....Unmanned AEW maybe closer than anyone thought
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Unmanned AEW?
- Thread starter HeyJoe
- Start date
*sigh*
(heard during a community brief on the E-2D AHE): "Enjoy this one, folks - after the D, it's all robots and blimps."
Of course, they're going to have to get DLs a hell of a lot more reliable before they won't need operators. The real irony is that the original concept of AEW, waaaaay back in the day, was just to have an airborne sensor with everything datalinked to the ships, but they couldn't quite make it work.
I'd submit that technology in the Navy may advance, but the reliability stays about the same.
(heard during a community brief on the E-2D AHE): "Enjoy this one, folks - after the D, it's all robots and blimps."
Of course, they're going to have to get DLs a hell of a lot more reliable before they won't need operators. The real irony is that the original concept of AEW, waaaaay back in the day, was just to have an airborne sensor with everything datalinked to the ships, but they couldn't quite make it work.
I'd submit that technology in the Navy may advance, but the reliability stays about the same.
MasterBates
Well-Known Member
And here I was hoping for the "Women of VAW" calendar just in time for Christmas..
No.... you really weren't.... trust me.
The delta should be in service a long time though. When it is phased out, what will be manned?
2sr2worry
Naval Aviation=world's greatest team sport
Given the advances of UAV's and the low production rate for E-2D it will be interesting to see if they build the entire production run before being driven to an unmanned platform.* My bet is that Northrop Grumman is already sketching out how to take the new radar and mate it with the X-47 airframe.* Airborne AESA with long loiter times, automated airborne refueling and automated carrier landing?* Navy would bite on that pretty quickly.* Don't forget ADM Nathman was championing the E-2 being the airborne UAV command post in an earlier net-centric view of the world.* Not too much of a leap to get to this outcome.
No more E-2 NFO's??? Wonder what VAW-120 would be like then...........so freaking pleasent is my guess
Oh, they'd still be around, but going to a ground station instead of the aircraft. Question is whether they can convert the E-2 to unmanned front end as well.
Wouldn't that take the "flight" out of NFO? In other words, it seems that those shiny wings would go away for new quals.
It's all supposition, but if you look at Air Force model with Predator Ops, they insist on rated "aircrew" (pilots and navigators) to appease FAA. I don't think there's any immediate plan to go that route in AEW, but that doesn't mean it won't happen at some point (senior folks love notion of persistent ISR and AEW and the limiting factor is often the human factor). That's why blimps/airships keep getting second, third, etc. looks every so often.
All it takes is circles....shouldn't be to hard.
I never believe the propoganda out of a company that just built some new wiz-bang weapon system, that report sounds a little too cheerful for me.
Something to keep in mind when it comes to UAV's and datalinks, they can always be jammed and you have to deal with bandwidth issues (that type of data is going to use a lot of it). Now the Israelis don't have to worry as much about either since they will be near home most of the time and their enemies have historically proved inept at using technology, but what bout us? We are in very permissive operating enviroments right now but what happens when we are not? Those unmanned systems might all of a sudden go stupid and that satellite we are streaming the bandwidth though might fall out of the sky. Then, we are in a world of hurt.