Posted on 03/22/2024 4:26:36 AM PDT by airdalecheif
The Pentagon has finally declared the F-35 fighter mature enough to go into full rate production.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I’m sure new problems will arise.
Just in time to be rendered obsolete in the age of drone warfare.
Experts call the 35 a flying pig.....
Hopefully the Navy does not have to buy any of these.
Do we have an older plane already existing and vetted that does almost as much as the F35 lightning II but much cheaper to make more of and maintain? Or is the F-35 so heads and shoulders better than anything we’ve ever had that it is essential for us, warts and all? Why do we develop and procure military vehicles this way?
It would be better to build dozens of Super Warthogs (A-10 II) for the cost of one F-35. In a fight one lucky shot disables the billion dollar F-35 and the missile battery continues on. Conversely should a lucky shot take down a Warthog, the rest of the Warthogs descend on the missile battery and destroy it and much of the area surrounding it.
I live across the river from a Naval Air Station.....recently a squadron of F-35s was here for a week.......I know its the sound of freedom, however man, are they LOUD.
Time to come up with a new flying boondoggle.
You're looking backwards, not forwards.
Or is the F-35 so heads and shoulders better than anything we’ve ever had that it is essential for us, warts and all?
The point is that drone swarms are to manned fighter jets what aircraft were to battleships of the late 20th century. A kid with a joystick sitting in a bunker in Nevada can inflict more damage than a manned fighter.
I suppose drone swarms technology and methods will also evolve and improve, perhaps faster than the F-35 and other plans, (and naval vessels) are able to counter them. Not surprising since the design of planes and ships were aimed at fighting and defending against other planes and ships, and to some extent missiles coming at them, torpedoes, mines and the like. Swarms of drones will at some point be able to overwhelm anything those planes and ships (and tanks) could carry aboard them to defend themselves. Unless drones could be effectively jammed and rendered inoperable they will be a potent new attack method. And then there’s the concept already deployed of old/new technology “wired” drones that are unjammable and have longer and longer ranges. Like our old T.O.W. anti-tank wired missiles.
Check out F-35s flying through the Mach Loop in Wales:
https://duckduckgo.com/?va=i&t=hb&q=mach+loop+videos&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DitwdxUm9Pxc
drones have one distinct disadvantage...7 seconds.
When the kid in Nevada throws his stick left, it takes 7 seconds for the command to reach the drone and for the drone to react.
Dead man walking.
Would moving the kid on the joystick from Nevada to near the front lines in the combat zone reduce those 7 seconds and by how much?
The command has to leave the stick in the trailer...
It then goes into space and bounces off of a satellite...
Then it gets relayed back to the drone...
Then the drone responds....
It really doesn’t matter....
The piloted craft will always have the advantage.
This is the critical weakness in the drone
Drone swarms (much touted) have disadvantages too. They require swarms of operators, and coordination between such, which requires a lot of communication, which can be disrupted.
Independently “smart” drones mitigate part of that, and create other challenges.
Now, that said, fighter aircraft not constrained by the pilot’s ability to survive high G-forces are likely to be a big deal in the not too distant future. The question is, how long until AI can match a human pilot with many hundreds of hours of experience? It takes considerable time to train even a F-16 pilot, as we know...
Could a drone be built to be manned by one or two persons, and as such, add unpredictability to its flight path and ultimate destination that the opposition could not counter effectively? Perhaps a swarm of manned drones that overwhelm defenses and don’t have that 7 second disadvantage? Most if not all would be lost, consumed in the mission each time. Isaac Asimov, Sci Fi writer, wrote about using manned missiles as a breakthrough technology against every more precise computerized unmanned drones and missiles. What is old in new again, eh?
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