WEBF,
thanks for the PM, which made me look again at the report.
I perhaps ought to share the result of this with a wider audience, since it makes the blog a little less valid as a source, I fear.
I thought I'd seen it the report before, to be honest. I had. In fact, I quoted two lines of it in a lecture I gave in June 2004...
The blogger says:
By coincidence, the US General Accountancy Office today issued a report on UAVs
Which means that I'm either pyschic or... the report is from March 2004! So why, I wonder, did the blogger say 'today'?
Taking the
March 2005 GAO report (html format), you get a more positive view of UCAVs with what seems a balanced assessment of capabilities versus problems. The issue for the GAO seems to be one of joined-up thinking at a strategic level so that the full potential of UAVs/UCAVs can be realised - not a warning that the theory and practicalities of the technology are miles apart.
The position, as I said above, seems to me to be one of 'No need to think about a manned platform just yet'. Who knows what'll be required or possible when JCA goes out of service? Why plan a sixth generation manned platform now when starting thinking in (say) 2025 - 20 years before the new platform is required - might give you a seventh generation manned platform instead?
I do not see the DIS as marking the end of the manned FJ platform in the UK. It might be that JCA is the last one, but DIS does not explicitly say so. The key issue, I think, and covered on the DIS thread, is one of what the implications and intentions for a national capabilty to produce defence equipment are. It's here that the DIS is open to question. The blogger, sadly, doesn't seem to have spotted this (although quite what his interpretation would be - probably that all military kit in the UK will henceforth be built by the French and Belgians - could be...er... interesting)