But Study Shows UAVs face Limits To Further Deployment

It's becoming harder and harder to be surprised by statistics on the growing use of unmanned aircraft in warfare. Israel recently announced that its UAVs now fly more flight hours than its manned aircraft. Now, wired.com reports a Congressional study finds 31 percent of all military aircraft are drones.

The growing use of drones is even more dramatic among US forces. The study was obtained by Danger Room, and counts 5,346 Ravens, and a total of 7,494 drones of all types in use by the US, compared to 10,767 manned aircraft.

The airline industry is already scrambling for ways to train enough pilots for the industry's needs in the future, as the military steadily phases out manned aircraft. In 20 more years, we may could ourselves watching the US Navy Blue Fire Scouts, or the US Air Force Thunderbots.

But Danger Room notes there are also some vulnerabilities, not mentioned in the report, which could slow the growth of the use of drones. One is their susceptibility to cyberwarfare, as demonstrated by a malware infection of drone cockpits at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. But the report does acknowledge bloat in the cost of sensor packages, overlapping acquisitions, and bandwidth limitations. The report notes that a single Global Hawk drone requires 500 megabytes per second worth of bandwidth, or “500 percent of the total bandwidth of the entire U.S. military used during the 1991 Gulf War.”

FMI: www.scribd.com/doc/77662547/1105-001