Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Boeing tests automated 'Loyal Wingman' jet in 1st flight
The pilotless "Loyal Wingman" flew over the Australian desert displaying potential for new approaches to military strategy. Several countries are developing similar projects, enticed by lower costs and reduced risks.
The Royal Australian Air Force and Boeing have teamed up for their first test flight of a pilotless fighter-like jet in South Australia. The "Loyal Wingman" provides new military strategies through its autonomous technology. Australia and the aerospace giant announced Tuesday the successful flight, which took place on Saturday.
Loyal Wingman took off under its own power and flew on a predetermined route over the Australian desert, before flying at various different speeds and altitudes to test its systems and demonstrating the performance of design.
The fact that the jet is functional and effective without a pilot is key to new approaches in military strategy — with this particular uncrewed aircraft designed to provide air support to a human pilot in another plane.
"The heart of this program is the autonomous systems, being a part of a manned, unmanned team approach," said the chief of the Royal Australian Air Force,
Mel Hupfeld.
The fighter-like jet is 11.6 meters long and has a nautical mile range of 3,704 km (roughly 2,300 miles). It can carry weapons and provide protection for more expensive manned fighter jets.
The success and relatively low costs of autonomous technology has attracted the attention of other militaries. Britain signed a $42 million contract with the Belfast unit of Spirit AeroSystems for a similar type of pilotless aircraft.
Along with Australia and Britain, the US is also investing in pilotless fighter jets. The US Air Force awarded a multi-million dollar contract to Boeing in December to produce unmanned aerial prototypes that can team up with piloted jets.
It is the first military plane to be designed and manufactured in Australia in more than 50 years. "A year ago it was a concept — and now it is reality," the Royal Australian Air Force wrote on Twitter.
Australia plans to invest $89 million to acquire three more Loyal Wingman and, according to Boeing airpower teaming program director Shane Arnott, three Loyal Wingman aircraft would be used for teaming flights this year.
"It is a milestone for Australia, for the Boeing Company, and for the Royal Australian Air Force," said President of Boeing Australia Dr. Brendan Nelson, in a video released by Boeing.
jm/msh (Reuters)
signs of the pandemic waning a bit globally. The WHO reports that global infections have been declining significantly for almost two months, much more quickly and more intensely than predicted. Mid-January still saw 700,000 new infections every day, today that figure has dropped to slightly more than half that number and deaths from COVID-19 have also almost halved in the past month.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the declining numbers a "sign of hope," saying, "This trend is a reminder that even though we are discussing vaccines today, COVID-19 can be suppressed and controlled with proven public health measures. And indeed, that is exactly what many countries have done," he said at the WHO Vaccines and Global Health Symposium in late February.
Numerous reasons have been listed for the significant decline in global infection rates. They are also being used as an argument for moving forward.
Clearly, vaccinations cannot be the only reason, because only a small percentage of the global population has been vaccinated. It is just as clear that distancing and hygiene rules are effective in many countries. Both arguments would suggest a very slow path to relaxing strict contact restrictions.
In the US and Brazil, for instance, so many people have already been infected that the basic immunization of the population is making headway. If you add the registered cases to the presumed number of unreported cases in the US, it looks like a kind of herd immunity is gradually emerging.
It may sound strange but some researchers argue that the virus may very well weaken noticeably in the medium-term as a result of the mutations.
In mid-February, a research team from the universities of Atlanta and Pennsylvania published a sensational study in the medical journal Science. In it, they predict that mutations will soon push the coronavirus from pandemic to endemic — a process the global vaccination campaign is also bound to accelerate.
Past experience with influenza has clearly shown that the incidence of infection is very likely to subside all of a sudden at some point, says Klaus Stöhr, the epidemiologist who headed the WHO's Global Influenza Program and was the WHO's SARS research coordinator. Two recently devastating influenza pandemics — the 1957 Asian flu, which killed up to 4 million people and the 1968 Hong Kong flu, which killed up to 3 million — both disappeared as quickly as they appeared, he argued.
In the case of Spanish flu after World War I, the second wave caused the most deaths, with a total of presumably more than 50 million people killed between 1918 and 1920. The third wave quickly subsided, but the pathogen remained. In a weakened form, the H1N1 virus (swine flu) appears in completely normal influenza to this day.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus might take a similar course in the medium-term, perhaps only appearing locally. If weakened by mutations, it will become less threatening. However, until the positive global trend stabilizes, the difficult balancing act between imperative contact restrictions and possible relaxations will continue.
This article has been translated from German