The Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration Program: A New Dawn for Naval Aviation?

"Peter Skelton" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 07:46:24 -0400, Tiger
wrote:

tomcervo wrote:

On Jul 13, 11:29?pm, "Milton Wirth" wrote:


Advantages
of getting the humans out of the aircraft far outweigh adantages of
having humans onboard.



Is there a known percentage of how much of an airframe is dedicated to
protecting the pilot or compensating for human physical limitations?



Well for a start? No cockpit needed, no O2 system, no ejection seat, no
G load blackout. While Not a great movie, The Film "Stealth", Jammie
Foxx & Jessica Biel dealt with operating such a system. It clearly has
some advantages...

I think the main advantage will turn out to be elimination of the
G restrictions.

Not really. The sensor suite and latency in control doesn't make these
things ideal for turning and burning. Higher fuel fraction leads to greater
persistency, elimination of crew makes stealth easier to achieve and the
asset better for high threat environments. A cheaper, smaller and more
readily disposable interdiction tool. The price is you've eliminated the
decision maker in the cockpit, something you can't always and wouldn't
always want to do.

R / John