Your thoughts on UAV's and UCAV's taking over?

[262crew]

With all this talk about the the tanker deal it got me thinking about the future of manned fighter and bomber missions, I think UAV's and UCAV's are a good idea not because of the KC program but the idea of removing the human from the cockpit and placing an XBOX and a HD flat screen in front him/her you can then practice what the Russian military does mass quantity of cheap machines but without risking the human.

[Randy Haskin]

It's inevitable that UAVs will eventually take over some combat aviation capabilities.

Unfortunately current technology won't allow every mission -- especially ones like CAS that involve needing "eyes on" the situation -- to be performed by UAVs.

Pilots can get angry about it, but it's p*ssing in the wind. They're coming.

[mlenoch]

I have been told by a source close to the Pentagon, that 80 new aircraft were received in the USAF inventory in 2007. 30 manned aircraft and 50 unmanned.
(The number seems small, but that's the number they said.)
VL

[CAPFlyer]

Vlado, that sounds about right.

Per Jay Baughter's site, only 6 USAF serial numbers were allocated for 2007 and 96 assigned in 2006. These were all manned aircraft though. I don't show any assignment of serials for UAVs since 2004, so anything being delivered this year to the USAF in the form of UAVs was most likely on a pre-2004 contract.