In the Secretary Gates v. General Moseley spat, the general’s comments on a place for manned and unmanned platforms jumped out (emphasis mine):

Moseley said there is no intentional bias against unmanned aircraft in the Air Force. There is a place for both manned and unmanned, he said. “Secretary Wynne got tired of hearing me say this when we were beaten up about not going all unmanned.” The reality is that there are few instances when the use of unmanned aviation is imperative. “One is when you believe the threat is so terrible that you’ll lose the human,” he said. “I believe the Air Force has never found that threat. We will penetrate any threat. We haven’t found a place we won’t go. So I don’t buy that one.”

The other is when human pilots are the limiting factor to the persistence of the machine. “I got that one,” said Moseley. “You leave the plane out there for 30 hours on a reconnaissance mission. That’s a valid one.”

Isn’t that backwards? In this era of declining budgets, a need for persistence (in general), and an almost total lack of contested airspace, isn’t the onus on the Air Force to prove a need for the use of human pilots? Why are we still considering manned aircraft the default, and only operating them remotely in particular circumstances?

I guess it seems as if there’s no overwhelming rationale for maintaining pilot primacy with the vast majority of missions. And I’m the first to admit I would try and have it both ways: if the airspace is too dangerous, then of course we’d want to minimize pilot risk and maximize unmanned platforms. If  airspace is uncontested, then it would seem that the skill and reaction time of a human pilot is unwarranted.

Obviously, manned flight isn’t going anywhere, but to declare the Air Force as essentially a force of human-piloted aircraft, except for a few instances, seems to be ignoring the larger trends and gains to be had from unmanned aviation.

(Original link h/t Rich Ganske).