Encouraging Risk and Embracing Uncertainty, The Need to Change US Army Culture

摘要

The history of unmanned aircraft from its origins before World War I through to the present has shown that unmanned aircraft in the past had not met with much success. Those that did meet with success were highly specialized and unable to accomplish a range of missions that would recommend large-scale integration into the United States military. Based on recent developments and operational successes, uninhabited combat aerial vehicles have finally reached the point where they will fulfill their promise across the spectrum of conflict. The Air Force is developing doctrine, weapons, and airframes that will yield a wealth of capability for the joint force commander by 2015. The United Stated military must be ready for the future-operating environment predicted by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Staff. In order to do this, the Joint Staff has enumerated five required capabilities if joint forces in the near future: rapid global projection; forcible entry into a joint operations area; immediate and synchronized employment of scaleable joint forces tailored to conduct simultaneously a broad range of joint military operations utilizing unified action; sustainment for extended periods in an austere environment or under anti-access or area denial conditions; and continuous joint C4ISR employment and knowledge generation fusion. Additionally, given the world environment, the author has added two capabilities which will be of great benefit to the joint combatant commander: the ability to employ a weapons system in diplomatically sensitive situations and the capability to execute a portion of the theater missile defense mission. This makes a list of seven capabilities which are the criteria that define whether the uninhabited combat aerial vehicle will be of utility to the joint combatant commander.