now the solution is to create a set of simmetric keys (by far safer tham PK, but need to be installed a new set on each mission), these keys ae faster than PK pairs, but need to be loaded every time the UCAV is activated thru a special secure dataport.
While the loss of the UCAV command isn't a concern about the hacking, the interference is another question,just remenber the GPS jamming, is only one of many examples, if you can find a weak point on a system you can exploit it, and use it to defeat or at least reduce the system's efficience.

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

I don't recall saying anything about what type of encryption or keying a secure military datalink would use, only that even publically available encryption systems are a tough nut to crack, illustrating the potential difficulty in hacking into a military system.

Jamming is another whole can of worms than "HACKING", the upside is that jammers (by their definition) are easily seen and targeted.

yes,i belive that uav's are an essential part of any airforce especially during a conflict in which risking the life of a pilot and his/her bird is the issue at hand considering that the uav's have a longer time on station and can be controlled by a ground station -a pilot-who is at the controls and is in my opinion bettter to loose a uav that doesn't cost so much is a better option than risking the life of a pilot''jet jock''and his/her bird.

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

Just watch out if they ever get hit by lightning! "it can rewire their circuits". Very Happy

Forum: Air Power

Are UCAVs really such a good idea?