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Comment by GhostVII | Hacker News Reader

Is there value in having a pilot, just to increase the consequences of shooting down a plane? When Iran shot down a US drone, there was pretty much no real response by the US. If it was a manned plane, there would almost certainly be at least retaliatory strikes, so Iran (and other countries) are going to be much less likely to shoot down a manned F-18 than an unmanned one. So maybe having manned fighters is valuable just to increase the barrier to engagement.

And regardless, is there even value in having autonomous fighter jets when we already have advanced missiles? It doesn't matter how good the pilot/AI is if they are just firing missiles from miles away. We already have missiles that can loiter for hours before choosing a target and attacking it (ex. IAI Harpy) - to me that is much more valuable and dangerous than an AI fighter.

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War is a good book to read about it.

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It would be more efficient to use drones but precommit to shooting a soldier back in the US whenever a drone gets shot down.

You could even host some Iranian Revolutionary Guard members on site at the drone facility to do the deed.

The levels of efficiency we are reaching on this thread are mind blowing.

Morally not possible.

/r/whoosh

Maybe watch this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

Thanks for this^. I needed a good laugh!

They did that in a Star Trek episode, more or less. "You have been assigned as dead. Please report...etc" so they could preserve infrastructure, which is so much more valuable than human life.

Star Trek: The Original Series

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

> In the episode, the crew of the Enterprise visits a planet engaged in a completely computer-simulated war with a neighboring planet but the casualties, including the Enterprise's crew, are supposed to be real.

It would! But if you have to put a human in the vehicle, children take up less space and can probably handle more G forces than an adult.

Isn't that the moral equivalent of someone holding a hostage in front of them as a shield? If the only reason to send in human pilots is because the enemy is less likely to shoot them (or because it justifies greater retaliatory response), that seems like it's turning the pilot into little more than a sacrificial lamb. Moreso if the retaliatory response means sending in the drones.

This is a common tactic, actually. The idea is that you create a credible threat by putting yourself in a situation that, if your adversary challenges you, you have no choice but to respond. Burn the bridge behind you, as it were.

The famous example is the US’ 10k troops in Berlin during the Cold War. If the USSR attacked, those troops were toast - and everyone knew it. But it meant that if the USSR took Berlin, it would be at the price of 10k American soldiers, and would inevitably lead to war. Even if that was the US’ calculation anyway, the Soviets wouldn’t know that for certain without the troops there.

Reminds me of the old idea of putting US nuke launch codes inside a person who would be part of the president's entourage, so that if the president wanted to launch a nuclear attack he would have to start by literally murdering and cutting open a person he was close to. It was explicitly intended as a disincentive.

When the guy who proposed the idea, Roger Fisher, was asked who the hell would ever volunteer to be the nuclear pinata, he volunteered to do it himself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fisher_(academic)#Preven...

I love it and I'm sure there would be plenty of willing people. What I think is misguided is the assumption that the president would do the deed personally. "SGT Thompson, bring me the codes, I'll be in the next room" Still chilling, but not personally traumatic.

I'd never heard of that before and it's a genius idea -- too easy to dissociate yourself from a million deaths on the other side of the planet, but if the first step is killing a single person with your own hands, that puts it all in perspective.

The negative value of having an pilot paraded around (ala Gary Powers) far supersedes anything that might be gained. The Iranians were perfectly justified in capturing the RQ-180, and the Global Hawks might have been justified. They'd have no qualms or legal issues with defending their airspace from manned flight.

>They'd have no qualms or legal issues with defending their airspace from manned flight.

It's one thing to go a mile outside your airspace to nab somebody's drone. To do that to nab someone else's pilot is a whole 'nother level of escalation.

You should look into what the Soviets did to US reconnaissance patrols that were well outside their airspace. Shoot downs, force downs, you name it.

It is an interesting, if ethically difficult, question.

Actually, the US military prepared multiple counter strike options, and the president (eventually) picked one.

He then called off the strike a few hours before the time on target, because a faction in the Whitehouse gave him an estimate that the counterstrike would result in 150 casualties.

See John Bolton's book "The Room Where It Happened" for a very elaborate inside account. He is very open that he would've preferred the strike to go through, and while he believes above casualty estimates were much too high, he was very much aware the number would not be zero.

I can see how any US casualties might've tipped the balance in Trump's mind.

So yes, there might be some value. But where it gets complicated is whether the value is positive or negative:

One could say that the US flying only an autononous aircraft that day saved up to 151 lifes.

Even more, considering the inevitable Iranian counterstrike. Killing people in response to a piece of equipment being lost would have been a horrifying agression that the Iranians couldn't have let slide.

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