Posted on 05/05/2020 5:01:20 AM PDT by PIF
In what is a massive milestone for Boeing and potentially for unmanned aerial combat systems as a whole, the company officially rolled out the first of three pre-production unmanned teaming aircraft, which is the central component of a total system called the Airpower Teaming System, or ATS for short. The War Zone was part of a small roundtable of journalists that talked with two of the minds behind ATS ahead of the official unveiling and we learned a lot about this potentially game-changing system, to say the least.
ATS is designed to work with manned aerial assets in the 'loyal wingman' role and to do so at a remarkably low cost. In effect, the concept has to potential to drastically expand the size of a tactical jet force at a fraction of the cost of buying full-up manned airframes, while also infusing a whole new set of disruptive tactics into an air arm's playbook. It will also make manned assets more survivable by not having to risk them during the direst parts of some missions. You can read more about this concept overall, here.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedrive.com ...
It kind of looks like a F-35. A miniature one.
Coming soon to the Spratley Islands US Navy Shooting range!
It would be impressive it was tested in the mountains of Jalisco.
I want one.
Well at least the passengers and crew won’t doe when it crashes. Unfortunate souls on the ground? Collateral damage.
doe=die.
Miss, more coffee please.....
The biggest pro would be it can pull as many G’s as the airframe can stand, i.e., far more than a human can take. The biggest con is what happens if it’s hacked/jammed? No longer loyal/usable.
Do they come in kitform>
I would think that these guys are pretty sophisticated in that they know when they are being hacked/jammed. They then go into AI mode, complete the mission as originally defined and then go home.
The biggest con is what happens if it’s hacked/jammed? No longer loyal/usable.
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unlike most drones this one has AI so jamming won’t work even if it had to rely on external signals (this factor has largely been mitigated in current weapons systems); hacking goes along with jamming so that too will be secure - at least from current methods.
The roles listed are not direct combat ones like dog fighting, but rater to take on the more dangerous roles in penetrating air defenses. Please read the article.
The biggest pro us not G-force but is the field interchangeable nose cone - it can accept many different missions or rather a group can preform many missions simultaneously without having to build many very expensive drones that do everything.
Please read the article.
Understood. But technological leaps happen. It seems I read recently where one of our drones was jammed and it crashed. A human in the cockpit couldn’t be hacked or jammed.
...and the fact that it doesn’t require all that volume for a cockpit plus the weight of all the equipment needed to keep the puny human alive.
Thank you for posting this.
I love this stuff.
It makes me regret letting my AWST sub expire...
Just read more on the War Zone where all things mil are discussed and written about
I see what you mean. Serious nap of the earh testing, no problem with human killing G forces. Turn on a dime, no more 5 Gs limit.
Being designed and built by Boeing Australia, for the Australian Air Force.
I can picture a boardroom in Chicago with CEO and all his flacks: "Gentlemen and women, what are we going to do? Nobody wants to ride in our airplanes any more!"
So they made a plane nobody rides in.
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