I hope we're done with manned aircraft after the F-35, and it is all drone swarms from here on out.
So you end up losing maximum airspeed and fuel efficiency (in terms of the mass you're moving) the smaller you go. Unless the drones in your swarm were really big, it doesn't work out.
Although, I imagine we'll see some smaller, unmanned jet fighters in the future (assuming someone figures out how to control something like that remotely, or autonomously). A smaller aircraft has the advantage of a smaller radar cross-section and being more difficult to hit. Doing away with the pilot cuts out a lot of weight and frees up room for a larger engine and fuel tank, offseting the downsides of the smaller size somewhat. There should be a sweet spot where that works out.
>I really wanted a photographer around for historical purposes to capture the expression on Kelly’s big, brooding moon-shaped mug when I showed him the electromagnetic chamber results. Hopeless Diamond was exactly as Denys had predicted: a thousand times stealthier than the twelve-year-old drone. The fact that the test results matched Denys’s computer calculations was the first proof that we actually knew what in hell we were doing. Still, Kelly reacted about as graciously as a cop realizing he had collared the wrong suspect. He grudgingly flipped me the quarter and said, “Don’t spend it until you see the damned thing fly.” But then he sent for Denys Overholser and grilled the poor guy past the point of well-done on the whys and hows of stealth technology. He told me later that he was surprised to learn that with flat surfaces the amount of radar energy returning to the sender is independent of the target’s size. A small airplane, a bomber, an aircraft carrier, all with the same shape, will have identical radar cross sections. “By God, I never would have believed that,” he confessed. I had the feeling that maybe he still didn’t.
it is basic geometry. Like a flat mirror, no matter the size, will reflect to you the same Sun spotlight (to be precise - as long as the mirror is bigger than 32 arcminutes as seen from the receiving position)
One of the big anecdotes from the early days of stealth aircraft development in the 1970s is how at some wavelengths the Hopeless Diamond shape wasn't visible to range radars at all. During one test, the range radar guys went absolutely crazy trying to detect the shape -- which was a pole model, not even flying yet -- and were about to just give up, when suddenly, there it is on their screens, plain as day. Awesome, the Hopeless Diamond lost its stealth! Or not, because what really happened was a bird landed on the pole model.
That's the power of your aircraft's shape.
Why would we shrink drones down? You read drone swarm and assumed small, but most swarm proposals are using drones of a similar size as today or even large in some cases. They're swarms because of the way they interact with one another, and overwhelm enemy defensive systems, not because they're small.
You do need to duplicate a lot of systems, but with modern electronics, these are a lot lighter and take much less power than before. The swarm aspect also allows for large synthetic apertures instead of a big single radar aperture in the nose of one aircraft. Swarms can also deploy cheap unguided weapons, because they can get very close to a target without the worry of losing a pilot and a $100 million airplane. The structural advantages of being small can also be exploited in an unmanned vehicle in that they can sustain much higher G loads than a large airplane, and with no pilot to black out, they will be much more agile in evading missiles.
The issue is not that any given drone is expensive. The issue is that any given manned vehicle with roughly the same profile will involve the same-ish hardware along with expensive life support and safety systems, and a super expensive pilot, and super expensive logistics and possible recovery missions. Plane for plane the drones let us do more with less, justifying their investment during ongoing appropriations. Human pilots will always have a role, but will never be disposable in the way a drone can be.
And, yeah, "swarms" because there is no cookie cutter monolithic answer to what unmanned military craft should look like... Low speed ground hugging smart missiles, ocean based spy capsules in mesh networks, slow speed support craft, high altitude recon craft, in theatre air fire support, air-to-air combat drones, and orbital UAVs can all coordinate. All we know is ever increasing automation and standardization is intersecting with decreasing costs and requirements... very fertile ground for mass production.
The drag from the fuselage does scale as l^2, but most drones have small fuselages since they don't need room for a pilot and (for fighter planes) a big glass canopy, and lifting drag dominates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGAk5gRD-t0
You can see the swarm of drones that could absolutely wreak havoc and out pilot humans with AI advancement.
Maybe warfare will return to a static mode, like WWI, but with much deadlier weapons, including automated AI area denial tanks and swarms of suicidal aerial drones.
But swarms could change the whole anti-personnel/troop exposure calculation, so it might make mute using super-platforms for air support. Flying IEDs is a lot easier to imagine than an F-22/35 killer (that are in the air, at least).
Right. In a way, that's part of the point. AAM are constrained to me munitions. They are expensive, but need to be far cheaper than the aircraft they are launched from, because the missiles are meant to be expended and the aircraft is meant to return. Swarms of suicide drones running tactics of area denial could be made at many different levels of capability and expense.
make mute
(Make moot.)
Flying IEDs is a lot easier to imagine than an F-22/35 killer (that are in the air, at least).
AAM are already flying explosive devices. Drones might well still carry AAMs, but be able to operate in a "mutual destruction" mode, sacrificing themselves to make a shot on a more expensive aircraft. AI programmers for fighter drones might well build in economic decisions. "Suicide for the kill, but only when the target is more expensive than yourself."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45077057 [dupl]
...also, i wonder what a wardrone does to a fighter jet when its titanium chassis is sucked into the engine :-/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45077057
from daily mail[meh], but a counterpoint and illustration of the weaponization of information that is happening... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6027507/Venezuelan-P...
That's just going to result in a "multi-purpose" drone that simultaneously carries comm systems for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Civilian Corps, CIA, FBI, and that one experimental group established in the 90s to test communication by aurora borealis. Never underestimate the power of the boondoggle.
Maybe it's just too much time with software talking, but this feels like the intuitive approach. If you have one task with three cases, use a standard frame and customize the part that changes. But if you have three distinct tasks, plan for three approaches and pull out common requirements into a shared pool - whether that's a utility class or a parts depot.
Doing requirements-first designs for each role and then looking for opportunities to standardize some parts might get you an unpredictable amount of savings, but it'll save some money and get you three working planes. Doing standardization-first design and hoping you can customize for each role after gets you... about half a plane and a broken budget, apparently.
I hope we will be done with such devices entirely.
AI war drones are a step sideways into a new flavour of m.a.d.
Any outrage we wanted to see hasn't just been there and can only decrease.
Really? We can't even get self driving cars right and BAE thinks we can have a fighter with lasers that controls a swarm of drones? Going to be an epic letdown when it first rolls off the line.
Air vehicles are substantially easier to make autonomous than road-borne vehicles that must intermingle with massive numbers of hazards, unpredictable circumstances, laws to abide by, life to preserve.
Airspace is, by and large, empty. For where it isn't: it's strictly controlled by other means.
These days that's the whole of the UK (and I say that as someone from England).
also has AI capabilities for interfacing with the pilot...
[Re:] sharing of parts, there could be a series of "shells" and an AI drone core that can eject, so as to let the shell burn in to the ground when it is "kacked" said AI core should be autonomous and plug and play with other shell types such as boats tanks and android mechbots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drevil_million_dollars.jp...
And the pilots are sharks.
This is a uniquely American issue. The US has four or five different air forces. They all fight amongst each other for research and new toys. Other countries operate on the principal that "if it flies, it is airforce", which moots most all of this debate,
Other countries have naval aviation don't they? What do you think the French fly off their carriers? What do you think the British plan to fly off theirs? (The British are actually planning to fly both Royal Air Force and Royal Navy aviators off theirs.) The British Royal Marines also sometimes fly fast air, when they have aircraft, but only as part of the Naval Service.
All these countries have very different military cultures between air force and navy. Navies, people who drive ships, generally have more ridged rank structures. Airforces, groups that fly aircraft, delegate authority according to job descriptions. There are historical and practical reasons for this, mostly linked to minimum team sizes, but safe to say the two cultures can conflict. Keeping some degree of separation reduces conflicts and increases cooperation/safety.
Russia is similar. Aerospace Forces, Airborne Forces, Navy, National Guards, Border Services operate aircrafts. Army used to have own aviation, but it was recently merged under Aerospace Forces.
Don't forget the 6th one, Space Force.
In all seriousness, the various US armed forces all step over each other. The Navy has it's own air force, but the USAF also has its own navy (Google "Tyndall AFB"). The Coast guard has plenty of helicopters and the national guard has a bit of everything. They all operate different recruiters, different training schools, and maintain unique relations with foreign forces. It's a total mess compared to countries like Canada where all the forces train and fight together from day one at basic training.
When a Canadian ship sails with a helicopter, the ship is Navy. The helicopter, its aircrew, and all the servicing people, are airforce. Their navy (RCN) handles the ship stuff and their airforce (RCAF) all the flying stuff. So a US carrier could stay in the USN, while the air detachments would be handled by the USAF. This sort of cross-branch cooperation means everyone gets along. The navy doesn't get jealous of the airforce's new toys because everyone plays together. When favors are needed, everyone has buddies in the different branches and knows each other's abilities.
> The Pentagon sold Congress on the F-35 in part with the idea of creating a common aircraft for three services, alleging it would save money—despite the well-documented and glaring failure of the tri-service F-111 program 25 years before Congress signed off on the very same plan with the F-35 in 2001
The idea that the STOVL variant would have significant parts commonality with the others despite having a giant fan in the middle was pretty laughable right from the start. In general, three aircraft with three very different design mission profiles were not going to be able to share much without making bad compromises.