Coming Full Circle

It's hard to believe that 105 years ago today, man first took to the skies in a heavier-than-air aircraft and had sustained controlled flight. For centuries man had tried to figure out how to have sustained powered flight and until the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina it seemed quite possible that the dream would not be realized for many more years to come. But thanks to the work of the Wright Brothers and other pioneers such has Samuel P. Langley, Alberto Santos Dumont and many others, powered flight became a reality and the development that took place in the years that followed can only be termed as rapid.

Prior to the developments of these aviation pioneers and many others in the centuries prior, it was impossible to imagine that aircraft could ever be built to carry a person let alone a group of people for any appreciable distance. Many of the first aviation successes were often unmanned or devices such as balloons which flew more or less at the mercy of the winds. Researchers were determined to prove that it could be done. Up until then most aircraft were unmanned and the ultimate goal was to get people into the air. Then as development of the aircraft progressed the goal was to get people higher, farther and faster into the air than anyone else. We've used that goal to get man to the moon and bring him home again. We have developed airliners that can carry the equivalent of the population of small cities within their bodies across the globe in a matter of hours. And now we move on to the ultimate development of aviation in recent years; unmanned flight.

It seems backwards on the surface but I guess it was inevitable. Yesterday, Northrop Grumman revealed the latest development that they have been working on for the US Navy; the X-47B Navy Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS). Heretofore only seen in the movies, this new aircraft is meant to be controlled by pilots back on the ground while the plane enters combat and puts itself (rather than the pilot) in harm's way. I think it's a natural development seeing as how it is more expensive to replace a pilot than it is to replace just a plane but I'm amazed to think that we've gone from wanting to fly ourselves to letting the computer control it for us remotely.

I often think about this development and think that in the near future the need for controllers on the ground will also disappear and eventually we'll have combat aircraft that fly themselves around the world on their missions with limited input from mankind. It isn't that far into the future and I'm sure it will happen sooner than we think. I'm sure development of civil aviation will continue to push for the development of larger capacity planes like the Airbus A380 but concurrently I think we'll see a continued development in the field of unmanned aerial combat vehicles. What I hope this doesn't mean is that our leaders take on a video-game-world attitude to enemy losses when your only view of them is through a television display. It seems almost impersonal to think of it that way but that's certainly what could happen in the near future.

Still, as we stand at the 105 years since the successful flight of a powered airplane I can only wonder what the next 105 years will lead to. In a little over a decade after the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk, the airplane was developed and pressed into service as a weapon. Forty years after their first flight it was used as a tactical and strategic weapon that helped turn the tide of the second World War and delivered the blow that effectively ushered in the atomic age. A mere sixty years after that day in Kitty Hawk, man was in space and on his way to the moon. Now going into space is seen almost like a mundane activity. Perhaps in my lifetime we'll see air travel become as common as driving a car but I for one feel disappointed that on this historic day there is barely a mention of the fact in the news or elsewhere. We shouldn't let something so significant become something so forgettable.