Ah, BEagle - '''Fings ain't Wot they Useda Be", right?
The thing about UAVs - or one of the things, anyway - is that they do strange things to Force Structure. Phoenix was supposed to go with MLRS. Giving the Gunners a weapon with a longer-than-they-were-used-to range meant that they needed their own asset to determine where the target was and whether they were hitting it. So they got Phoenix.
But since MLRS in the sort of Out-of-Area-Conflict now in vogue isn't a real asset, Phoenix didn't have a job - until it was realised that live IR pictures of the gorund were quite useful for other things. So the Gunners found they had An Assett that didn't go bang. And everyone wanted their data. So they were popular -which wasn't what they were used to. So now the lines of communication had to change: Gunners weren't an Intel sink - they'd become a source. Force Structure change.
Now, the next step. I wonder if I could make a UAV deliver a worthwhile weapon? Mmmm...lets call it a Cruise Missile. (And btw: why on earth has the B2 got people in it? Seems like an ideal remotely controlled operation, at least in its current usage. And none of America's Finest are put in danger, which has major economic benefits, if that's your yardstick.)
So let's get further out of the box: could a UAV shoot down another UAV? We'd get an Unmanned Combat Airvehicle, right? And Boeing and LM are working hard with the US Taxpayers Dollars on that right now. But what are the current smartest G-to-A or A-to-A missiles if not UCAVs with very small RoA or Time-on-Station? Making them 'real' UCAVs is just a scaling issue, that's all.
And a Force Structure issue...which is where I came in. To whom do they belong? Who uses them? Where do they get their data from - and where do they send it to?
Seems the distinction between land, sea and air is increasingly old fashioned. What's needed is a distinction in function, not the medium in which it's peformed.
'Fings Change - adapt or die.
GrazingI