Abolish the Air Force

[Rex Brynen]

I have absolutely no position on this at all. However, it does occur to me...

The UAV is essentially a fixed-wing, pilotless, land-based airplane.

...that, for the most part--and despite the acronym--they're not really "pilotless" at all--the pilot is simply located at a remote location.

[wm]

I have absolutely no position on this at all. However, it does occur to me...



...that, for the most part--and despite the acronym--they're not really "pilotless" at all--the pilot is simply located at a remote location.

Interestingly, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) (now known as unmanned aerial systems or UAS) used to be called remotely piloted vehicles (RPV), which they still are--remotely piloted, that is. BTW "unmanned," "unpiloted," and "pilotless" are not synonyms. Even most missiles are piloted after a fashion (since missiles tend to have a guidance system--a pilot is a species of guidance system).

I think it would be instructive to figure out why are we not fighting about Unmanned Underseas Vehicles and Unmanned Ground Vehicles.