The United States Military Airforce is looking to replace the F-22 Raptor Fighter plane with aircrafts that will not need any pilots. Their target is to have by 2030 the new generation fighter planes which will have the pilots safe at home, flying the planes from a distance, still making them able of retrieving all the information needed to fly and controlling the planes.
This will also empower the pilots to make radical maneuvers which could not be achieved with manned aircrafts due to their high risk. This of course will change any future warfare, creating many ethical problems, as was the case with the war in Yugoslavia, where NATO only fought via the air. Not even Carl von Clausewitz' s book 'On War' will be relevant any more, since the ethical and human part of a war will be non existent, except for the rising collateral damage which will not be considered, since this might be seen as a computer game...
How can the human element of war be removed by unmanned aircraft? they're still being directed by humans for human ends. Machines don't fight each other for no reason but are given tasks by human controllers for an objective of some kind. War is fundementally a human act, regardless of the tools being used. On War identifies the nature of war, which is unchangable. It is the character and grammar of war, not its nature, which changes. Read your Clausewitz again, a little harder this time.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. I agree with your analysis of Clausewitz's On War..I was just refering on the ethical side of war and how it has changed with all the means man is able to use. The Yugoslavia example is the one I used becasue it was the first time where a war was fought by one side only from the air, excluding collateral and military damage for one side and increasing collateral damage for the other side, meaning Yugoslavia. The nature of war will not change, as long as the two groups fighting are human and not robots.. who kknows maybe the film Terminator is prophetic for the future...no one can be sure of what the future holds for us all.
ReplyDeleteabout that bottom picture, is there a name for it?
ReplyDeleteI am, unfortunately, unsure of the name. You might find it on a site in relation to the United States Military Airforce.
ReplyDelete