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# Posted 7:05 AM by Patrick Belton

THE ECONOMIST has a piece on the potential of UAVs:

According to a UAV road map from America's Department of Defence, by 2012 UAVs the size of F-16 fighter aircraft are likely to exist.....By 2020, the Pentagon estimates that one-third of America's combat planes will be robotic....The world's smallest UAV is currently the 15cm-long, electrically powered, Black Widow. It can fly for 30 minutes and download live colour video to the ground via its onboard camera. Many such craft are being developed for “over the hill” work, when soldiers need scouts in dangerous areas....The biggest breakthrough in civil aviation, though, would be the invention of the aerial equivalent of the motor car.

Kudos to Bagehot's newspaper for a systematic exploration of the military, urban studies, and environmental implications of what portends to be a revolutionary new technology. And it is difficult not to end this post by quoting the piece's most memorable line: "There is a joke in the airline industry that the future crew of an airliner will consist of a pilot and a dog: The pilot's job is to watch all the computers, and the dog's job is to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything." Can I assume from this that the days of British Airways stewardesses are therefore blissfully limited?

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