A second X-45A Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) made its first flight from Edwards Air Force Base recently.
It was also a test of Build 2.0 of the UCAV control software, which includes greater autonomy, the ability for human controllers to command multiple vehicles simultaneously, and "point-click-kill" capability.
Posted by jjwiseman at December 12, 2002 10:42 PMWhile I understand that their control software is likely a brilliant piece of engineering, the project makes me feel sad and depressed.
Circa 1985 in USSR, one (banned) punk song, grotesquing Soviet militarism, had such lines:
..and the order of our world
would be plain and would be right,
we will coat all the Earth
will the sky of our might..
s/'will the sky'/'with the sky'
Posted by: Eugene Zaikonnikov on December 13, 2002 02:58 AMBeautiful piece of technology. It makes me so happy to see that we are moving in the right direction. Industrial revolution allowed us to automate most of our services. Now we are automating even more service like military and government with the help of computers. Computation is cool.
Posted by: Dima on December 14, 2002 12:55 PMAbsolutely. Soon we will be out there, hunting Commies and Mutants, guided by a faultlessly operating computer.
How many times can I get again?
Posted by: Andreas Fuchs on December 15, 2002 01:05 AM"How many times can I get _reincarnated_ again?", of course. D'oh.
Posted by: Andreas Fuchs on December 15, 2002 01:06 AMWhy don't we just emulate Ender's game and plug our best shoot-em-up warriors unawares into this nifty little toy! Talk about cagey sam operators, eh?
Who would have thought that all that time spent playing Falcon 3.0 would actually be worth something.
Maybe the warriors don't need to be unaware, though.
Talk about a people's army, eh?
Maybe we can get Gilman Louie, or whatever the fuck his name is, to get on board with new Falcon releases.
I can see it now:
Falcon 5.0 - Incinerate Iraq!
All ladder leaders get to drop real fire on real people on the other side of the globe! Yippee
Falcon 6.0 - Smash the Slavs and Slants!
Now that we have our atennas spread throughout Central Asia, join in the fun and drop low yield nukes on any natural resource owners we have not yet co-opted!
Falcon 7.0 - Eviscerate the Earth!
One lucky player will get to do the ultimate honor - drop the E-bomb!
Wheee!
Once the rockets go up
Who cares where they come down?
That's not my department
Says Werner von Braun
En der German, or der English
I know how to count down...
Und I'm learning Chinese
Says Werner von Braun