Stealthy New B-21 Bomber Will Fly Unmanned Missions & Control Drones
The question of pilotless fighter jets has been around and extensively demonstrated for years
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By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
(Washington DC)
Several years ago, Air Force weapons developers made clear that the B-21 will be engineered for both manned and unmanned missions, and more recently service leaders have said the B-21 will likely control drones from the air.
An Unmanned Future?
These are important and well-known developments, as autonomy, AI-enabled dogfighting, and unmanned combat has long been in development with the Pentagon.
Years ago, former Navy Secretary Ray Maybus said it seems likely the F-35C will be the last manned fighter ever to exist. This is more than likely not the case, yet few would question the growing significance of unmanned systems for survivability, forward surveillance, and even precision weapons attacks when controlled by a human.
We are already seeing the more likely scenario, which is that drones and unmanned systems will increasingly be controlled in large numbers from the air, something that massively reduces latency, streamlines operations, and greatly widens the mission envelope.
The question of pilotless fighter jets has been around and extensively demonstrated for years. The concept of an unmanned bomber seems to make even more sense, particularly if the actual bomb dropping and lethal decision-making is still made remotely by humans. Bombers do not need to maneuver or dogfight like a fighter jet, so wouldn’t there be even more of a rationale to move toward unmanned bombers?
Remote drone attacks have been successful for years in Iraq and Afghanistan as they have enabled precision attacks yet retained humans in a key command and control capacity, making decisions about lethal force.