The Air Force has good and logical reasons to take over executive agency of the higher flying unmanned aerial vehicle mission, a senior service official said Monday. (Find some in our earlier report.) There’s another element, though, and that is to force a discussion of roles and missions and the open-ended borrowing of USAF people for Army missions. It “makes no sense” for Air Force people to be driving Army trucks and doing other ground force jobs indefinitely if the Army is dedicating a like number of people to operate and fly UAVs, said the official. The Air Force and Army should each “focus on their core competencies,” he added.
Unmanned aerial vehicles and autonomous aircraft may provide a solution to operating in heavily contested domains such as the Taiwan Straits, according to a panel of expert who suggested operationalizing artificial intelligence for such purposes sooner rather than later. The group gathered virtually to help launch the Mitchell Institute for…