Commanche alternatives?

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 19:04:27 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

Well, in theory, and for some missions, anyway. But you have a couple
of potential problems with that. If they're completely autonomous,
they're not going to be as "smart" as humans when it comes to targeting

How the hell is gonna tell friendly from enemy? Civilian from
combatant? The only thing it'll be good for is knocking out armor.
Attack helos still present a flexibility and presence that you can't
get out of a glorified model airplane kit.

In article ,
Rune B?rsj? wrote:

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 19:05:52 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

...and the crunching sound you're going to hear is the machines hitting
the ground after real pilots start blowing the little critters out of
the air...

It only takes one.

Well, it only takes one that *works*.

And even the most optimistic folks are telling that it's going to be a
generation or so before there's an effective air-to-air dogfighting UCAV.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

"Rune Børsjø" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 19:04:27 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

Well, in theory, and for some missions, anyway. But you have a couple
of potential problems with that. If they're completely autonomous,
they're not going to be as "smart" as humans when it comes to targeting

How the hell is gonna tell friendly from enemy? Civilian from
combatant? The only thing it'll be good for is knocking out armor.
Attack helos still present a flexibility and presence that you can't
get out of a glorified model airplane kit.

You havent heard of IFF I take it

Keith

"Thomas Schoene" wrote:

The Navy/Marine counterpart to the CH-47 is actually the CH-53,

I have to wonder why the CH-53E or its kin isn't a viable
fall-back if the Osprey eventually fails. Is it just the problem of
fitting them on smaller decks ? I know they have a mighty big
footprint, but a friend who's a helo professional has a few great
stories of CH-53s doing amazing parking jobs after a hurricane came
through here a few years ago. The rotor wash knocked him flat on his
ass, though.




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On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:52:00 -0000, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:

You havent heard of IFF I take it

Lot of good it's gonna do you in an urban or even sparsely populated
scenario? If they're really going to replace helos it's going to have
to come down to AI or somebody sitting far, far away looking through a
videocamera... are you willing to entrust your life to a simple
computer program, or a stickjock computernerd, sitting thousands of
miles away in a trailer, eating pizza, drinking zima, and blowing up
everything in sight in the hopes of achieving a highscore?

I'm not...

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:46:36 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

Well, it only takes one that *works*.

And even the most optimistic folks are telling that it's going to be a
generation or so before there's an effective air-to-air dogfighting UCAV.

Air to air is an entirely different game, though. As is tank-busting.
As for replacing attack helos alltogether, I don't see it happening in
the foreseeable future. At least not if you have friendly troops on
the ground. But I wouldn't mind say sending a swarm of them into enemy
open territory looking for armor or structures, or even baiting and
retaliating.

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 22:31:56 +0100, Rune Børsjø wrote:

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:52:00 -0000, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:

You havent heard of IFF I take it

Lot of good it's gonna do you in an urban or even sparsely populated
scenario? If they're really going to replace helos it's going to have
to come down to AI or somebody sitting far, far away looking through a
videocamera... are you willing to entrust your life to a simple
computer program, or a stickjock computernerd, sitting thousands of
miles away in a trailer, eating pizza, drinking zima, and blowing up
everything in sight in the hopes of achieving a highscore?

As opposed to now when you're relying on a stickjock a few miles away
(or tens of miles with JDAM), eating nothing and drinking water, and
blowing.......

AI may be a problem, but if it's human eyes ona video screeen then the
only difference is the latency of the satellite link and the
resolution of the imaging device, which could well be better for a
newer UCAV than a TIALD/Litening/LANTIRN pod of indeterminate age.

---
Peter Kemp

Life is short - drink faster

In article ,
"Keith Willshaw" wrote:

"Rune Børsjø" wrote in message
...
How the hell is gonna tell friendly from enemy? Civilian from
combatant? The only thing it'll be good for is knocking out armor.
Attack helos still present a flexibility and presence that you can't
get out of a glorified model airplane kit.

You havent heard of IFF I take it

You mean like the IFF that fails from time to time, or that can be
spoofed and jammed quite easily?

You have some of the following problems:

IFF jammed, UCAV won't shoot.
IFF jammed, UCAV shoots down anything in front of it.
IFF spoofed, UCAV hunts down friendly targets.

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

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

In article ,
Peter Kemp wrote:

AI may be a problem, but if it's human eyes ona video screeen then the
only difference is the latency of the satellite link and the
resolution of the imaging device, which could well be better for a
newer UCAV than a TIALD/Litening/LANTIRN pod of indeterminate age.

That's why we need planes in the air. If the other guys manage to fly
something that the sensors won't acquire, or if they jam your IFF,
having a pair of Mk I Eyeballs on site is pretty important. And if
you're looking at high-def video, bandwidth issues are *not* trivial.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

Lyle wrote:

IMO whats going to happen is that we are going to put a stripped down
version of the commanche into service, minus all the crap that dosent
work/dont need, and with a change in the skin material of the aircraft
to make it alot cheaper. Then reincorporate the technology when it
becomes workable.

Or we could take a Cobra and incorporate the Comanches technology into
it.

As the DoD transcript clearly states, they're going to put the Comanche's
avionics capability into the Block III Apaches.

Guy