Posted on 04/10/2024 4:40:23 PM PDT by Fish Speaker
EA AIR SPACE 2024 — The Navy is in the nascent stages of evaluating how to bring autonomous combat drones to the decks of aircraft carriers, but the service’s top official for unmanned programs says one thing is certain: The drones will have to be cheap, topping out at about $15 million per unit.
To keep prices low, the Navy will likely sacrifice the longevity of each so-called Collaborative Combat Aircraft, said Rear Adm. Stephen Tedford, the Navy’s program executive for unmanned systems and weapons. Instead of being sustained over a 40-year lifecycle, a single drone could be catapulted and recovered off the deck of an aircraft carrier a handful of times for surveillance and strike missions before ending its service life as a kamikaze drone.
“I want something that’s going to fly for a couple hundred hours. The last hour it’s either a target or a weapon. I’m either going to hit something with it or I’m going to train [a sensor on it] and shoot it down,” he said today during a briefing at the Sea Air Space conference. “But I’m not going to sustain them for 30 years.”
In contrast to the Air Force, which has made its CCA a major technology development priority, the Navy has said relatively little about its vision for how combat drones could be incorporated with its fighter fleet since the cancelation of the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike program in 2016.
(Excerpt) Read more at breakingdefense.com ...
$15 million is cheap?
Huuummm. The F-35 engine is 45 million dollars. Just the engine. Commercial jet engines for light aircraft range from 1.5 to 3.5 million dollars. Presumably they’ll want fries with that, so fifteen million would be very, very cheap. How will the cheaper engines keep up with the military manned jets?
Fly for 30 years?
or fly for 200 hours?
The Navy has decided which is more cost effective.
“$15 million is cheap?”
That is what military schools teach young cadets these days.
I suppose I’ll have to teach my two grandsons that when the three of us each hamburger meals with fries that the $60.00 bill is cheap.
Virtually all the wear and tear on a military jet is training .
Drones are more like cruise missiles - you store them until you need them so 200 hours is a long life cycle for a drone
And 15 mil is cheap if they don’t require a lot of maintenance , spare parts and contractor support
Makes sense.
$15 million seems like a lot, or it may be it’s a little. Obviously these are equipped with a lot of technology - all kinds of imaging systems and radar I’m sure, perhaps carrying a weapons load, secure communications, remote piloting etc. And obviously need to be well built, and for takeoff and landing on ships if that requires any special design. In the movies the drones in Afghanistan are flown by people in Nevada. Maybe that’s just movies and these will be piloted from the ships?
Affirmative action hiring of lots of pilots and green and cheap electric airplanes will alleviate the alleviation.
Even at that, in many instances, expensive components could be salvaged and installed in other drones.
I worked for Admiral Tedford back around 2006 when he was a Commander up in NAVAIR then worked with him again when made Captain. Actually a very smart guy.
Have the drones made in Ukraine. They will be cheaper and will likely work better than the US aviation companies as they have more experience in what really works for a drone.
“the Navy will likely sacrifice the longevity ”
That would be smart since the technology is evolving rapidly. There is no point in spending large sums of money on an advanced aircraft that will be obsolete in 3-5 years.
My understanding is that the drones will fly along with manned jets. They’ll be used as decoys, to attack dangerous targets, to get in the way of missiles targeting manned jets. They won’t be used as unmanned missiles which are much cheaper. If this is the case, they’ll fly as many training hours and combat hours, as the manned platforms. Possibly more as they can be used for reconnaissance. I produced military hardware for over thirty years. Here’s what happens. Someone gets a system funded. Everyone and his uncle get on board and wants it to do their mission as well. What starts out as a relatively simple single purpose design ends up as a Mach 1 fighter/bomber that can also plow land, carry troops...you name it. (/s) I was on Future Combat Systems that was going to use one vehicle and every service was supposed to build their vehicle off that one. So, every potential customer wanted the basic vehicle to be the one they needed so they didn’t have to cough up additional funds. It got bigger, and bigger until it was ridiculous. Then, as my mother used to say, pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered. It was cancelled. The idea was as if you wanted a Formula I race car that could be easily modified into a limo.
The military doesn’t do cheap. The reason is political. A low-cost program is not good for your career. The higher cost, higher profile is good. Companies don’t’ want to build cheap because profit is a percentage of cost. Then there’s Congress that want their piece of the pie built in their district or state. And, they’ll add the anti-chromium and lead and cadmium clauses and the mandatory LGBTQ/Trans outreach program. (Dead serious on this.) The companies love this because...it’s an expense, chargeable to the contract, which makes the contract more profitable.
Thank you for personalizing and adding human element to the discussion.
Ah, 1968 when times were good, 2 hamburgers small fry and regular coke advertised for under a dollar at mickyd’s. Brand new Navy Jets for a couple of mil, if that.
“ There is no point in spending large sums of money on an advanced aircraft that will be obsolete in 3-5 years.”
EXACTLY.
How about $75K and just put a whole mess of them in flat packs on the aircraft carrier? If one breaks, use another.
Defense contractors.
You have to pay for a permanent facility and staff in DC, lobbying, hire a bunch of ex generals to get their Rolodex, pay for election campaigns, conform to DEI, green and other requirements, while paying a guy turning a wrench 100k+ a year at Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, Northup Grumman. Of course all the facilities need to be energy star compliant, and the manufacturing hubs based in those states that vote a certain way on defense spending...
It’s just a small premium we need to pay to have “national security.”
DEI soldiers and engineers can come up with one for half that in vacation money.
Augment with $3mil small kamikaze drones.
LOTS of them.
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