The Manned Aircraft Problem? Humans.

The use of captured pilots for hostage diplomacy should make Western air forces reconsider their dithering on unmanned aircraft.

On April 3, Iranian forces shot down a U.S. Air Force Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle fighter over mountainous Isfahan Province in central Iran. Rescuers quickly found the pilot of the two-seat warplane, but the backseat crewman proved harder to reach.

After a few hours and a lot of little vehicular mayhem, commandos fetched the crewman and escaped with no loss of life on the American side.

But the rescue op very nearly failed, and it resulted in the destruction of seven additional U.S. manned aircraft, together worth about $350 million. Rather than proving U.S. dominance, the rescue underscores a critical vulnerability for the United States and European powers at a time when unmanned aircraft are poised to supplant manned aircraft in strike missions deep inside defended airspace.

Ground-based air defenses, even when degraded and suppressed like Iran’s, are still a serious problem for Western warplanes that must penetrate enemy airspace to deliver their ordnance. And every single shoot-down is a potential diplomatic disaster if the crew is lucky enough to survive. Beaten and bloodied prisoners of war reading enemy scripts to the camera is a favored tactic of dictatorships, since they shock the home audience.

Iran very nearly captured an American pilot on April 3. He would’ve been a powerful bargaining chip for the Iranian regime in Pres. Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again efforts to negotiate an end to the U.S.-Israeli war. How long should the world’s leading powers accept that kind of risk when all the same powers are also actively developing fast, long-range armed drones?

The rescue op isn’t an argument for more manned air power. It’s an argument against it.

Read the rest at Europe’s Edge.