Robot Fighter Aircraft

There were some informative articles this last week about the new X-47B robot fighter that the Navy is prototyping.  This thing is big and carries a payload of 10000 lbs or 4500 kg.  That's a lot of bombs and missiles.  The fighter is supposed to be autonomous (e.g. no human operator - even remote) and it raises a lot of questions about accountability (can the AI be at fault?) and the role of these weapons.  We know these things are coming - worst case scenario - Skynet and Judgement Day, so it should be a lively topic.

• http://www.businessinsider.com/bi-x-47b-2012-1
• http://www.stripes.com/news/navy/new-drone-has-no-pilot-anywhere-so-who-s-accountable-1.166805
• http://www.as.northropgrumman.com/products/nucasx47b/gallery.html 

I read the estimated timeline to operationalize these autonomous fighters in a decade so this is not science fiction any more.  It also brings into doubt all of our favourite science fiction with human pilots like:

• Macross
• Gundam
• Battlestar Galactica / Star Wars
• and any other novel or show

Humans can't really keep up with machines like this for endurance, high G maneuvers, etc.  Even now I've read about numbers like the U.S. military have something like 7,500 drones at the end of 2011, which is one third of their aircraft fleet.  We can swarm our enemies with robots.  Why are humans piloting these things in SF?

I think it is time to watch the movie Stealth again. I was reading the Wikipedia entry and it was cool to run across this "The film shares similar plot and situations with Macross plus. Cohen has admitted that his main influence for Stealth was Macross." COOL!

ALSO,

TOR is having military sci fi week and here are a couple of the posts that caught my attention.

• http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/01/starship-troopers-the-movie I like Scalzi's work and his commentary is pretty darn good.  I'd agree with his viewpoint (beautiful young people being chopped up by big bugs) on the movie too even though I hated the tech in the movie.
• http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/01/anime-on-the-front-lines Lots of military sci fi anime, but no Macross here.  Gundam is an great example though of Japanese military SF that involves mecha.