{"id":2718,"date":"2010-01-05T00:30:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T08:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=2718"},"modified":"2010-01-04T23:25:40","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T07:25:40","slug":"uavs-by-any-other-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/05\/uavs-by-any-other-name\/","title":{"rendered":"UAVs by Any Other Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reuters notes the tensions<\/a> between common phrases and those who want to control the semantics.<\/p>\n

The US Air Force has made a concerted effort to change the lexicon of Predators, Reapers, and other air vehicles that do not have humans onboard.\u00a0 While traditionally called “UAVs,” or “Unmanned Air Vehicles,” the Air Force is now attempting to popularize the term “RPV,” or “Remotely Piloted Vehicle.”\u00a0 (See, for example, this official Air Force article<\/a> which exclusively uses the term “RPV.”)\u00a0 The intent is to accurately convey the make up of the weapon system:<\/p>\n

The change is significant to the Air Force as it recruits a new generation of pilots who may spend little time inside a jet plane. It wants the world to know that humans have “positive control over these vehicles,” [Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley] said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, the Air Force might become a victim of its own insistence on correct characterization.\u00a0 For example, it is true that the Predator and Reaper are “remotely piloted.”\u00a0 An operator sits in a control room with a stick and throttle and “pilots” the vehicle, sometimes from thousands of miles away.\u00a0 However, that is not true for all such systems.\u00a0 The Global Hawk, for example, has no stick or throttle.\u00a0 It is operated by keyboard.\u00a0 Can the RQ-4 Global Hawk<\/em> realistically be called “remotely piloted” when an operator pushes the “enter” button to command a takeoff for an autonomous mission, or should another term be coined?<\/p>\n

How about Remote Autonomous System with Pilot Suggestions (RASPS)?\u00a0 Maybe they should just all be called UAVs…<\/p>\n

On a related topic, UAV pilots have also been added to the Air Force Weapons School<\/a>, sometimes described as the Air Force version of the Navy’s\u00a0Top Gun.\u00a0 Note that this particular article refers to the aircraft as “UAs.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters notes the tensions between common phrases and those who want to control the semantics. The US Air Force has made a concerted effort to change the lexicon of Predators, Reapers, and other air vehicles that do not have humans onboard.\u00a0 While traditionally called “UAVs,” or “Unmanned Air Vehicles,” the Air Force is now attempting to popularize the term “RPV,” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[13,2,113,53],"class_list":["post-2718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-aircraft","tag-military","tag-rpv","tag-uav"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}