Has the last fighter pilot already been born?

So stealth fixes everything? Do you know anything about stealthy aircraft design and the strengths and weaknesses/trade offs when deciding what type of stealth you want to put on an aircraft? It's not like the Klingon cloaking device, even in the X band. And speaking of which: there are a lot of ways to track and target aircraft. Ever heard of an IRSTS?

I will admit that I hate the thought of unmanned fighters because that's just the way I am. However, I find it difficult to believe that people who've never flown a tactical airplane can "assure me" that the unmanned fighter is the end all be all. Without having been there and done that, you have no credibility or idea of what you are saying. This isn't directed at Velocity173 or anyone in particular but to non tactical aviators in general. I can't count the number of times in the past 12 years of tactical flying that the mission (training and combat) was saved because someone in the flight just had a "gut feeling", picked up a tally out of the corner of their eye or made a split second decision that was correct because they were there in the moment. I've seen our new interfaces for UAVs, they aren't even in the ballpark (hell,not even the state or galaxy for that matter) of the amount of info you need to be able to effectively evaluate a constantly changing tactical situation. Man in the loop is an absolute requirement.

I didn't say stealth was perfect but there's no denying it gives a higher survival rate if you're penetrating a country that has radar. Why did they bother to modify the Black Hawks to a stealth configuration in the Bin Laden raids? Also I didn't say your job was going away completely but that we wouldn't have such a high reliance on manned fighter/attack aircraft in the future. This isn't just a non fighter pilot opinion. You can read this article from Air & Space. These opinions are from all former fighter pilots who now work for companies designing unmanned vehicles.

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/Pilot-Not-Included.html
 
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Why did they bother to modify the Black Hawks to a stealth configuration in the Bin Laden raids?

That had a LOT more to do with politics than tactics...

I'm not worried about my job, I'm less than 7 years from retirement. I'm worried about the future of our tactical capabilities with uninformed people making decisions on the future of our force composition.
 
That had a LOT more to do with politics than tactics...

I'm not worried about my job, I'm less than 7 years from retirement. I'm worried about the future of our tactical capabilities with uninformed people making decisions on the future of our force composition.

Yeah, things are starting to remind me of (not that I was around at the time) the kind of thinking that resulted in F-4's showing up to the merge over North Vietnam with crap missiles and no gun. We learned a hard lesson, and expended billions of dollars and man hours of training to rectify it in subsequent years, and now we are gearing up once again to throw away all those skills for the miracle of technology. Sensors don't get you to the merge.......open ears and eyeballs do. A UAV has neither, aside from a soda straw replication.
 
Yeah, things are starting to remind me of (not that I was around at the time) the kind of thinking that resulted in F-4's showing up to the merge over North Vietnam with crap missiles and no gun. We learned a hard lesson, and expended billions of dollars and man hours of training to rectify it in subsequent years, and now we are gearing up once again to throw away all those skills for the miracle of technology. Sensors don't get you to the merge.......open ears and eyeballs do. A UAV has neither, aside from a soda straw replication.

I hear you guys, but... Take the F-22, ~180 aircraft in service, $64B spent, 10 years at war, 0 combat missions?

Granted Al Qaeda doesn't have an air force. However, any enemy that does, probably also has nukes, so, what are we non-fighter pilots missing? What theoretical mission makes sense without forcing a nuclear escalation?
 
I hear you guys, but... Take the F-22, ~180 aircraft in service, $64B spent, 10 years at war, 0 combat missions?

Granted Al Qaeda doesn't have an air force. However, any enemy that does, probably also has nukes, so, what are we non-fighter pilots missing? What theoretical mission makes sense without forcing a nuclear escalation?

What about after gulf war 1 when the A-10's didn't fly combat for 10+ years? Should they have stopped training for their mission?

Do you think that the US is the only nuclear player than understands the consequences of escalation? Just because we get in a conflict with another nuclear power doesn't mean that either side will use it.

Everyone throws around the F22 program cost tied to the number of planes. Remember the original buy was for 750+ jets. If we'd bought that many the per jet price would be a lot less and our capability to sustain it would be much better. Basic economy of scale. And as someone else mentioned, no UAV replacement will be cheaper anyway.

If we designed a true fighter UAV (assuming the technology is ever available AND we actually buy any) if they were truly capable of replacing manned fighters they will have to be maximized for the same missions - the first one we always need before conducting any type of war is air superiority. If they are maximized for a/a, they wouldn't be used in Afghanistan conflict either.
 
And for the record, from what little I have seen of the F-22 while doing joint training with those guys, it is an unbelievable airplane. It had a big, heart stopping price tag to be sure, but I am convinced that in terms of the mission it was built for, it is/was worth every penny. I'll leave it at that, and all I will say is that when I was in the middle of a 40 plane large force exercise at Nellis, I was VERY glad to have them on our team.
 
And for the record, from what little I have seen of the F-22 while doing joint training with those guys, it is an unbelievable airplane. It had a big, heart stopping price tag to be sure, but I am convinced that in terms of the mission it was built for, it is/was worth every penny. I'll leave it at that, and all I will say is that when I was in the middle of a 40 plane large force exercise at Nellis, I was VERY glad to have them on our team.
A couple of years ago I was in Bahrain working at NAVCENT with a Super Hornet guy who had flown against F-22s. He said air combat for the F-22 guys was like clubbing baby seals.
 
We fly with them a lot. It depends on what type of threat they want replicated, but it's never easy to beat up on the Raptor at long range.
 
Having UAVs do the dirty work also makes sense from a design perspective as well. Think of all the weight and added complexity that goes into making an aircraft for a person to ride in. Oxygen systems, ejections seats, narrower environmental and pressurization constraints, etc, etc ,etc.

Same argument NASA has been fighting now for a long time.
 
Amen Evil....well said. That being said, I wonder when the first tactical pointy nosed UAV will depart controlled flight when attempting to join on the moon (or stars) on goggles. Some things you just can't replicate without being there in the jet itself. Obviously this comparison applies to many more things that just night re-joins, but it is a very administrative and basic example.

Why would a UAV join on anything?
 
Why would a UAV join on anything?

Formations are more tactical than singles. A UAV would currently be too "blind" for these considerations to apply, but that is also the reason why they could not substitute for a manned fighter at this point in time. If they ever reach the level of required sophistication to be employed as fighters, the same considerations would apply to them as well. That said, this was just one example of the many ramifications of fighting a jet tactically with no seat of the pants sense.
 
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I guarantee if you watch this video, questions about UAV's working autonomously, flying in formation, working together, will be answered decisively:

http://www.ted.com/talks/vijay_kumar_robots_that_fly_and_cooperate.html

I don't have any questions about their ability to fly in formation. That can be done via link 16 or any various other systems, at least if the don't intend to get too close. The big question is how they can develop the kind of outside visual lookout that is required to be successful in air combat, particularly while in that formation of fighters. Popular misconceptions aside, fighting a jet is a very visual task, even at range. Sensors add to your situational awareness, but they are no substitute for getting your eyes out of the cockpit, and most importantly, having a sense of everything that is going on around you. I'll be interested to see how they can artificially recreate this sort of scan with their sensor suite. None of he threats to modern manned fighters magically go away or are somehow minimized just because you aren't sitting in the aircraft. There is no shield that suddenly surrounds the UAV.....it can still be targeted in the exact same ways that we can in manned aircraft, and they would have to defend against this in the same manner that we do.....which would imply doing most all of the things we do as well, just without he benefit of actually being there.
 
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I don't have any questions about their ability to fly in formation. That can be done via link 16 or any various other systems, at least if the don't intend to get too close. The big question is how they can develop the kind of outside visual lookout that is required to be successful in air combat, particularly while in that formation of fighters. Popular misconceptions aside, fighting a jet is a very visual task, even at range. Sensors add to your situational awareness, but they are no substitute for getting your eyes out of the cockpit. This includes radar, FLIR, IRST, or anything else.

I can't answer your questions directly, I have no idea about air combat. Did you watch the video? All of it, really? Do you doubt they could be programmed for air to air combat with the money and resources a defense contractor could throw at them given what they can already do?
 
I can't answer your questions directly, I have no idea about air combat. Did you watch the video? All of it, really? Do you doubt they could be programmed for air to air combat with the money and resources a defense contractor could throw at them given what they can already do?

I absolutely doubt it, no question. There are things in this world that simply involve too many variables and uncertainties to plan for. You could program a UAV to respond to very simple situations, but you cant program what you cant even predict. That is where human thinking, experience, and intuition come into play. We have tactics that give us a toolbox of things to reference, but every situation is different. I have yet to fly a hop where things went according to the brief. Someone is going to have to direct action when a real life situation that there is no algorithm for occurs.....which will be most of the time.
 
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Yep, what he said...

So you watched that video and still doubt it? Why, they do all those things right in the video? This is being done at a university, what could Lockheed Martin do with the same technology?
 
I don't understand. Is this a UAV for ants? In order for it to be an effective fighter aircraft it would have to be at least three times that size.

Of course, I'm not saying this is a literal replacement for a fighter or even close. My point is they are not remote controlled UAV's they are working autonomously, cooperating, flying in formation, completing tasks, managing fuel as a group, etc. Tasks some just said were not possible for UAV's let alone autonomous devices.

Given a fluid command and control path I believe this kind of thing is the future at least for certain missions.
 
I'm certainly not saying that this won't ever be a reality. I think it likely will at some point, at least in some capacity. That being said, there is a lot more to the problem than some of the basics outlined in the video that was posted. Basically what was demonstrated was the ability for UAV's to conduct some of the tasks required to execute administrative and tactical administrative portions of a flight, all in a very scripted laboratory environment. This is a big step in the right direction (and it was an impressive experiment), but there are a lot of dynamic factors involved with doing it in the real world that weren't addressed, and it doesn't prove anything about this system's ability to employ weapons and survive in a hostile environment, which is the most important question.
 
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I'm certainly not saying that this won't ever be a reality. I think it likely will at some point, at least in some capacity. That being said, there is a lot more to the problem than some of the basics outlined in the video that was posted. Basically what was demonstrated was the ability for UAV's to conduct some of the tasks required to execute administrative and tactical administrative portions of a flight, all in a very scripted laboratory environment. This is a big step in the right direction (and it was an impressive experiment), but there are a lot of dynamic factors involved with doing it in the real world that weren't addressed, and it doesn't prove anything about this system's ability to employ weapons and survive in a hostile environment, which is the most important question.

Ultimately I'm sure it will come down to a balancing act between a humans abilities and the expendability of UAV's. I'm no expert but I wouldn't expect a UAV to do any close air support in the foreseeable future. However, rescuing a downed pilot without risking more lives... maybe.
 
Ultimately I'm sure it will come down to a balancing act between a humans abilities and the expendability of UAV's. I'm no expert but I wouldn't expect a UAV to do any close air support in the foreseeable future. However, rescuing a downed pilot without risking more lives... maybe.

I would actually argue that CAS is one of the missions that UAV's are already capable of executing, at least in a low threat environment. A big problem will still be survivability in most other endeavors though. For a UAV to add anything tactically significant to a conflict, they will need to carry the same kinds of heavy and complex ordnance that we carry in manned fighters......ie AIM-120/9X and 500/1000/2000 lb GP and smart weapons. Throw in some more exotic stuff like JSOW, LMAV, HARM, etc. Carrying this sort of ordnance will require basically a full scale aircraft, that will cost no less than a comparable manned fighter. Yes, you don't jeapordize the lives of aircrew, but you still can't afford to just throw them away in large numbers. I'd imagine a compromise would be something a little less technologically advanced than present 5th generation fighters, but I don't think you would gain anything by regressing much behind that point.
 
Perhaps I'm a bit biased, but I think most people in this business would agree.

I'm am certainly no expert, but I'd think one word captures the issue - latency. It seems it would be great to have a fleet of drones ahead of the planes with brains ... you know, sweep the sky. But at the end, once you close between two aircraft, I don't see how a drone can handle a skilled pilot without some level of AI that isn't there yet.

Then again, maybe the goal is to never need to close with another plane. Literally launch a boat load of drones, each equiped with missles and let rip.

You do have to wonder how a standoff will work when it is drone vs. man. I keep thinking of the F-15s escorting the Tu-95 Bears near Alaska when I was a kid. When we need to send planes up to escort an adversary, I wonder how it work when our planes are drones and the adversary has a pilot sitting in the cockpit. Okay, they shoot down a drone, thats an "attack". Now, what, we shot down a manned plane?

I could actually see the ruskies popping a drone. Hey, its just hardware, it wasn't a real attack and besides, we were over open water and you zoomed up on us. Okay, we back down or we kill a couple of pilots and crew?

[edit] That's not to say pilots will always manage the situation correctly (my ROTC pilot friends in school were all maniacs :wink2:). If we are talking all out war, it seems we'd be much better off with a load of drones backed up with breathers and brains. Before we get to all out war, I can see many ways that pilot v drone could lead to unanticipated escalation.
 
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It's not the money, it' the time.

If you start a war with 200 planes and 200 pilots, and then need 400 more, I promise you there will be 400 planes sitting there long before you have 400 skilled pilots to fly them.

I'd challenge this, but more to argue than anything. Anyone here have actual knowledge on how much time it would take to tool up and take 200 F-22s from the "Oh crap, we need more planes!" moment to mission ready?

I'd be willing to wager that we could get 200 pilots through training faster than we could build 200 new F-22 from a cold start. My guess is that whatever war we're talking about would be long over before we got either the planes or the pilots. We've been at war for a decade and while the hardware is getting abused and worn, it's not like we've lost hundreds of plane. What kind of war would it take where we'd have an URGENT need for 400 planes ... that I don't want to contemplate.
 
Ultimately I'm sure it will come down to a balancing act between a humans abilities and the expendability of UAV's. I'm no expert but I wouldn't expect a UAV to do any close air support in the foreseeable future. However, rescuing a downed pilot without risking more lives... maybe.

As AOA pointed out they already do CAS on a low threat limited basis. They'd have to carry more ordinance in the future to be any real threat though. Still, Generals love them. Cheap, can loiter for hours and no human lives in the mix. they have just as much priority in theater as manned aircraft. I don't know how many times I've waited for takeoff clearance because a Predator was departing in front of me. Of course avoiding their airspace is a pain in the butt as well.
Still, the primary CAS platform today is manned aircraft especially for CSAR. I always highlighted the call signs and freqs of the assigned CAS on my kneeboard in theater. You can bet that would be the first transmission I make if on the ground. Im not going to waiting for some UAV to show up.

I really don't think a CSAR type of helo will work either. That's a dynamic situation and you really need eyes out looking for the survivor and the threat. You'll still need gunners in the windows for coverage and PJs or someone to physically go out possibly get the survivor. If the aircraft is shot up you'll need pilots that can immediately acess the situation and decide a course
of action. So really in CSAR I think you always have humans in the loop.

As far as UAVs replacing helicopters it would be for mundane missions where you don't have people in board or missions too risky to put humans on board. This would be primarily resupplies. This is already being done with the Himax helicopter in Afghanistan. The two benefits to a UAV resupply are you can land it in a hot LZ with no worries, and when it becomes autonomous, you can send it to some mountaintop LZ in zero zero wx.

I see in 20 yrs a scenario where someone like 35 AOA is leading a flight of four. Two F-18s and two X-47s. He and his wingman's job would be to escort the UCAVs to just outside the target area and provide a CAP for anything that wants to come up. Once near the target the X-47s are free to attack the objective and then the F-18s RTB. The X-47s hopefully hit their assigned targets and RTB as well. If damaged or even lost, oh well, they did their assigned mission without loss of life. I think that's realistically the role as far as the UCAVS interaction with fighters. Unless you can build one fully autonomous that has radar that can automatically IFF everything around it and engage, well they just won't be used in a fighter roll.
 
As AOA pointed out they already do CAS on a low threat limited basis. They'd have to carry more ordinance in the future to be any real threat though. Still, Generals love them. Cheap, can loiter for hours and no human lives in the mix. they have just as much priority in theater as manned aircraft. I don't know how many times I've waited for takeoff clearance because a Predator was departing in front of me. Of course avoiding their airspace is a pain in the butt as well.
Still, the primary CAS platform today is manned aircraft especially for CSAR. I always highlighted the call signs and freqs of the assigned CAS on my kneeboard in theater. You can bet that would be the first transmission I make if on the ground. Im not going to waiting for some UAV to show up.

I really don't think a CSAR type of helo will work either. That's a dynamic situation and you really need eyes out looking for the survivor and the threat. You'll still need gunners in the windows for coverage and PJs or someone to physically go out possibly get the survivor. If the aircraft is shot up you'll need pilots that can immediately acess the situation and decide a course
of action. So really in CSAR I think you always have humans in the loop.

As far as UAVs replacing helicopters it would be for mundane missions where you don't have people in board or missions too risky to put humans on board. This would be primarily resupplies. This is already being done with the Himax helicopter in Afghanistan. The two benefits to a UAV resupply are you can land it in a hot LZ with no worries, and when it becomes autonomous, you can send it to some mountaintop LZ in zero zero wx.

I see in 20 yrs a scenario where someone like 35 AOA is leading a flight of four. Two F-18s and two X-47s. He and his wingman's job would be to escort the UCAVs to just outside the target area and provide a CAP for anything that wants to come up. Once near the target the X-47s are free to attack the objective and then the F-18s RTB. The X-47s hopefully hit their assigned targets and RTB as well. If damaged or even lost, oh well, they did their assigned mission without loss of life. I think that's realistically the role as far as the UCAVS interaction with fighters. Unless you can build one fully autonomous that has radar that can automatically IFF everything around it and engage, well they just won't be used in a fighter roll.

Well said, though I truly hope our front line fighter in 20 years is not the Hornet :)
 
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Well said, though I truly hope our front line fighter in 20 years is not the Hornet :)

Yeah it will. The F/A-18H " Super Duper Hornet" will enter service. A Mach 2 + supercruising low observable platform. :D
 
So you watched that video and still doubt it? Why, they do all those things right in the video? This is being done at a university, what could Lockheed Martin do with the same technology?

Yes I watched the whole video. And yes I absolutely doubt it. Assuming Lockheed actually was the best vendor to work with (that's a whole other discussion). This is amazing technology, no doubt. That doesn't mean that it can replace fighter pilots anytime soon. It's a long long L O N G leap from those robots to combat.

Why do people that (admittedly) have no idea about aerial combat insist that those of us who do this for a living are wrong when we tell you that the technology isn't ready yet?
 
Yes I watched the whole video. And yes I absolutely doubt it. Assuming Lockheed actually was the best vendor to work with (that's a whole other discussion). This is amazing technology, no doubt. That doesn't mean that it can replace fighter pilots anytime soon. It's a long long L O N G leap from those robots to combat.

Why do people that (admittedly) have no idea about aerial combat insist that those of us who do this for a living are wrong when we tell you that the technology isn't ready yet?

If we don't want to have a discussion then the question could have been answered with one word, first post, "NO". Next topic.

I tried to offer some information as to what is going on with technology that seemed to at least suggest the possibility. We do live in a world where airliners fly CAT III's everyday 100% autonomous, UAV's fight wars, robots dismantle bombs, so that seems to be the direction we're headed with almost everything. You guys all agreed that despite that, it isn't possible. I'm not sure why, but you are the experts so we'll leave it at that.
 
I can't speak for Evil (and I think he has many more years of experience than I do anyway so I won't try), but I certainly never said it would be impossible. In fact, I believe I said a couple times in this thread that someday it probably will be a reality. Only point I am trying to make is that it is not there yet. It is hard to explain the "whys" without getting into things that just don't belong on a public forum, but I've attempted to do so in the most generic and unclass ways. It is a good discussion, and I certainly don't mean to tell anyone to shut up and color......it is an interesting topic and I wouldn't be responding here if I didn't have an interest in talking about it myself. Everyone should have an interest in what our massive amounts of tax dollars are buying, and what value they actually have.......so this discussion of UAV vs how we have always done things is important. My only goal is to provide what professional perspective on the issue that I can.
 
I can't speak for Evil (and I think he has many more years of experience than I do anyway so I won't try), but I certainly never said it would be impossible. In fact, I believe I said a couple times in this thread that someday it probably will be a reality. Only point I am trying to make is that it is not there yet. It is hard to explain the "whys" without getting into things that just don't belong on a public forum, but I've attempted to do so in the most generic and unclass ways. It is a good discussion, and I certainly don't mean to tell anyone to shut up and color......it is an interesting topic and I wouldn't be responding here if I didn't have an interest in talking about it myself. Everyone should have an interest in what our massive amounts of tax dollars are buying, and what value they actually have.......so this discussion of UAV vs how we have always done things is important. My only goal is to provide what professional perspective on the issue that I can.

My post to Evil aside, you've actually made me think a lot about more about the challenges and I know you guys would love to hammer home some facts but can't and shouldn't.

One other thing I can say is that this discussion makes me feel a lot better about the F-22 program as a tax payer. If it really is that much better, then at least we made a meaningful advance and that's a lot better than some of our other expenditures.

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to comment on the topic.
 
I'm not saying never, re-read my posts. I'm saying no time soon.

I didn't mean to tell people to shut up and color but when 35 and I say it's a long time off, then someone says 'watch this and I guarantee you'll change your mind'; we both watched and said 'no change'. After that, we got 'are you sure you watched the whole thing?'

I'm all for discussion and advancement of technology. I'm not all for people making claims that they can't back up. It's a slippery slope from "do you think this could replace xxxx" and "I'm sure this can replace xxxx".
 
And for the record, from what little I have seen of the F-22 while doing joint training with those guys, it is an unbelievable airplane. It had a big, heart stopping price tag to be sure, but I am convinced that in terms of the mission it was built for, it is/was worth every penny. I'll leave it at that, and all I will say is that when I was in the middle of a 40 plane large force exercise at Nellis, I was VERY glad to have them on our team.

Does that mission still exist? Will it ever exist again?
 
Perception is funny. Do fry cooks know the future of fryers? Fry cooks are the tip of the french fry spear they should know. Anybody have some ditto fluid laying around I miss that smell.
 
Does that mission still exist? Will it ever exist again?

I would hope we are planning for the future wars and not just the current war. That's why you need a mix of aircraft for low conflict (AT-6) and high tech (F-22) for industrialized countries that have similar capibilities as ours.
 
Perception is funny. Do fry cooks know the future of fryers? Fry cooks are the tip of the french fry spear they should know. Anybody have some ditto fluid laying around I miss that smell.

That's an absurd comparison, but I will try to relate it in terms that use it. The fry cook knows how to cook the fries, and he knows what he needs to do his job successfully, and perhaps even what things would be nice to have in order to do it better. He doesn't have deep insight into the funding process of the fry maker industry, and he doesn't work behind the scenes at his company making big picture decisions about fry maker acquisitions. So the company could choose to buy whatever they want, and thus unilaterally decide what the fry maker of the future will be, regardless of the merits of their decision. But there is still nobody more qualified than the fry maker to judge whether the future fry makers will work for the fry cook himself, even if he really has no say in the issue at all.
 
Does that mission still exist? Will it ever exist again?

It exists as a possibility. I hope that possibility is very very very small, as there are a lot of folks who will not ever be coming home if it happens. And yes, the irony of this statement given the topic at hand is not lost on me. In an ideal world where the UAV can do everything I can in a 20 year old Hornet, the UAV would absolutely be what we need to be spending money on. A guy I once flew with is currently working as a test pilot on one of our shipboard UAV programs.......he has a lot of good things to say about it. It isn't wasted money or time IMHO, but it has a long way to go until it equates to a division of APG-79 Super Hornets, or Block 60 Vipers or APG-63 v(2)/v(3) Eagles or Raptors, with all the other latest combat systems and a pair of human eyes and ears to make use of it all.
 
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