Karma said:stumpy said:In reality I still expect the future (and they are a way off) to be controlled from the ship, as you are minimising the communications distance, the more links the more danger of things going wrong.
Personally I see it as the other way round, the platform just becomes storge and maintenance space and the missions are operated from elsewhere, like Las Vegas for exampleNot sure what the RAF Sqn number is that's based over there, but it's now established on a permanent basis.
Flying the aircraft from a fixed location somewhere is much less technically risky than flying them from the ship. More comms redundancy is available for a start plus your missions are operated from well out of harms way, it reduces your logistic footprint and it reduces the need for all the mission planning to be supported onboard, which is a hugely comms intensive activity nowadays what with huge data requirements and a desire for 24/7 video-conferencing.
Fair point.