Here is a News article from 2007 that confirms my previous statement
Here is an article from Wired, June 2005. Part of it mentions a pilot at the end of his training.
The way they are describing piloting the UAV I wouldn’t think that even a five second delay would be significant.
We’ll see one about two hours after one crashes in a place where there are witnesses.
Too techno-phobic to post a real life example? 
(From a previous thread of mine.) Neural Robots Incorporated has made autonomous helicopters with AA-12 12-gauge machine shotguns.
Drifting a bit from UAVs, one of the people who worked at the company that developed Teddy Ruxpin now owns a company called Robotex that makes ground robots carrying the AA-12. One of Robotex’s designs is an armed robot that carries six smaller robots, because until now war wasn’t enough like 1980s arcade games.
The logical extension of UAV’s would be to slave them to piloted aircraft and operate as a swarm. The UAV’s would react to the pilot’s commands and attack what the pilot attacks. Imaging a group of eight which the pilot can task in groups of 2. Group 1 is assigned incoming aircraft, group 2 to a ground assault, group 3 to ground based radar and group 4 to airborn radar. The piloted aircraft (with multiple crew) would exist to eliminate time lag and the UAV’s would act as a buffer zone for the piloted aircraft.
That is what has been predicted since the Eisenhower administration. They were wrong then too.
Makes good sense to me. But if they could stick a bomb, just one, on the aircraft would make sense.
Oh. My. God.
WIN.
As I understand it, the real reason development has dragged on fighter and armed UAVs in general is due to most senior Air Force officers being ex-pilots. IIRC, tests showed years ago that armed drones are better in combat than manned fighters, but they’ve resisted anything that would make their former profession less important or obsolete.
Thats not really an issue. A modern warzone is a jamming nightmare. Both sides are doing their best to jam communications, radar, etc. This is already a mitigated risk. If youre worried then let me introduce you to my friend the anti-radiation missile. The jamming needs to come from somewhere and those little guys will find it.
Oh, as to who to fight, how about some modern airforces like China, Russia, all of W. Europe, Pakistan, Iran, N Korea, Japan, Canada, etc. Friends today may not be friends tomorrow and China and Russia sure as heck arent crazy enough to start WWIII using nukes.
Also, Boeing is working on this stuff, its called the X-45. They flew a few prototypes a couple of years ago but they didnt go into production. The one they are working on may go into production soon.
I’d like to see the results of those tests…I expect that this isn’t true. How could it be, for reasons already outlined? Granted, dogfighting aircraft is inexorably becoming less relevant, but with the lag time associated with remotely piloted aircraft (which is fine for the slower, prop-powered UAV’s we have now), the lack of human intuition and reflex, etc…I just cannot envision that a jet-powered UAV could perform as well as an F-22 in a dogfight.
Why not? Youll have a trained pilot controlling it from the ground. He can use his existing skills but will never have to worry about g-forces or getting killed.
Modern militaries dont have dogfights. You launch a missile from over the horizon. The guy with the better equipment will always win.
That’s been mostly true since the stone age.
Except when he doesn’t win.
Well, if you need to substantially suppress the EW environment to be able to use fighter UAVs, it’s not as simple as launching a bunch of AARGMs. Many modern air forces are putting very capable DRFM pods on their fighter aircraft. And if we need fighter UAVs to go kill the DRFM equipped enemy fighters so we can operate figher UAVs… well, then, we’ve got ourselves into a feedback loop.
No UCAV is going into production soon, and Northrup’s X-47 is considerably more advanced than Boeing’s entry. Both aircraft are essentially technology demonstrators, not much more. The X-47 is supposed to attempt its first carrier landing in 2011. It will be many more years of development after that before anything is ready for production.
Yep. Who do you think is developing future weapons? 80’s gamer geeks. Look at the controllers for weapons in current use.** Openly declaring that the Universal Control System (UCS) derives from standard video-game controllers, the defense contractor said they would combine these consumer electronics with their own decades of experience in command and control systems.**
A remote piloted craft has just as much intution as one piloted by a guy in a cockpit, the reaction time is the same if the controller is close enough that lightspeed doesn’t impose significant delay, and the drone is much more agile because it doesn’t have a flimsy human on board.
What are the limits structurally of a typical modern warplane versus the limits of the human body? Are they even close?
And I still wonder at the reaction time issue. A pilot of a very modern fighter plane would have instant control over his aircraft, UAV’s would have a lot to prove in this area, considered the ones we use now are piloted from the USA and are flying over Afghanistan. And are prop planes, which I suspect allow for significant lag time between controller and vehicle.
Thats a chicken and the egg problem. Fighters are designed for human use. Remove the human and engineers will be free to do a lot more with them.