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CONTENTS of 2018 AD-2025 AD: Consumer robotics go mainstream; 'wire heads' appear; do-it-yourself medical care; organ regeneration; unmanned planes of many types becoming common

This page last updated on or about 10-15-05
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2025 milestone: The deadliest fighter planes in the developed nations no longer have pilots onboard...

...being 85% plus autonomous, with their own onboard artificial intelligences.


Northrop Grumman UCAV concept, circa 1997

-- "U.S. Trying To Develop Unmanned Combat Aircraft"By Tabassum Zakaria, July 21, 1999, Reuters/Yahoo! News Technology Headlines

Uninhabited combat air vehicles (UCAVs) is one label for the new technology. Such unmanned craft can offer greater performance, longer ranges, more radar stealth, and lower costs relating to maintenance and training. In some of the earliest deployments several such robot craft might accompany/support a single manned aircraft to accomplish a given mission-- and be supervised somewhat by the pilot on-site.

-- Robot Aircraft to Dominate Future Air Forces By Bradley Perrett, Reuters/Yahoo Tech Headlines, February 21 2000

Increasingly robust defenses against stealth aircraft will make higher speeds and altitudes more important. Thus, future bombers may need supersonic and even hypersonic (Mach 5-10) speeds as a part of their repertoire.

The immediate successor to the B-2 however looks to be a stealthier subsonic aircraft offering greater payloads and range and perhaps the capacity to field smaller robotic daughter-craft.

-- PopSci.com | Science | Features | B-3 and Beyond ["http://www.popularscience.com/scitech/features/b3bomber/"] by Steve Douglass, found on or about 4-5-2000

Other unmanned planes serve as high altitude circling communications hubs similar in function to space-based satellites but costing much less.

Despite odd appearance, prototype jet could be next step in communications By CYNTHIA L. WEBB, Nando.net/The Associated Press, September 23, 1998, http://www.nandotimes.com

Within 24 hours of a major disaster thousands of cell phones could be dropped into the afflicted area, and be enabled via a special long-flying plane around 65,000 feet in altitude, to restore local communications and speed relief, salvage, and reconstruction efforts.

The plane may possess transparent wings encasing both upward and downward facing solar cells to catch both direct and reflected sunlight off clouds. At night it will rely on fuel cells. Its speed will typically be less than 100 mph, its flight duration possibly as long as six months at a time.

Besides disaster relief, such planes could also play important roles in telecommunications redundancy and stop-gap measures for temporarily relieving normal equipment outages.

-- Plane May Revolutionize Telecom, Disaster Relief By Nigel Hunt Reuters/Yahoo! Science Headlines, April 10 2000

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