"Historic day: Carrier-based drone flies with manned..." Topic

… aircraft.

"A computer-controlled drone launched, flew and landed alongside a fighter jet during an exercise Sunday off the Virginia coast — proving for the first time that manned and unmanned aircraft can operate together.

In tests aboard the Norfolk-based USS Theodore Roosevelt, the Navy launched an F/A-18 Hornet and the X-47B, a prototype unmanned aircraft. After a 24-minute flight, the X-47B landed on the carrier's flight deck, folded its wings and taxied away from the landing area, allowing the Hornet to land.

"What you saw today was history," said Rear Adm. Mat Winter, who oversees the Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, at a news conference following the trial runs. "It was history in the making and it's the next steps in our understanding of how technologies come together to the tactical — to provide a war-fighting capabilities."…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

Cool! Was wondering when this would happen!

Now to decide just what roles the Naval armed drone should be doing, so that Boeing/LockMart/Northrup can start designing the combat-duty version of the X47. Personally, I'd want the drones doing SEAD and maybe CAS, along with combat recon missions. All the high-threat roles, basically.

If you're really a bastard, you put the controller station into the back seat of an FA18F or EA18G, and have a trio or quartet of drones shadowing the manned bird, and the backseater just tells the drones what target to engage. The Navy has already demonstrated a group of drones that were given orders to attack the installation at location X, and the drones figured out the attack plan and executed it completely autonomously. No input from the controller other than 'attack this place', the 4 drones selected which drone would hit the primary target, which drones would hit the defenses, and which drone would do the bomb damage assessment pass, all based on which drone was best positioned to make the attack pass with the greatest chance of success!

Slightly scary, this attack drone thing. Magnifies what one person who goes bonkers can do. And keeps the whole Skynet issue alive!

I like IT !!!!!!!

Me too!

Amicalement
Armand

Makes me wonder how long until the carrier personnel, flight-deck crew, and captain/admiral are all replaced as well, for fully autonomous ops.

Shades of Battlestar Galactica……….

@Mako: Unlikely, as the US likes having a person in the loop to fire weapons.

Also, robots/computer programs don't do well when unexpected things happen, like combat damage and even simple maintenance. So you're going to see living drone mechanics and crew on the carriers for a long time yet.