Yet after nearly 100 years, manned fighters still represent the overwhelming bulk of airpower, in terms of air-to-air and air-to-ground capabilities. But predictions of their irrelevance or obsolescence persist. Last month, U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus opined, “Unmanned systems, particularly autonomous ones, have to be the new normal in ever-increasing areas. For example, as good as it is, and as much as we need it and look forward to having it in the fleet for many years, the F-35 should be, and almost certainly will be, the last manned strike-fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.”
Unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV) enjoy a high level of political popularity, so Mabus’s comments were bound to resonate. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) quickly opined, “I hope the sentiments expressed by Secretary Mabus . . . will be reflected in the Navy’s future programmatic decisions.”
To supporters like Sen. McCain, UCAVs promise cost savings and better performance, welcome developments after the massively expensive F-22 and F-35 development programs. In addition to the economic savings associated with eliminating the need for pilots and cockpits in aircraft, remotely piloted and autonomous combat aircraft promise great virtues. They can penetrate enemy airspace for strike and reconnaissance missions without risking pilots’ lives. For air-to-air missions, they can maneuver violently, without any need to worry about jeopardizing the pilot.
There are two problems with these virtues. The first is that high-end UCAVs are very promising in a full-up shooting war, one where targets are known, battle lines are clear, and the objective is to destroy the enemy as quickly as possible. Yet for several decades now, most airpower engagements have been conducted under very different circumstances. Typical conflicts have included no-fly-zone enforcement, limited applications of force against misbehaving states, counterinsurgency missions, anti-piracy operations and interventions in civil wars.
Credit: U.S. Air Force

In situations like these, it isn’t about destroying the enemy as efficiently as possible. It’s about situational awareness, and it will be a very long time before remote data links allow this level of awareness to be conveyed to remote operators. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, when asked at a Defense One symposium about Mabus’s comments, noted that “the human brain . . . as a sensor in combat is still immensely important in our view . . . . Until we have a set of sensors that can maneuver as well as a manned platform in every scenario, then you should continue that manned platform.”
The second problem is that as air vehicles become more capable, the more pilots make sense as an insurance policy. The RQ-170 may well be a great unmanned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance asset, but the one that crashed in Iran would have had a better chance of returning home if a pilot had been onboard. Reaper-class aircraft are one thing, but aircraft with the payload, sensors and capabilities of a traditional fighter would be a valuable asset, one best protected by having an onboard pilot.
For a somewhat absurd example, consider the Air Force’s interest in an unmanned bomber as part of the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) program. Because the baseline LRS-B needs to be crewed to carry out a nuclear mission, the only cost savings with an unmanned version would be the crew itself. Does anyone really think that a $600 million aircraft with nobody onboard would be a clever way to save a few hundred thousand dollars a year?
But the debate about UCAVs and manned fighters is more than just an interesting trade study. Belief in UCAVs, like all the other beliefs in the coming irrelevance of manned fighters, potentially damages fighter program decisions. It promotes a belief that there is just one last fighter coming, so it had better do all missions for all people.
That 1957 U.K. white paper engendered the TSR2, a large multirole combat aircraft intended to perform all missions that was eventually canceled. Similar lines of thought in the U.S. created the TFX/F-111. Wishful thinking about UCAVs and the end of fighters likely played a role in the F-35’s creation, too.
Not surprisingly, combat aircraft have been oscillating between extremes, as the services revolt against the constraints of these all-purpose aircraft. We went from the one-plane-fits-all days of the TSR2 and F-111 (and F-4) in the 1960s to the service-specific F-14, F-15, F-16, F/A-18, AV-8 and A-10 programs of the 1970s. Then, in the 1990s, we saw a return to a single-type approach with the F-35.
And in the next decades, the tri-service F-35 will likely be supplanted and replaced by service-specific aircraft, too. The Navy’s own F/A-XX will then emerge as one of these manned aircraft, despite the politically friendly appeal of unmanned systems—and despite another round of predictions about the impending death of the manned fighter.