Soldier Pilots - The Future of Air Combat

The increasing importance of air warfare has led to many debates and speculation with regard to the future of air combat. During the First World War air combat was the revolutionary new technique. However, the increasing value attached to human life and also advancement in technology is changing the face of air combat. There is a continuing debate between analysts as to the direction air combat will take. One school of thought suggests that the inclination of air craft design will be increasingly towards unmanned air craft while the other school of thought suggests that whatever the degree of advancement in technology might be, air combat can never be completely robotised. The human judgement cannot be made redundant.

The new breed of air crafts however seem to belie the second school of thought as technology is increasingly veering towards unmanned air crafts. The new prototypes being developed by the first world nations are smaller machines designed to be mission specific and programmed for single missions. These aircrafts are smaller in size because they do not even have a cockpit and can fly longer hours at lower costs, in terms of both human life and money.

Despite the direction aviation technology is heading in, manned aircraft is still an active part of the air forces defence strategy purely because its efficacy has been effectively demonstrated in the past. Time and again, it has been proven that what technology can do is not necessarily what technology will do. Therefore, Air Combat Manoeuvring (ACM) continues to be important, primarily because of the lessons learnt in the past. In the debate of technology versus pilot skill training, it follows that with new technologies coming to the fore, the focus will be more on specialisation than redundancies.

Given the different aspects of combat, almost all of the unmanned air craft  technology is focused on reconnaissance and bombing capabilities. Technology at the same time is also building more effective swifter, stealthier air planes for combat flying. The future of combat flying will inevitably lean towards safer and more manoeuvrable aircraft through the development of stealth technology and more intensive ACM training.