ORIGINAL: FalconWings
The J-UCAS..........we did a lot of hydraulics and ECS for that beast, before NGC kicked us out and decided to take the whole pie by themselves.
I hope everybody understands the concept of Autonomous and the possible consequences on R/C. I see it fairly simple, Autonomous and R/C cannot co-exist. With conventional UAV's, we can stretch it out, but once these Terminators start coming out...................it's going to suck! But I think we still have a good 10 years before we start hearing about it.
Not even the FAA has the slightest idea of how manned traffic will be affected. I've heard that synchronizing flight tests with the FAA has been a real challenge to say the least, even over non-populated areas.
BTW, J-UCAS is military, but I guarantee you that there will be a long line of commercial and government costumers that will want this technology for an endless list of applications.
You are familiar with the FAA's rulemaking effort for SUAS, right? The FAA's answer to all UAV's in the NAS right now is simply -
no, except for certain circumstances which they have to explicitly approve (said approval taking 6-12 months...)
Now if you are talking about autonomous flying vehicles that make their own decisions as to how/where to fly, we're a *long* *long* way from that - and when we get there, for military applications first, as always, I'm willing to bet that the FAA's stance will be to have it take place in restricted areas and nowhere else. UAV's in the NAS will have to fully comply with ATC procedures and controls and I would be willing to bet that we will not see that change in our lifetimes. There simply is no political will, money, or driving need to mix manned aircraft and fully autonomous (i.e., "Terminators") flying in the same airspace - its simply not going to happen. If RC can successfully weather the coming storm with the sUAS rules, that will be the status quo for a long time...
As far as how "advanced" and full-proof autonomous military technology is, one only has to read about the Navy's Firescout - state-of-the-art and just *now* entering the beginning of military service, so see where that is...
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs...entId=blogDest
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38857999
http://www.suasnews.com/2010/09/1501...lying-at-yuma/
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4759558
Bob