Robotic combat drones may be the means that China ultimately will challenge us in the air. Unable to match our pilots, they may try to beat us with software:
But now, all those nations that see no way of competing with the F-22, do see it as possible to build a large fleet of robotic fighter aircraft. China has a lot more software engineers than it does highly experienced fighter pilots. American air force generals fear that the Chinese are moving slowly to expand their fleet of modern fighters because everyone believes that the next generation of fighters will be robotic, and a lot cheaper than F-22s.
This is no time to stubbornly refuse to adapt. Pilots may well keep the advantage over drones for decades. But eventually, the software will surpass the pilots and if we haven't tried to match code for code, we will have inferior "pilots" in our planes:
This is one of those rare turning points in weapons design. Similar to when the modern battleship (the British Dreadnaught being the first), made all existing battleships obsolete. A similar thing happened when jet fighters appeared in the mid 1940s. Nearly all those 63,000 American fighter aircraft in 1945 were prop-driven, and all those pilots knew that in the next few years, jet fighters would make all those prop fighters obsolete. Now the robotic fighters are about to make manned fighters obsolete, just like GPS guided bombs (JDAM) made dumb bombs dropped by a low flying fighter-bomber obsolete.We will still have our system as an advantage, but without the "pilots" and advanced aircraft to put into that system, our supremacy will be at risk.
I don't blame pilots for not liking this future, but the purpose of an air force is to provide aerial supremacy--not to give pilots the thrill of flying.
