Back in the depths of the cold war, the British Minister of Defence proclaimed that the end was in sight for manned fighter aircraft, and that automation was rapidly making humans obsolete in the cockpit. A few generations on, another British minister is saying the same thing, with a bit more chance of being proven correct:
In a bizarre repeat of history, a British defence minister has given it as his opinion that we are currently witnessing development of the final generation of manned combat aircraft. The comments made last week by Quentin Davies MP echo those made in a 1957 government white paper by the then Defence minister, Duncan Sandys.
Mr Davies, minister for Defence Equipment and Support, made his new “last of the manned fighters” comments at an Unmanned Air Systems exhibition held on Friday at the London headquarters of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
“My own working assumption is that although we certainly need the manned combat aircraft, and are investing in some very good ones at the moment… that will take us through to the 2030s, but beyond that I think the name of the game will be UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles],” he said.
To be fair, the view from 1957 was not as dazed and confused as it might appear to be in hindsight. It was only 13 years after the start of the first widespread and successful cruise missile attacks (Nazi Germany’s V-1 “buzz bombs”), and in the middle of the nuclear arms race. Strategic bombing was still the way wars were expected to be won . . . and with thermonuclear warheads, it was likely to be a final war for all concerned. Flying fighter aircraft was seen to be a relic of the second world war, and an expensive relic at that.
