You're asking the wrong question. Not how much space the human takes, but how much performance the plane loses because it contains meat jelly.

I'm not disputing the notion that primary fighters might one day be completely autonomous. My point is that autonomous fighters won't lead to the end of the modern jet fighters as we know them. They'll still be the big expensive machines we know and love (fear?) because most of the factors driving that trend are unrelated to whether the pilot is a human or an algorithm.

It seems you misunderstood GP. Their point is that machines have higher tolerances and won't just die of too many g. Unlike weight, this is not obviously irrelevant.

I understood their point perfectly well and agreed that there may be a point in time where autonomous aircraft replace manned combat aircraft. My point was that such an occurrence wouldn't lead to a significant reduction in aircraft size or cost.

They absolutely will just die from too many G. You're just replacing a family at home mourning the loss of a pilot to the accountants throwing themselves out of windows because these damned airframes keep ripping themselves apart or otherwise incurring excessive maintenance costs because the maneuvers they engage in are pushing the airframe itself to it's material limits. Believe it or not, the art of engineering is striking the right balance to minimize the overall cost of the process, and trying to keep from just stunting the cost to a different coffer.

That's a good point. I always considered this in the opposite direction though. Once you have a sufficient number of drones I don't think any conventional aircraft will have sufficient weaponry to deal with them effectively.

Use the Sidewinder missiles as an example. You're going to run out of munitions very quickly and be left with far poorer capabilities.

I just don't see a drone swarm sufficient to the task of taking down a single jet fighter in disputed territory as being economically feasible (for the reasons I outlined previously).

Maybe it could be done defensively over territory you controlled, but the 'drone swarm' in this instance really does just sound like a ground-to-air missile.

I'm always baffled when I see people talk about "drone swarms" as if they have never used a drone or RC aircraft. Most drones can't fly for more than 30 minutes and then they have to charge for significantly more than 30 minutes.

The smaller your drone the lower its effective range or loitering time. Therefore a transport vehicle such as a jet has to bring the smaller weapon into effective range. The transport vehicle usually also has much better sensors so that it can effectively search for targets. Guided weapons receive additional targeting data from the transport vehicle even after they have been deployed and are heading toward the target.

When people talk about medium sized "kamikaze drones" that are carrying enough fuel to reach a given far off destination they don't realize that these already exist and are called cruise missiles and tomahawk missiles in particular are quite cheap. For the cost of a F-35 the US can buy 100 tomahawk missiles. I still remember that attack where 60 cruise missiles were launched from a single navy vessel at a military airport in Syria with essentially no risk of counterattack.

> I'm always baffled when I see people talk about "drone swarms" as if they have never used a drone or RC aircraft. Most drones can't fly for more than 30 minutes and then they have to charge for significantly more than 30 minutes.

Most drones are cheap civilian toys. Military drones have had much greater endurance for decades.

> Therefore a transport vehicle such as a jet has to bring the smaller weapon into effective range.

If you are using short-endurancd drones for some reason (e.g., missiles), the carrier can just be a long-endurance drone.

> When people talk about medium sized "kamikaze drones" that are carrying enough fuel to reach a given far off destination they don't realize that these already exist and are called cruise missiles and tomahawk missiles in particular are quite cheap.

That they already exist and are cheap and effective is proof of the point, not an argument against it.