Ok - I stand corrected GF.

 

I guess I'm just not comfortable with the whole 'automatic warfare' thing.

 

Then again, if Ronnie Ray-gun had gotten his way, we wouldn't even need UAV's - we could just blitz everything from 200 miles in the sky...

 

BJ:)

  

  

Darn...this thing seems to have chucked a Spaz.

 

Sry bout the double-post - first I had none - now there's two...

 

BJ:)

Where's the darn 'Crikey Bar' when you need one....

 

*kick slap punch wallop*

 

There... that's more bedderer... :)

I don't think it would be a case of dealing with inserted external threats but internal criminal/bandit activity.

 

If I recall correctly there was a foreign tourist in central Australia who was basically mugged and left for dead but managed to survive and get picked up and returned to civilisation *apologies* the details are hazy, I heard it on breakfast radio as I was steeling myself to leave my bed about 6 months ago (probably longer).

 

To keep tabs on and check such activity a UAV (or several) would be a very attractive option versus manned aircaft, my belief is it would be a State/Territory police matter, not a military/federal one however such a decision would be driven by the same cost/benefit equation that has determined policy for the Federal government and ADF.

 

Which leads to my query, while the Fedeal government and ADF are looking to UCAVs as the future, are State/Territory governments seeking to procure this kind of technology (UAVs if not UCAVs) for their respective police forces for operational purposes in central Australia?

 

GD

Now that the first Shornet has been delivered 3 months ahead of schedule, I would expect that the 24th will be at least 3 months earlier than originally planned.   We should see the first one here 3 months earlier as well, very early 2010.

The first 4x airframes are going to be flown to Australia in March 2010. Other aircraft will be delivered in batches until end of 2012, with one aircraft remaining stateside for continuing training, trials (JASSM integration, perhaps?) etc.

 

IOC will be at the end of 2010. I expect a deployable detachment of 4x aircraft with A2A, A2G weapons, ATFLIR and full IDECM EW kit, or some similar number, will provide the IOC capability.

 

 

Armed Predators, Reapers etc are not "autonomous". They are flown, just like a manned fighter, with a pilot in a control centre, rather than in the aircraft itself.

 

They have some autonomous flight features of course, every modern aircraft does, I'm sure you don't mind travelling on a Qantas jet, despite the fact they have significant "autonomous" flight characteristics?

 

The difference between a Super Hornet (for example) and Reaper/Sky Warrior type armed UAV's, is speed, payload and flexibility in the former, traded off for range and loiter time in the latter.

 

They are complimentary systems and will be for much longer than some like to think, I would argue. I will not argue that unmanned assets will play an increasingly larger role within ADF and I for one would be extremely pleased if RAAF or Army, I don't really care who runs the asset, acquired an MQ-1 Reaper/Sky Warrior type capability. 

 

Something like the Sky Warrior, with 30hr + endurance and cheap to run "heavy fuel" (aka - diesel powered) engine, armed with 2x or 4x Hellfire II missiles or a pair of 500lbs laser guided bombs (JDAM will be integrated by the end of 2009 as well) and equipped with Lynx Synthetic Aperture radar, GMTI moving target capability and EO/IR seems to me to be the perfect surveillance/response aviation asset for running down those "insurgents in the outback" DoA type scenarios over the thousands of kilometres they need to cover in the outback.

 

Far superior to running fast jet / attack helo operations for cost effectiveness reasons, particularly where there is next to no air threat, yet with the targetting capacity and firepower to do the job.

 

What more could you want? Reaper C would be nice, but we have to crawl before we can walk most of the time...