« Where the Fascists Went | Main | Sympathetic Magic and a Slow News Day »
January 4, 2006
Sensors
As a general rule, I tend to be very much in favor of having humans do things. While it is nice that a robot can go to Mars and find out all kinds of things for us, it is indisputable that there are things it cannot do. For example, a rover won't glance at the back side of a rock, see a strange color, and go investigate it; thus a rover might not find something important that a human would find, like water ice. Similarly, it is an open question whether a UAV capable of high-G turns could outfight a human pilot; the future will tell, when we have both available and can test them against each other. But there are some things that just don't require a human, and in fact where a human is a detriment to getting the job done.
Take, for example, aerial reconnaissance. Small UAVs are providing troops on the ground with information they would not otherwise get, because it's too expensive to use a manned aircraft for such missions, and this is costing the enemy dearly while saving the lives of our forces. Larger UAVs have basically gotten to the point, now, that they can do what the U2 can do, and without risking a pilot. So it makes sense that the Air Force will be retiring the U2 shortly. Why risk a manned platform where an unmanned platform will do the job with less cost and less risk? At the altitude that U2s fly, it's not like the pilots are making decisions on where to go and what to photograph: they can't see what they're surveilling.
I suspect that there'll be griping, but I really don't see a downside here.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.caerdroia.org/MT/mt-tb.cgi/736