scribbler614
17th Aug 2006, 14:31
Quiet half hour in office.
Reaching for my trusty crystal ball, what is this I see emerging from the mists of future time? A disturbing extract from the BBC news website, two decades hence.....
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August 17, 2026. TYPHOON'S LAST BLAST
King William and Prime Minister Euan Blair today attended a ceremony to mark the disbanding of the RAF's last squadron of manned combat aircraft.
Watched by a small crowd, the final remaining unit of 12 ageing Typhoon jets performed one last flypast at a rain-swept RAF Brize Norton, the service's only remaining flying station.
The number of manned aircraft has plummeted as cheaper unmanned aerial vehicles have usurped the role of pilots - ever since drones proved their worth so dramatically in the 2012 invasion of Iran.
Now virtually all RAF operations involve UAVs - provided under a PFI contract by the global defence and furniture conglomerate BAE-Ikea.
The drones are operated remotely via satellites - mostly by balding computer technicians with bad skin and rows of biros in their shirt pockets, who have never been near a cockpit but sit in a heavily-guarded shed on the outskirts of Slough, drinking cheap coffee.
Only the recently-delivered A400M transporters are still flown by humans, and are kept busy ferrying the Army's three remaining infantry battalions to and from Afghanistan's Helmand province, where fighting against the Taliban recently entered its 21st year.
Martin Baker - the former leading producer of ejection seats for fast jets - called in the receivers last month, admitting that its foray into the luxury sofa market had been 'misguided.'
The RAF's already shrinking reputation was crushed two years ago when the entire class of officer cadets at its Cranwell training college was arrested and subsequently jailed for terrorism offences.
The young and eager would-be pilots had formed a secret society of modern-day machine wreckers, roaming military installations at night wearing balaclavas and smashing UAVs to pieces with cricket bats.
The final tragic irony came when the then Chief of the Air Staff - suspected by Special Branch of being the ringleader - was shot down over the Buckinghamshire countryside during an unauthorised sortie in a vintage Tornado bomber he had stolen from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
Air Chief Marshall Sir George Sticken-Ruddahr was blown from the skies by a police-operated UAV drone close to the Prime Minister's official residence at Chequers.
A leaked Board of Inquiry report later concluded that the crazed chief had been attempting a futile kamikaze-style attack - using the ageing and obsolete jet which he learnt to fly as a young man - in protest at the fate of his beloved service.
Pprune, the shadowy aviation 'chatroom' used to coordinate the attacks, was officially proscribed as a terrorist organisation, and membership is now illegal.
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Hmmmm. What do the experts think?
Will the era of the military combat pilot last much more than, say, 120 years?
For how long will human-in-the-loop mean human-in-the-sky?
Will your children or their children ever don their green bags and pumpy trousers, and slip the surly bonds of earth? Or will UAVs give a whole new meaning to 'flying a desk'?
Will Typhoon and JSF be the last strike aircraft fitted with a seat?
Will the new carriers have too much deck space for the little diddie UAVs they'll actually operate?
Reaching for my trusty crystal ball, what is this I see emerging from the mists of future time? A disturbing extract from the BBC news website, two decades hence.....
---------------------------------
August 17, 2026. TYPHOON'S LAST BLAST
King William and Prime Minister Euan Blair today attended a ceremony to mark the disbanding of the RAF's last squadron of manned combat aircraft.
Watched by a small crowd, the final remaining unit of 12 ageing Typhoon jets performed one last flypast at a rain-swept RAF Brize Norton, the service's only remaining flying station.
The number of manned aircraft has plummeted as cheaper unmanned aerial vehicles have usurped the role of pilots - ever since drones proved their worth so dramatically in the 2012 invasion of Iran.
Now virtually all RAF operations involve UAVs - provided under a PFI contract by the global defence and furniture conglomerate BAE-Ikea.
The drones are operated remotely via satellites - mostly by balding computer technicians with bad skin and rows of biros in their shirt pockets, who have never been near a cockpit but sit in a heavily-guarded shed on the outskirts of Slough, drinking cheap coffee.
Only the recently-delivered A400M transporters are still flown by humans, and are kept busy ferrying the Army's three remaining infantry battalions to and from Afghanistan's Helmand province, where fighting against the Taliban recently entered its 21st year.
Martin Baker - the former leading producer of ejection seats for fast jets - called in the receivers last month, admitting that its foray into the luxury sofa market had been 'misguided.'
The RAF's already shrinking reputation was crushed two years ago when the entire class of officer cadets at its Cranwell training college was arrested and subsequently jailed for terrorism offences.
The young and eager would-be pilots had formed a secret society of modern-day machine wreckers, roaming military installations at night wearing balaclavas and smashing UAVs to pieces with cricket bats.
The final tragic irony came when the then Chief of the Air Staff - suspected by Special Branch of being the ringleader - was shot down over the Buckinghamshire countryside during an unauthorised sortie in a vintage Tornado bomber he had stolen from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
Air Chief Marshall Sir George Sticken-Ruddahr was blown from the skies by a police-operated UAV drone close to the Prime Minister's official residence at Chequers.
A leaked Board of Inquiry report later concluded that the crazed chief had been attempting a futile kamikaze-style attack - using the ageing and obsolete jet which he learnt to fly as a young man - in protest at the fate of his beloved service.
Pprune, the shadowy aviation 'chatroom' used to coordinate the attacks, was officially proscribed as a terrorist organisation, and membership is now illegal.
------------------------------------------
Hmmmm. What do the experts think?
Will the era of the military combat pilot last much more than, say, 120 years?
For how long will human-in-the-loop mean human-in-the-sky?
Will your children or their children ever don their green bags and pumpy trousers, and slip the surly bonds of earth? Or will UAVs give a whole new meaning to 'flying a desk'?
Will Typhoon and JSF be the last strike aircraft fitted with a seat?
Will the new carriers have too much deck space for the little diddie UAVs they'll actually operate?