When you drop a 2,000lb laser guided bomb on a field HQ, you’re going to kill some leadership. Ditto dropping larger numbers of unguided bombs. I’m sorry, but the technology existed both then and long beforehand, and wasn’t limited to static targets as you suggest.
Snipers have been shooting officers long before WW2. As far as ‘our’ use of snipers, it can be dated to the birth of the republic in 1776. We have the capability to attack the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership without putting soldier’s lives at risk with or without drones. Aircraft can drop precision munitions as easily as drones, and the risk against air defense from the Taliban and Al Qaeda is non-existent. In the face of an opponent with actual air defenses, drones risk being shot down as well as aircraft, only much more so. They are much, much slower than aircraft, and Joe drone pilot sitting in the US has a lot less situational awareness than a pilot in the cockpit.
Can there even be a military genius anymore? For the most part conflicts are so governed by people so far away that any leader is unable to act independently.
I can’t see set piece battles that require the sort of genius that was applied in the past.
If you can’t see the qualitative difference between using a 2000lb bomb to that takes out a building and hellfire missile launched from a UAV taking out a single vehicle, then it is a waste of time discussing the subject with you.
You apparently haven’t noticed that we run drone missions over Pakistan, which does have air defenses. The important point about drones is that they can be shot down and the pilot goes home and sleeps in his own bed. A pilot flying over a battlefield at 30,000 feet at 500 knots has little situation awareness of the actual battlefield. A Reaper can run a 40 hour mission and has a sensor suite that read a license plate from 2 miles away.
Absolutely. If anything military leadership has become more direct. The people involved may be farther away physically but modern communications has negated the effects of physical distance. An ancient commander like Alexander or Hannibal was limited to how far he could yell or how fast his messengers could run. But with modern technology, a modern commander can talk one-on-one in real time with virtually everyone in his command.
I can see the quantitative difference. A 2,000lb LGB does a lot more damage than a hellfire. I suppose it occurs to you that LGBs don’t only come in 2,000lb varieties and aircraft can use a very wide range of precision munitions including the hellfire if less or more damage is desired to be done, and that LGBs aren’t somehow magically restricted to only being able to hit buildings rather than individual vehicles. Tank plinking, a term the higher ups didn’t particularly like, was coined for aircraft with FLIR or LANTIRN and Pave Track Infrared sensors picking out individual tanks and other armored vehicles in the night when they showed up best in temperature difference from the desert and dropping 500lb LGBs on them. These weren’t buildings or static targets, aircraft were assigned boxes to hunt and kill whatever they found. But I guess if you are incapable of dealing with facts contrary to your preconceived notions, then yes, there is no point to your trying to discuss the topic.
Which they do not use against us, they’re our allies, remember? This is simply a non sequitur.
A pilot flying at any altitude or airspeed has a hell of a lot more situational awareness about air defenses being used against him on the actual battlefield than Joe drone operator who’s first indication that his drone has been fired on by a SAM is when his screen goes all static.
I’m sorry, but your notion that using unmanned drones have caused some qualitative change in the very nature of warfare is pure hogwash.
Ans you are operating in a fact free zone where our ‘allies’ haven’t already shot down American drones.
And you have no knowledge of the advancements made in UAVs in the 21st century. The Reaper has a sensor operator and actually has better awareness of the battlefield than a manually piloted aircraft. Pilots don’t rely on the Mark-1 eyeball as the primary defensive mechanism. We have the ability to keep missions in the air for over 24 hours and switch crews as needed, which you can’t do in most aircraft.
Napoleon used telegraphs…of course in those days, “telegraph” meant optical telegraphs using types of semaphore code. Napoleon used them quite effectively.
And rifles did exist, but Napoleon rejected them because, before the invention of the Minié ball in the 1840’s, the rate of fire was much slower than a smooth bore and fouling was particularly bad. The British did employ Rifle units against Napoleon.
Apparently I am, I was unaware that the Pakistani Air Force was in the business of shooting down American aircraft and drones, and they let the SAMs fly the second something crossed the border. Oh wait, they don’t, you mean thesedrones brought down by local tribesmen, which speaks to the greater vulnerability of drones to even the most basic of air defenses due to, you guessed it, their much slower speed and lack of situational awareness. As for operating in fact free zones, local tribesmen do not constitute Pakistan’s air defenses, which you indicate being used against us.
And you have no knowledge of air combat and what constitutes situational awareness. Any guesses on your part on how you know someone’s fired a shoulder launched IR seeking SAM at you? Or that normally radar-guided SAMs have been barrage fired with the operators intending to try a lock on after launch rather than painting you with the fire control radar and letting you know you’ve got inbound SAMs? That’s right; the Mk-1 eyeball that you seem to think has no use anymore.
Strictly speaking, the rifle dates back to 1520, but as you noted the fouling was bad and the rate of fire slower (and that’s saying something with how slow the rate of fire was with smooth bore muskets). I had intended my meaning to be the widespread replacement of smoothbore with rifled muskets, but perhaps I should have been more specific.
You don’t seem to comprehend that when a UAV gets shot down, the pilot goes home and sleeps in his own bed that night. This is a very useful feature when operating in hostile airspace. We are operating drones in Somalia, Iran, Libya and Yemen as well as Pakistan. We can keep operations in those areas on a 7/24 basis. We you compare risk to a UAV to a manned aircraft, you are talking apples and oranges.
You are wrong. Human beings can’t detect radar, IR or UV. All of those depend on electronics using Missile Approach Warning Systems systems.
No, what you aren’t comprehending is that they are much easier to shoot down, which is why local tribesmen have brought them down.
As I said; you have no understanding of air combat and what constitutes situational awareness. Pretty much what medicated said, IR guided missiles are terribly hard to detect as they are using a passive guidance system rather than actively using radar which will set off the radar warning receiver quite nicely. The only reliable method of spotting an IR guided missile, or radar guided one fired with the hope of a lock after launch is by spotting the smoke trail, something human beings are eminently able to see. The F-117 shot down by Serbia was apparently lost to an ancient SA-3 launched in blind fire with only a last minute use of the fire control radar or getting lucky on the proximity fuse.
Do you even bother to read the links before you post? 70% of planes shot down since the sixties were brought by passive IR seekers. This proves that your theory is busted about human senses providing a effective protection. If you read the links there are effective ways to detect passive IR seekers which they are being deployed in larger aircraft.
You also don’t seem to comprehend that unmanned aircraft are a lot cheaper than manned aircraft. You seem to want pilots to fly into harms way and get killed instead of using unmanned vehicles.
For all your theories, the military is buying UAV systems as fast as they can be built.