PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - "Pilotless airliners safer" - London Times article
Old 3rd Dec 2014, 22:30
  #173 (permalink)  
ShyTorque

Avoid imitations
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
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Read my last post. That is all about spurious warnings, though chip warnings are a rotary thing really.
Yes, I'm aware of that, having flown both rotary and FW, military and civilian.
I mentioned tail rotor chips specifically because you introduced a rotary wing example to the discussion to further your argument about the available technology. So now you want to disregard it because you couldn't provide an answer to the question I posed about it?

BTW, the military have never so far said that they believe that unmanned aircraft are better than manned. The idea of an unmanned machine is to keep the man safe, away from unnecessary risk due to enemy action.

Of course as an ex military man yourself you will recall that the Defence Minister of 1957, Duncan Sandys, obviously did believe that manned fighters should be replaced with missiles but it didn't really work out that way. It's generally recognised by the RAF that his policy did immense harm to the UK military capability and the associated defence industry, in the long term.

An aspect not yet discussed: If unmanned airliners ever come to be, who is going to be willing to sign off the aircraft to be dispatched, with a known defect? I'll bet a pound to a pinch of ***t that you won't find many engineers willing to sign their life away because once that aircraft gets airborne, it's fully their responsibility, there are no further links in the chain. Many of these extremely complicated aircraft (much more so than now, according to our resident expert, Tourist) will sit on the ground u/s for far longer than today's aircraft.
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