Maybe somebody(s) know more than all of us! That is, from the perspective of using the Navy to project the US whenever and wherever we are needed, maybe an ever increasing "fleet" of drones coupled with a 300-ship Navy is just the right mix going forward??? I am impressed that the Air Force seems to have embraced drones and training more pilots to operate them efficiently and effectively. Just a thought...
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no but it does take a military budget to create a rail gun that will completely replace a 5" bow deck gun on must cruisers and destroyers...the batteries that will power this railgun are also going to power the ships engine and the aux systems as well...and actually if you want to talk about drones the navy has sea/surface/air drones
MQ-8 Fire Scout
Scan Eagle Recon/Attack Drone
Sea Stalker Surface Drone (looks alot like a MK-V S.T.A.B or Seal Tactical Assault Boat)...they are developing these in coronado i saw one tooling around in the bay while i was at NAB Coronado and i know they had this on a episode of future weapons
US Navy Developing Submarine-Launched Drones - Neatorama
i forget the name of the subsurface one but it is used for anti-mine warfare and could possibly used one day for unmanned attacks on ships or targets in a harbor or on close range targets at sea
did anyone see cindy sheehan and her anti-war cronies protesting the use of drones on al qaeda and taliban targets?seriously she is protesting a use of a weapon to take out the enemy that wont endanger troops lives
ut:
but in the end drones are only as good as the humans who control them... and nothing beats a humans reasoning judgement and skill onsite
some people question if we need all this advanced equipment to fight a war and if we are making it too playstation-ish ...but honestly if dropping a bomb or firing a missile on a target from a drone means we can devote more troops elsewhere instead of hunting people through terrain that is hard to navigate and potentially miss out on a chance at getting them
alot of the services have retooled their efforts for wars not against a giant army like the threat during the cold war but clandestine/littoral/surgical missions
just think back to the beginning of the iraq war...when we did the decapitation strike against sadaam...if we had some hunter killer drones scanning we would have been able to detect we didnt get our target and begin an active search for him...probably would have had him nailed months sooner
but really all this techno gear really doesnt compare to the awesome power that a Iowa Class Battleship brought...that was america's big stick...those 16" guns could strike more fear into a country than any army brigade or air force fighter wing could ever hope to accomplish... -
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