The End of the Beginning: Competing Approaches to Robotics in Air Warfare
Abstract
Twice in two decades the U.S. Air Force confronted demands for combat airpower that outstripped its supply. Both times it looked to robotics for help. Both times it neglected nuanced relationships between robotics and human capital strategy. Repeating the error in todays competitive strategic environment incurs intense institutional risk. Senior leaders heavily bet the future of air-to-air victory on the hope the service can unleash a new model of air combat. Future force planners, meanwhile, interpreted those instructions as a call to make unproven technologies conform to existing doctrine and reboot 1990s models of airpower.The idea that autonomous robotic wingmen will sustain favorable combat performance while reducing manpower costs is a mirage. The Air Force strategy to liquidate its Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) pilot inventories to pay for robotic wingmen means losing its most experienced robotics operators while unwittingly aggravating fighter pilot retention. Robotic wingmen, per se, are not the answer to restoring mass. Rather, succeeding in robotically-saturated air warfare requires alignment of clear terminology and concepts, architectures for dynamic command and control of many aircraft from many locations, a doctrinal refresh to pursue distributed air dominance operations, and realistic human capital plans leveraging existing pilot inventories.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2023
- Accession Number
- AD1198832
Entities
People
- Michael W. Byrnes