UAVs And Other Robot Planes
Kettering Bug
Kettering Bug Being Worked On Robotic planes, also known as UAV and drones are replacing piloted planes at a quickening rate. So far this is mostly in the military and I think you can see why. How would you feel about getting onto an airliner and flying from the U.S. To Europe, if the plane was completely automatic and had no pilot on board. Maybe it wouldn't even have a cockpit that a pilot could take over in case of an emergency. I don't particularly like the idea and I don't think that most of you would either. The funny part of all this is that when the Wright brothers made their first flight, they were probably thinking about how they could automate things more. What most people don't realize is that from the very beginning, there has been unmanned flight. The first of these took place in England in 1917, way before the computer age. A type of drone was actually being designed to be used in World War I, it was named the Kettering Bug. It was to be remotely controlled by a very primitive system and when its mission was finished the wings would come off and it would dive as a bomb. The only reason that it was never used was that the war ended before it could be put into production. Yes it is hard to believe that even in those early days, drones or UAVs as they are known today, were in the works. These crude vehicles would not have the capabilities of today's UAVs, but never the less would have been useful in saving pilot lives if they could be crashed over a large target, thus eliminating the need for manned bomber crews.
British World War II Airspeed Queen Wasp Target Drone A paper actually appeared in a publication known as Television News in 1931. It described using a television link to control an unpiloted plane, or UAV. The author of the paper was a man named Hugo Gernsback, who had been tinkering with the idea since 1924. This idea didn't seem to go anywhere and must have been viewed as science fiction for years, until the US Army decided to contract out to Northrop Corp. for some target drones. Northrop developed the very first assembly line for UAVs. During World War II drones were used as training devices. Even more strangely, the idea of the Kettering Bug was put forward again. This was the same Kettering Bug that missed production in World War I. This time it was not considered since its range was too limited. Toward the end of World War II the Germans built some drones as did the Japanese. Some people consider the V1 that terrorized London as a drone and indeed in a way it was. It resembled more of a crude type of cruise missile however and required a huge target such as a city, because there was no way of zeroing it in on anything smaller. The US also worked on something called a glide bomb and glide torpedo. It was essentially a guided vehicle with wings that would crash into a target. I guess you could call it a one way UAV. It was used late in the war in the Pacific and was dropped out of B-25s. When the US Air Force was formed, the emphasis was on pilots not UAVs and for years the Air Force resisted any real program to switch over to UAVs in a meaningful way. What they didn't foresee was that other US services would embrace the idea, which meant they had to find some way to take charge of this, if they wanted to control what was flying in the sky. I am sure that they still didn't like the idea that pilots flying expensive machines were going to be either partially replaced, or the even more dreadful idea that they would be almost entirely replaced. I believe that they bit the bullet, because they felt that they could not survive as a force otherwise. They have now thrown themselves into the development of UAV vehicles.
Unusaul Rotor Powered UAV Supposedly the first robotic aircraft to cross the North Atlantic Ocean was the Laima from Aerosonde Robotic Aircraft Pty Ltd., Melbourne, Australia. This happened in 1998. Is this true, or has there been secret military aircraft that has done this without a pilot being present? Would we ever know? The US Air Force actually began acquiring drones in 1948. I say that because even though that had them before that date, 1948 is considered the time that they developed functional drones that could be depended on. Still the amount was small and when the Air Force was approached in 1968 to develop a UAV program, it was shelved shortly thereafter. This didn't stop other countries from developing UAVs and it is said that Israel began to develop them far before we did. Some of the advantages of a UAV system is that the “pilot”, the guy or gal with the joystick in front of the monitor, could “fly” several vehicles at once. If some were shot down, he or she would still be fine and fully functional. The UAV, since it was free of its human pilot on-board, could now do maneuvers that a human couldn't take without blacking out, as long as the airframe was strong enough. All is not rosy however as was proved recently when terrorists were monitoring the video signals from the UAVs and could now see where they were headed. The signal has always been a problem. If a signal is going through a satellite, what happens if they satellite is destroyed, do we lose our entire flight of UAVs if they are too far for other radio signals? Another problem to think about is can they be jammed. Jamming has always been a part of war and we have jammed many a radio and radar station during wartime. Who is to say that an enemy might not be able to do this to us and render our entire fleet of UAVs inoperable. Would we have enough conventional fighters if this happened? Unfortunately here is what we face. As the national debt rises to huge proportions, we may not be able to maintain both an effective conventional fleet of planes and a large fleet of UAVs. What choices will there be made and how will they effect the future of this country? Will our navy start to become automated also? It has already begun. The newer ships need less personnel to man them. Will we have ships in the future that do not contain any people on them? Robot trucks are now being considered for the military, as is a suit that a soldier can wear that will increase his strength. It can be taken off and becomes a robot that can fight beside him. Will the soldier part of this equation be eliminated in the future? Maybe war will become more like a game where their robotic devices go up against ours. It will be a deadly game however when these same devices are aimed at towns and cities. |
