Posted on 05/24/2010 10:56:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It is not, however, unlikely that the sensor operator flies the craft while the pilot gets some coffee.
I remember a UAV that Boeing was developing that at the time claimed the ability to increase a carrier’s fire power 4x+ what it currently is.
I don’t know if this is the same plane. But it folded up inside these mini containers that looked like flattened freight containers. The idea was that you could stack them to the ceiling in the ships hanger.
Unpackaging the plan and preparing it for a mission was said to take less then 15 mins.
I was stunned, but manned pilot lobby killed the plane.
I would love if this plane is the same one that I saw before. A carrier already by itself carries firepower in excess of most countries on earth. This can only make it better.
Anyone concerned that Obama would use these against the domestic population? Posse Comitatus probably doesn’t cover drones.
Given the opportunity and the a sufficient crisis to take advantage of, I wouldn’t put anything past him.
Still think we need to develop these. We have a national debt problem and can’t afford manned aircraft in sufficient numbers to protect us any longer.
My biggest nightmare is someone takes control of these (terrorists) and turns them on a domestic population rather than Obama.
I am aware of the significant effort that has gone into sigsec, but the episodes of terrorists intercepting video feeds from drones in Afghanistan aren’t that reassuring.
The Army has enlisted men fly its unmanned aircraft. The Air Force did too, until the Union objected.
Only 4x? Pikers.
They even talked about prepositioning these so resupply would be as simple as an unrep.
While the F-22 is an amazing piece of engineering, I’m actually glad that we’re not pushing much more money down that route, since (speaking as someone who works on advanced control systems) it is clear that they will soon be obsolete.
“they will soon be obsolete”
Yes and no. It depends on the war. Aircraft carriers are obsolete in a full out war, but man are they ever useful for the policing wars.
Great post keep em comming
I don’t see the attraction as a fighter or a bomber at this time.
For $30MM, you can buy more than 50 cruise missiles. The price comparison becomes even more lopsided when maintenance costs are included.
An F-22 would mop the floor with one of these. They are subsonic and have a ceiling of 40,000 feet. The Raptor has a 60,000 foot ceiling and supercruise capabilities.
Maybe this is why they want to fight it now. The pilots know they would win.
The F-22 was designed subject to very specific criteria: to attain air dominance at any cost. This means it can easily be priced out of policing wars if much cheaper options are sufficient.
This doesn’t mean the F-22 was a waste. It was designed in the 1980s for an adversary that never really materialized. This is, in a sense, the ideal scenario and we should reinvest this dividend into engineering the next generation (for then it might then be needed) versus rolling out hundreds of unnecessary planes now.
I doubt 4X. Unless the darn things are launched from a vertical cell... You'd still have to fuel, arm and launch the thing, not to mention recover. Sortie rate, IOW's.
It wouldn't be anywhere near a 1v1 engagement. More likely to be 1v20 or 1v50. Heck, the USAF already worries that the limited number of F22's carry far too few missiles to mount an adequate defense.
The f-22 can simply fly away. It has a full Mach 2.35 speed advantage (3.2M vs. 0.85M). A sidewinder has a top speed of Mach 2.5. That means that the closing speed is about 100 miles and hour. Your UAV shooting at an F-22 at a range of fifty miles would have to have a sidewinder with 30 minutes of fuel to close the gap. Each successive missile would have it worse because the range would increase rapidly. The F-22 missiles would be traveling with a closing speed of about 2000 mph. It would take 90 seconds to arrive on target. This is a scenario where the two planes fire at 50 miles, turn tail and run at top speed.
You misunderstood my comment, and I can see why. When I gave the matchup ratios it led you to believe that the mission was an aerial engagement with UAV’s attempting to shoot down defending F22’s. Not what I was thinking, but I can see how you could get that from the way I wrote it.
These UAV’s are on a strike mission. They are flooding the zone of a given air defense sector looking for Patriot batteries and such. Now you’ve got a pair of F22’s trolling around at 60K ft. How many missles do they have between them relative to the number of UAV ‘targets’? See what I’m getting at.
There’s another problem that I didn’t even mention because I don’t know the answer. Could be a big one, or a small one. The problem is detection time. Can the F22’s ASEA radar pickout these individual UAV’s at sufficient range to engage BVR? BVR is what the F22 was designed for.
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