英译汉参赛原文

Welcome to the wingbot

Tomorrow’s squadron leaders will be accompanied by drones.

Will future combat aircraft needpilots? At least part of the answer can be found 400km north of Farnborough, near Preston, Lancashire. Warton Aerodrome is the site ofBritain'snearest equivalent to Lockheed Martin's celebrated Skunk Works—a research anddevelopment facility run by BAE Systems, the country's largest aerospace and defencecontractor. Inside a high-security building called 31 Hanger sits Taranis, anaircraft named after the Celtic god of thunder.

Taranis looks like something outof “Star Wars”. It is about the size of a small jet fighter, but is shaped likea flying wing. It is an unmanned, stealthy combat drone. Like most militarydrones it can be operated, via a secure data link, by a pilot sitting in acontrol centre on the ground. Taranis, however, can also be let off its digitalleash and allowed to think for itself using artificially intelligent automatedsystems. Left to its own devices, Taranis can take off, find its way to acombat zone, select a target, attack said target with missiles and then findits way home and land. A ground pilot would be needed only to keep an eye onevents and take control if there was a problem.

Thunder follows Lightning

Removing the pilot, together withthe systems required for a human being to fly a fighter aircraft and remainalive during the gut-wrenching manoeuvres this involves, has many advantages--not least of them, cost. A manned version of Taranis, were one to be built,would be twice the size and twice the price. The current prototype is thoughtto have set BAE back by around £185m($244m). That is cheap for whatis a one-off experimental prototype. The F-35, a ten-country effort led byLockheed Martin, is reckoned to be the most expensive military weapons systemin history. Some $50bn was spent developing the aircraft, which cost around $100m each.

The good news for pilots is thateven in drone-heavy air forces they will still have a job-though not necessarilyin the air. Many will be employed supervising drones from the ground. Others,though, will indeed remain flying for, as Michael Christie, BAE's head of airstrategy, observes, in the future pilotless and piloted fighter aircraft willoperate together.

A human being who can makedecisions will always be needed somewhere in the system, Mr Christie reckons.And in some cases it would be best if that person was in the aerial thick ofthings. Just as fighter pilots now fly with wingmen alongside them, a singlepilot could fly with a number of combat drones, similar to Taranis, as his“wingbots”. The drones would operate autonomously but respond to a pilot'scommand. They might be used to reconnoitre an area or attack it, permitting themanned aircraft to hold back.

The idea of people flying information with drones is being explored in several other countries, too. Lastyear Lockheed Martin's research engineers converted an F-16 fighter into anunmanned drone, complete with various anti-collision systems, and flew italongside a manned fighter to carry out ground attacks on a test range.Japanis also looking at using drone squadronsto accompany piloted aircraft. Japanese officials say the drones couldundertake defensive twists and turns at gforces so high that a human beingcould not withstand them, and thus be used to divert incoming missiles awayfrom a manned fighter.Chinais also developing a combat drone known as Dark Sword, which might similarly beused in conjunction with manned fighter jets.

This vision of a team offull-sized drones with a single human mind in charge gives the term “squadronleader” a whole new meaning. It also requires new technology, some of which isprefigured in the F-35. This aircraft is a massive information system, in whichthe amount of data generated by its sensors is beyond anything a human beingcould take in, so the aircraft's computers dish up only what a pilot needs toknow, when he needs to know it. Information relevant to the flight at anyparticular time is presented on touchscreens in the cockpit and as imagesprojected within the pilot's helmet. His vision is improved further by camerasembedded in the aircraft's skin, allowing him to “see” through its structure.That way he can spot anything which might otherwise be obscured-even thingsdirectly below.

This information feed alsoextends to other manned aircraft, to reconnaissance drones and to groundforces. Instead of attacking a heavily defended position himself, an F-35 pilotcould, for example, summon a missile strike from a ship. Eventually, thisinformation feed will extend to his receiving data from, and issuing orders to,accompanying combat drones.

All these extra data meanmilitary aviators of the future are likely to be even more reliant than today'sare on their helmets. BAE has an experimental system in which almost all thephysical instruments and controls in a cockpit have been replaced by virtualones projected into the pilot's helmet. The pilot can reach out to touch oroperate these controls as if they were in physical form, with sensorsrecognising from his movements what he is trying to do. This could mean thatwhen an aircraft's flight systems need updating, it is the pilot's helmetrather than the aircraft itself that is revised.

03

竞赛活动时间及要求

1. 投稿截止日期：英译汉和汉译英截止日期为2018年8月30日；视频翻译培训、竞赛等事项另行通知。

2. 请参赛者在投稿截止日前将译文Word电子版发送至499218518@qq.com（请将个人信息及联系方式另页填写，参赛译文上不留任何个人信息，否则将视为无效）。

3. 原文可在本协会微信公众号下载。请务必先登录本协会微信公众号注册(微信公众号名称：江苏省科技翻译翻译工作者协会)，关注赛事的有关信息；需要注册会员的参赛者，可在订阅号“关于我们”一栏注册会员。原文也可在 www.jsfyxh.net（江苏省科技翻译工作者协会“学府杯”专栏））、www.college-china.com（南京学府翻译有限公司官网“学府杯”专栏）、http://sfl.seu.edu.cn/（东南大学外国语学院）、http://foreign.njau.edu.cn/（南京农业大学外国语学院）、http://sfl.suda.edu.cn/（苏州大学外国语学院）网站下载。

4. 请参赛者在大赛截止日前妥善保存参赛译文，请勿在书报刊、网络等任何媒体公布自己的参赛译文，否则将被取消参赛资格并承担由此造成的一切后果。