It’s not just me. The Economist also observes that the future belongs to drones. In this case, referring to the F-35 fighter and the many problems in the production program.
The future belongs to the drones
But the longer-term outlook for the F-35 is uncertain. Its costly capabilities are intended to make it effective against the air defences of a sophisticated enemy, such as China. But the growing vulnerability of American aircraft carriers to Chinese missiles will mean operating from well beyond the F-35’s 600-mile (1,000km) range.
Some military strategists already think that the job the F-35 is meant to do can be better handled by cruise missiles and remotely piloted drones. In many roles, unmanned planes are more efficient: they carry neither a bulky pilot nor the kit that keeps him alive, which means they can both turn faster and be stealthier. And if they are shot down, no one dies. Even the F-35’s champions concede that it will probably be the last manned strike fighter aircraft the West will build.
It is important not to overstate; there will long be a role for manned aircraft in warfare. Pilots will not be out of a job any time in the next several decades. But the technology is steadily moving toward an increase in the types, numbers, missions, and roles for drones, in both conventional warfare and counterterrorism. Recent articles about a drones “arms race” on account of the US supposedly having let the genie out of the bottle have quite frequently missed the point (I don’t include here the Washington Post’s story a week or two ago by William Wan and Peter Finn which, despite the phrase ‘global race’ in the headline, actually made precisely this observation).
The reasons for moving toward drones are, in the first place, about the cost and usefulness of drones themselves – countries that can afford cutting edge technology will either develop or buy them for reasons independent of what other countries do. Second, insofar as there is competitive pressure among countries to develop drones, it is far less about the other guy having one than responding to pressures of a different kind – e.g., as the article notes, the vulnerability of America’s carrier fleet to Chinese anti-ship missiles that operate from beyond the F-35’s range. And the most important arms race will be about counters to drones, and counters to the counters, and so on. Third, the military technology for drones is part of a larger shift in aviation generally; civil aviation will be transformed, and military applications will be a subset of that.