“This is a load of crap from the LATimes. The drone is using nothing more than autopilot to land. The mission is still controlled by people.”
That’s not really correct. The distinction being made is that current drones like the Predator and Reaper have a “man in the loop” for weapon use. The X47-B will be pre-programmed with a mission, and will have no human involvement between the “launch” command and recovery.
That is, of course, absolutely no different than a Tomahawk cruise missile, which have been around for decades, as long as a static target is being struck. If (and I have no knowledge of this one way or the other) the X47-B has a capability of, say, “interdict all vehicles in an area”, then the drone would be making life or death decisions on its own.
I agree, though, that the responsibility would lie squarely with the military organization that planned the mission. It had better understand the technology well.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) like X-47B are not the self-aware Terminators of Ahnold’s fantasy movies. All UAVs have ground-based system operators whose responsibility is to monitor the UAV’s actions as the mission progresses. They do this using redundant command and control data links. If one link fails, the redundant link allows positive control of the UAV. If you have a kid who played StarCraft video game, the control of the UAV is a lot like that.
Should all data link communications be lost, the UAV ie pre-programmed to go to a safe location and flies in a circle while attempting to re-establish communications. If this fails, the UAV flys home and enters a holding pattern at it’s home airfield until given permission to land using a 3rd set of command and control data links.
X-47B is not armed, but UAVs which are all require consent to employ weapons from their ground-based operator. The UAV is not programmed or permitted to use weapons without human consent.
This method of controlling UAVs is not new. It is derived from the methodology for controlling satellites and has been practiced for decades.
How, I wonder, do you pre-program the ROE’s for the mission? What if they change? Seems to me that an X-47B might be a very blunt instrument and therefore unlikely to be used except in extreme circumstances.