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Air Force Studies Autonomous Cargo Jets.
The Air Force has awarded a contract to Silicon Valley firm Reliable Robotics to study the feasibility of flying its biggest iron autonomously. The company will look at whether it makes sense to fly multi-engine jet cargo planes from gate to gate with a remote pilot monitoring from the ground. (avweb.lt.acemlnb.com) More...Not to worry, Sparkie. Read closer and see it's only an Air Force STUDy, R & D.
Obama spoke about shovel-ready spending ; IMO this R&D grant is merely "pencil-ready " spending by USAF. A make-work project, touting a shiny new object.
Obama spoke about shovel-ready spending ; IMO this R&D grant is merely "pencil-ready " spending by USAF. A make-work project, touting a shiny new object.
We are already doing that with large drones. Most large aircraft (commercial/military) can already almost takeoff, fly, and land on auto programming...save for flap, gear, and trim(?) settings...and ATC control. I think it's a great idea to look into...especially into an active battlefield situation.
Autonomous definition - "Not controlled by others or by outside forces; independent." Flying remotely isn't autonomous; it's still being controlled by a pilot. Now, if the control link fails, for whatever reason, then the aircraft will be flying autonomously with whatever pre-programmed decision making abilities it has.
this is a vision inspired by the cartoon show the Jetsons, nonsensical then, more stupid now. Also by a generation who think deep down workers can be made obsolete, especially pilots and flight engineers. A pilot remote monitering an inflght aircraft: pardon me as i snicker. self evident (ought to be )shortsightedness mixed with foolishstupidy is a heady brew when first taken, but nothing clever or smart remains thereafter.
Maybe in combat situations this is feasible. However, day to day operations we pretty much ran like a regular airline and everyday was a real world scenario, constantly moving cargo, mail, and pax. In the back of my mind I'm thinking autonomous cargo (MAC for us older guys, AMC for the newer guys) flights will grow a larger back log of cargo and pax in our Aerial Ports. Requirements change constantly to supply or resupply troops at fixed and forward bases. Despite what's in the regs these days, there is no cookie cutter load on any particular aircraft. Also we can reconfigure the cabin layout at a moment's notice depending on mission. Most of our MAC/AMC flights were regular channel missions but the loads between pax and cargo changed quickly depending on backlog and priority cargo.
Now that I think about it, I was phase 2 qualified to load C130's and 141's without a loadmaster, maybe this can be feasible...not, lol.