Justification for piloted aircraft in a far-future setting?

All right, let's talk about drones. I don't mean those little, glorified RC planes that people put Go-pros on, nor do I mean the Predator drones that the Air Force uses. Rather, I'm talking about the idea that, sometime in the not-so-distant future, all aircraft will be pilotless. For example, it is now agreed by many engineers that the aircraft of the future may not have physical pilots, but will instead be completely computer controlled.

So, I'm planning a story that takes place over a century in the future, and one of its most important scenes involves a character flying a fighter plane to attack the Big Bad's skyscraper. How can I justify the existence of such a seemingly obsolete technology in a future where drones would logically be the norm?

edited 8th Sep '17 7:21:38 PM by ElSquibbonator

Distrust of AI or prohibition on it ala Dune series. The manned craft lacks a certain exploit that the bad guy uses to defend against automated craft. It was originally a personal craft that has since been modified into something more serious and is a personal ship and the bad guy isn't expecting it or defending against it.

Those are a few off the top of my head.

That all aircraft will be pilotless in the future is something engineers come up with, and marketing wouldn't. Someone still has to sell the aircraft to a buyer, and the buyer may not be A) as convinced of AI perfection or B) simply not have enough use for it^note See: F-22, as the engineer.

Here is a scenario that might justify that in the civilian sector: After a few well-publicized Gimli Glider and Aloha 243 situations that drones couldn't handle - but human pilots could - some airlines simply stopped using automated airliners for passenger flights as an economic decision: customers got too skittish about the lack of a human touch. There is a market for human-piloted planes, and a separate market for drones (mostly cargo or short flights).

This carried over to the military as well. Turns out, the brass likes being able to actually blame and/or congratulate someone when things get FUBAR, and this is an important part of the contract. "Whoops, that GPS-I bug'll get fixed in the next firmware update" doesn't fly with military types. Thus for every two drone Q-50s, which replaces the cockpit with a drone-brain unit, there's one human-piloted F/D-50 directing them and an E-50 keeping an eye on the combat area. (That might even be an A/D-50 - Tuef, do you think that skyscraper job's for an A or an F? M's right out, in a world of drones.)

Alternately, the fighter isn't a fighter so much as a semi-automated gunship/transport, designed to get the combat side of a human platoon into a hostile area by shooting its way in and then parachuting Marines onto the scene.

Deus: By sky scraper do you mean the really high altitude craft or you talking the buildings?

Tuef: The skyscraper the Big Bad uses. Though thinking about that raises an interesting question...

Squib: I can't tell immediately if you said 'fighter' knowing how aircraft typically called that are used. (eg: do you describe your character flying a 'fighter' because that's all they had access to, or because you think of a 'fighter' as any smallish air force jet aircraft?)

Also, if it's far enough in the future, I would not be surprised at all if that skyscraper isn't a tall building but a floating aerial base. (Flying a military aircraft into the sort of place where skyscraper buildings are usually built would raise local air force hackles. Flying it into international waters, towards an aerial base, less so.)

Humans tend to over-rely on automation, and assume the mitigation of risk it brings means the risk is completely mitigated.

edited 9th Sep '17 2:36:34 AM by DeusDenuo

I've been watching Air Crash Investigation and I suspect the reason that aircraft might still be piloted is for when something does go wrong. If you watch that series while human error is often the cause of accidents, in the case of mechanical failure just as often the actions of the pilots save the day (and even when they don't, it's not for lack of trying).

I suspect will happen is an extension of what already exists. Human pilot(s) overseeing an increasingly automated system and only intervening when something goes wrong in an unexpected fashion. And they'll stay on the aircraft itself to prevent the possibility of communications failure, though the psychological reassurance for the passengers would also be a factor.

At the same time I agree that cargo flights are more likely to be completely automated (or to have their human element shifted to a remote control centre like some types of military drones). Because if a plane full of passengers crashes, it's a tragedy. If an automated cargo plane crashes (provided it doesn't hit anywhere populated on the way down) it's an insurance claim.

Maybe the pilot has had some work done, and is just as good - or even better - at piloting aircraft than an AI would be?

Deus: Ahh ok. Well flying around sky scrapers especially in city scapes has some unique challenges. Some sky scrapers have things like wires and supports strung between them and there is an issue of high wind generated by what effectively are artificial canyons in a heat island. The wind speed at higher portions of sky scrapers tends to pick up to dangerous levels. Which can make flying a craft close to them challenging. Helicopters are preferred for the obvious reason the improved maneuverability in all directions means they can get around those obstacles more effectively. Human piloted craft seem to do reasonably well in a city scape for the time being.

Though places like Dubai are set to begin testing automated air taxis in the not so distant future barring future problems or set backs. So we shall see.

Those are all very good ideas.

Robert A Heinlein mentioned this very thing in his novel Friday. Even though a computerized AI or a bio-engineered lifeform might be able to do the job far better than a human pilot, many passengers would flatly refuse to fly in an aircraft that lacked a human pilot altogether. ^note Prejudice against genetically-engineered lifeforms was very much a thing in this setting. If they could pass as human, they were termed Artificial Persons and treated as second-class citizens. If they were obviously non-human, they were called Living Artifacts and treated like animals, or worse. Thus, most Artificial Persons had false identities and lived in constant fear of being found out.

In addition, a genetically-engineered lifeform would be very likely to resent all this Fantastic Racism, and might decide to crash the plane deliberately out of spite. The risk of obviously non-human beings becoming too alienated from humanity to be responsible for the lives of humans is too high.

So, the airlines decided: no bio-engineered lifeforms as pilots. A computer AI does the actual piloting, but with a human pilot in the cockpit as backup, able to take control instantly whenever he deems it necessary or prudent. Most of the time, though, he just sits back and sips coffee while keeping an eye on things. However, the speed and precision required to actually fly the plane in an emergency make it likely that he would fail — but at least he would die trying, and be hailed as a hero posthumously.

edited 9th Sep '17 7:14:28 PM by pwiegle

I'd say that unless you have AI in your setting that is as capable of instantaneous judgment and improvisation, you basically have full-fledged AI on your hands that can be treated as a character in its own right. Otherwise, anything as hectic and complex and prone to unforeseen factors as combat would definitely require a human to be guiding them, at the very least, if not actively in control themselves. Alternatively you could have a situation where humanity is over-reliant on AI, and the bad guy uses this fact to create some sort of AI-disrupting device that basically makes drones unable to function in the vicinity of their base. Thus your character, one of the few oddballs remaining that still actually know how to fly a plane, must go in to defeat them.

It's actually very easy to justify this.

And the simplest justification can be summed up in a few words: Everything's made in China.

Now, that's probably confusing (at least, I hope so. It's supposed to make you wonder 'What the f- does he mean?'), but let me explain.
We, today, have the ability to automate nearly all our manufacturing, It wouldn't really take much to make an assembly line that can push out, say, a specific model of smart phone with pretty much zero manual labour and very little human oversight.

And yet instead of doing that, nearly all our smart phones are hand soldered by human beings in China. It doesn't make much sense, does it? Sure, labour costs in China aren't very high (though they're rising), but once the initial investment on the machines is paid off an automated factory costs even less to run. Why don't we just build those?

And the answer is that while, yes, you can build an automated factory for a certain model of smart phone and crank out those smart phones far more cheaply (or much faster at the same cost), but with that specific factory you can only make that model of smart phone and not a different (presumably newer) model without having to completely reconfigure the machines in the factory.
Those manual labourers in China, though? Their relatively low-tech tools and knowledge of the basics of putting together appliances have a wide enough range of applications that they can build your current model of smart phone, but if you need them to they can switch over to building your new model with no more effort than you printing out a couple hundred copies of the new diagram and handing them the new parts. And if you decided to get out of the smart phone business, those skilled workers in your Chinese factory are equally well at home putting together T Vs, gaming consoles, guidance systems for heat seeking missiles or any other doodad that amounts to a PCB with some peripheral junk attached.

You can justify pretty much any 'obsolete' technology in your story by remembering that as long as a cheap, low tech method will suffice, there will always be people who will use that method rather than the high tech one, even if the high tech one is superior on paper. Especially if the skills used for that low tech method are suitable to a wide range of applications.

edited 12th Sep '17 7:25:14 PM by Robrecht

You use somebody like Will smith in Irobot namely someone who despised technology. You team him up with a hacker genius. All computers are hackable so before they attack the big bad the genius disrupt the enemy's defense with a super virus in the same way Will smith's buddy does in Independance day with the mother ship. Now, the once secured way of flying is not secured anymore since computers are not reliable so he use an obsolete technology to do the job.

edited 13th Sep '17 7:54:23 PM by Loreley

Other options being that AI are considered fundamental people and have successfully demanded that they not be used as cannon fodder meant to die as Death is permanent for them. Doesn't make your good guys look very good if they are essentially building what are people just to die for them in mass droves.

Rob's approach is essentially how I justify an alien AI coming to Earth to recruit a human labor force. In this case, its an AI employer thats going "low tech".

I'm not sure if the science of this checks out, but what if, in the time period of the story, people have developed nanobots that can be widely dispersed through the air and will gather on enemy aircraft in order to sabotage them. To cleanse the aircraft of these nanobots, it has to repeatedly hit itself with an elecromagnetic pulse. This has the nasty side-effect of shutting down its own systems; nothing that can't be fixed by just rebooting everything, but that does leave the plane powerless for several seconds in mid-flight. As such, you need a human pilot who won't crap out when the EMP goes off, and can, during the reboot, use mechanical controls to maneuver the plane.

edited 5th Oct '17 7:51:38 PM by RavenWilder

I would think it depends on the timeline. At our current level of technology the vast majority of our unmanned aircraft operate with a man in the loop. Basically, they're just large remote control planes. There have been a few semi-autonomous ones, like Boeing's X-45 demonstrator. These have a human pilot "holding the reins" while the aircraft flies itself. As far as we know there are no truly autonomous aircraft.

This is likely to change dramatically within the next 10 to 20 years though, as autonomous systems are slowly becoming more mature. You'll occasionally hear the phrase "the last fighter pilot has already been born" when people are talking about this kind of thing. Autonomous aircraft are massively, unbelievably practical in terms of cost since you don't have to train pilots or include all the systems that allow a human to control an aircraft. Since nobody is risking their life they're more flexible in their application.

Given that air combat is already moving away from visual range dogfighting to BVR missile slinging I believe it's highly likely that within 40-50 years the air-to-air mission will be entirely autonomous. Obviously there's going to be a human issuing commands and providing oversight somewhere up the chain, that won't change any time soon, but I believe that the actual combat operations will be carried out by autonomous aircraft. Unmanned vehicles are also well-suited to strike missions for the same reasons. Suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses is one of the most dangerous missions a pilot can fly, and the idea of a fleet of stealthy unmanned strike aircraft designed to "kick down the door" in the opening days of a conflict and pave the way for manned aircraft is something that many armed forces are actively pursuing right now.

If your setting is just around a century in the future, manned aircraft will definitely still be around in some form. Aircraft from our present and near future will likely be common in the inventories of nations unable to afford modern equipment. More than a few third world countries are still flying aircraft from the 60s and 70s, even the US is still flying F-15s and F-16s which were introduced in the late 70s and aren't expected to be retired until 2030. As far as a modern country I believe modern armed forces a century in the future will field manned aircraft in smaller numbers, and I think these will probably end up being things like the current 6th generation fighter concept. Basically, a large and stealthy fighter aircraft with deep magazines of long range weaponry, protected by laser-based defense systems and carrying a wide range of electronic equipment. Currently these are only conceptual, but the plan is to have them serve as an airborne command hub for groups of autonomous aircraft. They'd hold powerful radars and larger weapons, and they'd be able to share targeting information with their autonomous wingmen to launch strikes from extreme distances. These programs are still in their infancy so I would think a century in the future evolved versions would be available in the inventories of modernized armed forces.

Further out than 150-200 years I believe manned military aircraft will essentially cease to exist, barring some sort of massive stigma becoming associated with autonomous systems. That's not unlikely at all, there's some serious opposition even now to giving autonomous systems the ability to kill independently. If something were to cause a major backlash against autonomous aircraft it's possible they could be banned under international treaties. Not every country is party to those but if they were prohibited like that I imagine most powerful or prominent counties would give their autonomous aircraft up.

It depends on a few factors, but here are my thoughts:

I'd justify it by using both systems. You could have a human pilot in a plane, with their brain attached to an AI. This could conceivably work quite a bit better than either system alone.

Anti-AI stigmatization is something your audience will likely believe, but not particularly realistic for a few reasons:

1. 1: Even if there's a robot war, it doesn't actually make war bots less useful. Nations will still make them, and they will crush nations that don't.

2. 2: Kill All Humans is actually a really bizarre goal for an AI to have, even an evil or amoral AI. An evil AI would be less a swarm of metal locusts and more a Manipulative Bastard coercing humans into giving it what it wants.

3. 3: In addition, it's unlikely every AI or human would be on the same side of a robot war. It's pretty likely A.I.s would want to fight each other as much as humans; and humans already love to fight each other.

Especially since with AI, we're always trying to make it in the shape of humanity. So if we did make AI, they'd be just as irrational as us.

AI already exists and has for a couple decades and the vast majority of them are nothing approaching the shape of humans or our minds. ALPHA^note  Fighter plane AI, Alpha Go, Adam ^note Robotic Laboratory that runs itself and has even made a unique discovery on its own., Deep Blue, etc. Are all AI and are nothing but rational.

You would have to go out of your way to make an AI irrational or screw up your design rather badly.

I haven't read through the whole thread so this may have already been suggested, but considering that people nowadays in 'developed' states still ride horses for recreational purposes even though they're all-but-obsolete as a mode of transport outside specific contexts, the same thing could happen to cars and, of course, manned aircraft in the future. Manned planes and helicopters may still be sold because, well, people like flying them.

Obviously, recreational jets wouldn't have weapons attached to them, but that's only a concern if your character actually needs to attack anything with it (this may have been covered and I just didn't read the OP correctly, so disregard this if this is the case). Of course, if they do need weapons, it could potentially be Hand-Waved as having been modified as such, for whatever reason.

edited 1st Nov '17 10:18:41 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

Quite true, people still have sailboats, even though motorboats are faster and easier. But faster and easier isn't the point of having a sailboat.

No, cooler is. As for AI and autonomous warcraft, its going to be all about target recognition. Can it llearn to distinguish viable from non viable targets better than a human pilot could. I cant think of any reason why thst wont happen, if it hasnt already.

That's a interesting point I once saw brought up about I Robot's 3 laws. How does a Robot identify a human as... human? Say you build a android, how do they identify them as a robot?

How could these AI determine non-viable targets, or cloaked targets?

My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think one of the original short stories did some interesting stuff with that. I think there was this politician whom people suspected was an android for some reason, and he tried to prove that he wasn't by punching a reporter in the face, but later on it turned out that the reporter was secretly an android too.

I'm not sure if he'd been told about it beforehand, or if he was able to tell anyway though.