Edit: here's a video of some F-15s blowing up QF-4s http://youtu.be/xISpZYajveA

Since the F-16 was purely fly-by-wire and computer stabilized anyway, the difference is where the commands are coming from - there's no additional algorithmic "magic" or computer-controlled decisionmaking power.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1609281

(Amusing fact-of-the-day - the fastest RC models in the world do not have motors. Specially built gliders flown in big winds on just the right shape hills can go a couple of hundred mph faster than even jet powered RC planes…)

This is getting attention because the F-16 is in the current inventory. But these aren't the Block 50/52s of today. They're the original versions, rolled off the line in the 80s. It's like an early BMW M3. Yes, it's an M3, but it'll get smoked by a 328 of today.

The worries of NGOs in this case are misplaced. Old target drone F-16s don't have the sensors or electronics to drop the current required ordinance, and the cost of refitting them isn't worth the expense when there are purpose-built platforms that can do this much more cost effectively.

Looks like an escalation, irrespective of whether it actually is technologically speaking.

This and the fact that the USAF seems for their UAV to be 'flown' by a more restricted class of personel compared to the US Army. I don't see this as Boeing announcing they have a new toy militaries can blow up just for training.

I had no idea such an organization existed. The future is now, I guess.

Lots of weapons already meet that requirement.

It's easy to use scare quotes here, because the automated behavior is so direct and understandable that we don't really see it as AI. Even when it does something other than what the human intended, it doesn't seem like a rebellious robot, just a heat-seeking missile that happened to be near an unexpected heat source, which it of course followed, and therefore hit the wrong thing. The general idea that the human is giving high-level orders and a robot is making local decisions in an attempt to carry them out is not that different though. The main difference is that the local decision logic is nowadays getting more complex than "find hot thing nearby". But that too is a gradual trend: even old heat-seeking missiles started getting more complex logic, to try to avoid being misled by flares.

The definition of "chemical weapons" is also problematic. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_use_in_Iraq

So from a friend that was a major in the USAF flying fixed and rotor wing aircraft: the current UCMJ / ROEs requires an officer present for each and every kill decision. Period. If that doesn't happen, it's get-a-lawyer-and-court-martial time. Probably main US military isn't the biggest threat if the video's fears in the near term, there are too many people watching: it's any force of any country that doesn't respect rules of war.

edit: For clarity.

You can make the argument that there are some very inhumane/barbaric ways to kill people, and as a "civilized" world, we shouldn't engage in them. But, that line of reasoning always takes you back to, "wait, how about we just not kill people at all?"

  The firm added that the flight attained 7Gs of acceleration but was capable 
  of carrying out manoeuvres at 9Gs - something that might cause physical problems 
  for a pilot.

Also: I'm not sure how I feel about a $15-18 million target dummy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_...

Of course, if someone can interfere with or hack your link with the aircraft, you're hosed. If they can turn it around and attack you with it, it's even worse.

That, and the Blue Angels will be far less romantic when there's nobody at the helm of each finely-tuned airbreathing rocket.

Things change.

(Modern air-to-air missiles are $0.4-1.2M [1,2]. Modern war is expensive; we trade consuming lives at war for consuming economic output at home.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM

Source: I worked with the Reapers and Predators (deployed and at home) in the Air Force and as s contractor working for L-3 Communications as a Satellite Engineer (Responsible for the datalink).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

Given that they were not designed for particularly long loiter times, they would make better cruise missiles than they would drones but as a crack suicide air to air squad they would be hard to beat (the F-16 seems much more capable as an air superiority fighter, not so much on ground attack, Iron Eagle not withstanding :-)

The F-22A is the USAFs Air Superiority fighter[1]. The F-14 and F-15 were the Air Superiority Fighter of the Navy and Air Force although they also became strike aircraft (F-14D and F-15E versions)

A single F-22 could down 4+ enemy fighters without even being seen, and the pilot coming back alive. The F-22 can also close for a gun kill. A Suicide squad of 4 F-16s would be hard pressed to beat that.

Just because a jet can dogfight does not make it an Air Superiority Fighter.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_superiority_fighter

Usually requires massive abs and leg muscle involvement to keep from blacking out.

[ Too tall to fit in any fighter aircraft :*(, this will have to do: http://is.gd/Tu3E4e ]

http://www.nuclearabms.info/Sprint.html

"However, it was literally a last ditch missile and was designed to intercept an incoming RV at less than 6,100m (20,000ft) altitude. At that altitude, the incoming RV would be traveling at around 3,000m/sec (10,000ft/sec) so a very fast reaction time was essential to insure interception. In fact, HiBEX was designed to have exited from its silo within 1/4 second and it accelerated at over 400g."

That's also one of the reasons why JSF has taken so long...

What if we put missiles on our missiles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetab...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak_missile

Powerful nations will be able to conduct warfare even more secretly (less witnesses and potential whistleblowers) and reduction in home casualty will allow them to conduct their wars for even longer.

Can we really trust these countries to use this sort of technology responsibly? Clearly not. Interesting and clever technology but ultimately distasteful and sinister.

Also the unmanned F16 provides 0 advantages over a purpose built UAV (plus is bigger, slower, and more expensive), I highly doubt anybody would seriously consider these for warfare applications.

It's cool tech, take it at face value.

Seems that removing humans from harm's way on one side of the conflict would have pretty big implications wrt high level decision-making.

>I highly doubt anybody would seriously consider these for warfare applications.

Are you saying that Iarger fighters no longer have utility as opposed to purpose-built UAVs?

Bitcoin is a potential solution for (b), were it to truly become dominant and replace non-government demand for Federal Reserve notes.

I fully support the US defending itself, and in that regard, I'm not sure that "the citizenry" would make better decisions than the Bush/Obama war complex. So I'm not saying this is a perfect utopoan solution. Just something to think about.

The US gets out of this by being able to do quantitative easing.

So do I. The problem is that they are confusing attack and defense.

If someone has the means and intent to attack you, by all means, a preemptive attack is a good means of defense.

Attack and defense are not fundamentally different. Force is force. The question is who initiated it or threatened to initiate it. That is the bad guy.

It might turn out more like the picture you've painted, but I think it's too early to say for certain. It could be a good thing.

Drones can also be mostly automated, so one person can do a lot more. For example, the fire-bombing of Dresden took several hundred bombers crewed by thousands. With semi-automated drones, the crews are eliminated and you only need enough pilots to man a single wave at a time, with the following waves waiting on autopilot until ready to engage. In a campaign of sustained bombing where each bomber makes several trips, the return-trip to base for armaments/fuel can also be automated, allowing a single pilot to keep dozens of planes in the air. If they'd had drone-bombers, the allies could have razed Dresden with a dozen men or so.

Would the U.S. fire-bomb an entire city, civilians and all today? Probably not, but this technology will not be limited to the U.S. for long. With the reduced need for pilots, the real limiting factor on air power will be manufacturing capacity (not the U.S.'s forte these days). Also, with such a tiny number of pilots needed to run a massively destructive force, it's going to be easier to select "morally flexible" pilots.

Military drones are a Pandora's box. The U.S. opened it, but other nations are starting to use them now too. While drones may reduce military casualties, the negative concerns they raise are numerous and severe. As AI improves, the role of human pilots may also be further diminished to the point where one immoral leader (or potentially a hacker) could kill millions. Civilians are going to be able to build drones easily as well. In fact, this is already happening.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/german...

As the article says, just adding a grenade could have allowed them to assassinate the German chancellor. Drone-attacks are going to be a serious problem in the future.

Given that actors who deploy automated or RC weaponry keep its own soldiers out of harm's way, it seems that the natural counter for other parties would be to develop its own such weaponry as a deterrent. The goal for each side then becomes to remove as many of its own humans from harm's way as possible. Thus, escalation may be inevitable and, at some point, it seems that various actors would have a bevy of such weaponry pointed at one another's human populations, as well as infrastructure.

Fewer American casualties. More total casualties, since UAVs ease the task of attacking foreign people without risking the lives of American pilots.

When you say people, you mean the humans who are fortunate to be on the side of the richest team

Automation in warfare and one-sided removal of the human element for the richest side isn't necesserially bad, but it is bad when we can't trust the governments who have this technology and when they repeatedly act unethically.

They're not even trying, are they.

An aircraft is now just a mobile long-range weapons platform.

That same type of thinking was prevalent in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Its failings ultimately led to the creation of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, more commonly known as TOPGUN.[1]

Positive target identification sometimes requires closing within visual range of the target. As long as there's still a human in the cockpit, the necessity of pilots being trained and equipped for dogfighting will persist.

Even then, there's still going to be dogfighting in a sense, because one of the foremost advantages of autonomous figher aircraft is their ability to execute high-G maneuvers far in excess of what humans can tolerate.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Fighter_Weap...

For example, if the skies of tomorrow are filled with inexpensive drones, it's grossly cost-ineffective to fight with long range guided missiles.

We don't plan to fight calvary anymore, do we? And hence there goes dogfighting.

Perhaps. But human dogfighting skills will prove even more worthless in that future, relative to the guided missiles.

Still, it's interesting to see the progressive powerlessness of fighter pilots and open testing of fighter drones.

I think what's catching attention is that the F-16 is in the active inventory, but a modern Block 50/52 is not the same as the original A's that rolled off the line in the 70s.

These are not going to be used to bomb militants anytime soon. They don't have the capability to drop the weapons needed, and the costs to provide this capability (sensors and electronics upgrades) can be met with purpose-built drones at a fraction of the cost.

It's like the same model car, only 10 years apart. They're technically the same name and lineage, but wildly different in terms of performance and capability. That's why we're blasting them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/309th_Aerospace_Maintenance_and...

https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.17089,-110.855184&q=loc:3...

I really don't understand what he is trying to say here.

Reporters sometime pressure a source to give them a negative sentence so they can bring balance to an article. It means nothing except that the reporter didn't want to seem one sided.

That's going to get interesting in Dutch parliament...

I've just finished reading Generation Kill for the second time - I highly recommend it for an idea of what things are actually like.

The only way to do it well right now would be to have one human piloted jet (preferably with 2 pilots) as the wing leader and the autopilot ones following it and executing commands issued by those pilots.

This would make old planes useable on the battlefield again (recon, escort, decoys, you name it)... oh how useless the F35 program will be :-)...