Last week’s poll: are we seeing the last generation of manned military aircraft?
Will future generations of military pilots control their aircraft from a cockpit inside their aircraft, from a ground-based control centre, or will fully autonomous systems fight future air battles?
Given yesterday’s announcement from Farnborough – a future fighter jet that can deploy air launched ‘swarming’ Unmanned Air Vehicles – will we see a combination of capabilities that marry human and machine learning elements to create air lethality? DARPA, for example, appear keen on developing a similar idea with Gremlins, a programme that has challenged companies to investigate air-launched and air recoverable UAS.
Back in the present, there wasn’t much separating the 477 poll participants, with 34 per cent agreeing that fully autonomous aircraft are inevitable, followed by 32 per cent who think future military aircraft will be remotely operated. Third place went to the 31 per cent who think pilots will remain in the cockpit of next-generation military aircraft, and the remaining three per cent chose ‘none of the above’.
In the comments that followed doubts were raised about autonomous systems being able to make the right decisions.
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