(February 16, 2014 at 3:55 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote:(February 16, 2014 at 3:18 pm)Minimalist Wrote: These pilots are not strafing a column at tree top level these days. They are firing a missile from miles away. Whether or not there is a man in the cockpit is not going to make much of a difference in target selection.
Ah, this is true, but target selection is still the issue. We have small(ish) UAVs for drone strikes now. No one is going to sign off on the billions of dollars of dev money for just bigger drones with more payload. What is proposed is fully autonomous (with the exception of possibly target acquisition) aircraft. But why, when there are plenty of red blooded boys (and girls) lining up willingly and with the advent of new avionics
and continued air superiority relatively safely flying more than capable aircraft now?
And also, there are plenty of aircraft/pilots strafing individual targets with 20mm depleted uranium rounds from close range to this day. There were some videos leaked by Snowden et al. that show this first hand.
Glad you mentioned DU ammo. The 30mm shells for the A-10 were effective but the A-10 is being retired. The Bradley AFV uses DU ammo but there have been serious investigations of the impact of DU regarding Gulf War syndrome. Probably be a good idea to get rid of that shit. Although as was demonstrated with Agent Orange, the Pentagon has no problem poisoning the grunts.
