Our only guarantor of air superiority rests with this plane: Lockheed Martin Boeing F-22 Raptor.
Posted on 07/15/2009 3:19:28 AM PDT by myknowledge
Nice pics, and your point is???
One is for close air support, the other is for air dominance.
Can’t believe the moronic Gates is trying to kill off the Raptor so he can fund more Reapers.
Fact is, if there is no air dominance, the Reapers are sitting ducks. There’s no way it would survive a dogfight against a manned fighter.
Our only guarantor of air superiority rests with this plane: Lockheed Martin Boeing F-22 Raptor.
Of course. But that's "apples and oranges". What we are discussing is a UAV that would be designed from the ground up specifically for air superiority. And in that case, the "manned fighter" would be the "sitting duck", because the unmanned airframe will be vastly superior in manueverability. That's the whole point.
Oh, and the Air Force doesn't particularly want to fly "Reapers" either. Read about how the "geek pilots" are treated by the "fighter jocks".
My concern is what if the enemy jams the communications links? With a surface attack aircraft like the predator, they can be programmed to attack a stationary target and operate autonomously. For the Air to Air mission, the enemy is constantly moving and the pilot has to make decisions on the fly.
This is true for ANY war fighting situation, not just UAV's. The job of technologists is to assure that it doesn't happen.
"With a surface attack aircraft like the predator, they can be programmed to attack a stationary target and operate autonomously. For the Air to Air mission, the enemy is constantly moving and the pilot has to make decisions on the fly."
This is why an air superiority UAV WOULD be piloted. The pilot is just not sitting in the aircraft.
The remote pilot would have more and better information than the "hot seat" pilot would have, due to the ability to use more technology at the remote pilot site (also my point about more than one "fighter" per UAV).
No, piloted air superiority will inevitably go the way of the dodo.
Bump
My point was that communications can be jammed. If that happens you can’t pre-program an air-to-air fighter to continue the mission. You can use autonomous logic in a surface attack aircraft because it’s attacking a stationary target.
I work as a engineer for a military contractor for unmannded mine warfare systems. I agree that they’ll take over the most dangerous manned missions someday, but we aren’t ready for them to take over the Air to Air mission yet.
I doubt seriously that communications can be jammed sufficiently to prevent control. Secure communictations is much too important to the modern high-tech battlefield to allow a potential enemy to succeed.
"I agree that they’ll take over the most dangerous manned missions someday, but we aren’t ready for them to take over the Air to Air mission yet."
And the biggest reason fot the delay is that the "fighter jocks" in the Air Force want to keep getting their "adrenaline high", not that the technology isn't available.
I work for a Navy Contractor doing test and evaluation on Autonomous and remote minehunting equipment. Trust me - if the stuff we're evaluating is any example of what the state of the art is, it's not ready yet. The number and types of decisions that would have to be made during an air to air engagement are staggering. It is an incredibly fluid environment. The software that we've seen couldn't handle anything near that complex.
I don't know how many times I've got to repeat this before it gets through your skull....the UAV's WILL BE PILOTED. Software won't be doing anything "autonomous", unless maybe to get the UAV from launch point to theater. FORGET about "autonomy"...that isn't the subject under discussion.
The only differences will be that the pilot (or crew) will be sitting in a nice, air-conditioned facility instead of in the cockpit, and that the airframe will have many times the performance of manned fighters. They won't be fatigued, have bloated bladders, have soiled their diapers, or any of that. They will be sharp, focussed, and ready to "rock and roll". And when they DO get tired, they can be easily relieved by fresh personnel.
Only as long as the control link is intact. Interrupt comm, then what?
Maybe you don't read so well. Even a piloted UAV has to have some kind of contingency program to allow it to operate autonomously if the communications are lost. I understand how UAVs work. As I said - I am on an engineering team doing test and evaluation on unmanned vehicles. I'm sure I know a lot more about them than you do and I know what the current level of development is on them. I'm also very familiar with the Air-to-Air mission because I'm an engineer and was the Superintendent of the F-15C Schoolhouse at Tyndall AFB before I retired from the AF. That's the only schoolhouse that was dedicated to teaching the Air Superiority Mission in the US.
One of the common failures that I see is a due to a loss of communication with the vehicle. The software has to take hundreds of variables into account and react quickly. The data is fed from sensors all over the vehicle and those sensors sometimes fail, so the program takes action based on faulty data. We've lost very expensive equipment because an attitude sensor failed and said the vehicle was descending when it was supposed to be going straight and level and it commanded a corrective action that caused it to broach and break loose.
Your comment about "Fighter Jocks blocking UAVs" displays your ignorance. The "Fighter Jocks" are the only ones who have a frame of reference on the requirements for Air to Air because they've actually done it. Everyone else is just guessing. You're discounting the opinions of the most experienced people on the subject because you read something on the Internet and formed an ignorant opinion. Ninety percent of the F-15 pilots that I knew had engineering degrees. I worked with one guy who graduated number one from the AF Academy - Number one from undergraduate pilot training, and had Aeronautical Engineering and a Computer Science Degrees. He had several thousand hours of seat time in half a dozen different fighter jets and was the number one graduate from Fighter Weapons School (the AF Equivalent of Top Gun). That's the caliber of person who made the decision that the current state of technology in UAVs isn't up to the Air Superiority mission.
You also stated that a UAV could pull 20 Gs. A brand new F-15 could pull about 10 Gs before it experiences structural failure. You have to compromise drag and weight to increase structural integrity and that in itself will limit performance. A plane would need large control surfaces to pull high Gs, but that would create a lot of drag and the G load on the wings would be huge. To achieve high speed, you need low drag - that means smaller control surfaces that prevent high-G maneuvers. That's why an airplane can outmaneuver a high speed air to air missile. You have to compromise speed for maneuverability.
You also can't deploy weapons at high Gs or high air speed.
The Navy's approach to AUVs for the Air to Air mission was the AIM-54 Phoenix. It was a long range air-to-air missile with a range of over 200 km. The program was scrapped because it was expensive and didn't work well. Someday we will have the technology to build and operate UAVs for the Air Superiority mission, but not today.
One day we will face a foe that doesn't bow to Allah and grow dirty beards on their unwashed faces.
Enough with all the UAV bashing. First of all, a UAV can be piloted from the ground with all the situational awareness of a pilot in the air. The ground operator can see the same instrumentation data that a pilot in the cockpit can. High def cameras can provide the same range of vision that a in-cockpit pilot has.
The UAV will be able to execute maneuvers that would generate enough G-forces to kill an in-cockpit human pilot. In fact, the F22 can already do this, but its flight controls computer has an active limiter that prevents pilots from pulling a 12G turn.
UAVs are expendable. Pilots are not. If a UAV gets shot down, the operator can simply stretch his legs, go to the bathroom, and grab a drink of water before coming back and grabbing control of another UAV.
UAVs will be significantly cheaper. No special ejection, life support, or pilot comfort systems are required. Airframe geometry would not be dictated by having to comfortably seat a human pilot. Billions of dollars were spent on designing the F22 canopy so it could be stealthy AND allow the pilot to see outside - a non-issue for UAVs.
Additionally, a jammed comm signal will not cause UAVs to fall out of the sky. Even today’s generation of UAVs have contingencies in the case that they lose communications with ground controllers - they autonomously fly back and loiter around their home airfield until comm can be reestablished.
Second, wireless communications systems are getting better and better and there are a ton of jamming countermeasures. Unfortunately, the USAF finds fighter jets to be much sexier than communications satellite systems. While a program of questionable utility like the F22 gets hundreds of billions, next generation SatCom programs such as TSAT get their budgets slashed or outright canceled.
It’s rather disingenuous for the USAF to purposely neglect developing reliable, protected communications and then claim that UAVs cannot replace manned aircraft because the comm links are unreliable and unprotected.
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