"Chad Irby" wrote in message
m...
In article ,
"Keith Willshaw" wrote:

Attack helos dont go in much for air to air combat as I recall

But if you're using autonomous UCAVs, they have to be able to detect
incoming threats, and decide which ground targets to hit. Therefore,
you either have IFF or a very restrictive set of rules of engagement
that the machine won't be able to break. Since a part of the "new"
battlefield is going to be IFF for ground forces, that's going to be an
issue, too. Restricting the question to air-to-air is a mistake.


There's no doubt in my mind we NEED IFF for ground forces
even with conventional manned platforms. We have seen far
too many blue on blue incidents in recent conflicts

IFF spoofed, UCAV hunts down friendly targets.

IFF is easy enough, but "robust" IFF is a real pain.

As is recognition by human pilots in the heat of action

Still a couple of orders of magnitude better than any UCAV IFF we're
going to see in the near future.

We can't even build the suckers to fly reliably under non-optimal
conditions yet, much less deal with threats while doing so.


I have no illusions that we will see UCAV's flying CAS in the
next decade but it is the way of the future with low level
aviation becoming increasingly hazardous as MANPAD's
and other weapons become increasingly common.

Keith