Friday, May 27, 2011

My standing on the UAV vs Manned Aircraft

As i have studied the topic of aerial drones through these weeks, my stance has changed a couple of times as i have gathered different information on the subject. When i first started with this topic, my stance was that the UAV was the way of the future and that eventually all military aircraft would be unmanned. The United States Air Force has even outlined specific drone planes that will fill the roles of current aircraft from spy planes, to fighters, to tankers and cargo planes. As i progressed through the research of this topic, I uncovered a lot of incidences of civilians killed by drones and drone accidents/crashes. That got me to think that maybe these drones are not as great of an idea as we first thought. As i have further researched this topic, i have found that the vast majority of the accidents/crashes were caused by pilot error and not the fault of the UAVs programming or design. Furthermore, the reported civilian deaths have been the result of various reasons. Some have been from the marking of targets by a random citizen who was paid for every target he market for the drone to kill, others have been because of the drones hellfire missiles being shot into residential areas knowing that these missiles are not completely accurate and have a big blast radius. Currently my position on this argument is that the UAV program has a lot of potential, but at this point in time, primarily due to human error, the system is lacking the support and training that it desperately needs. Government funding has gone to buy more and more UAVs but i submit that most of this money should go to further training of pilots and to further advance the methods used to fly these drones. The UAV has many advantages. Dont let inexperience keep these planes from the skies!

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