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To: markomalley

This sounds reasonable to me. Is anyone working on a replacement?


52 posted on 08/07/2009 9:54:12 PM PDT by Nosterrex
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To: Nosterrex
This sounds reasonable to me. Is anyone working on a replacement?

In my mind, I think they need to look at the mission of the fighter again.

In my mind, there are two basic missions: ground attack and air superiority.

For ground attack, Predators and Tomahawks can do a large amount of the job. If you can put 100 UAVs in the air for every F-22, then how much do you need manned ground attack aircraft? Maybe you need more UAVs and more air control aircraft.

For running wild weasel type missions, you could equip the radar and SAM detection equipment in a UAV, along with the appropriate HARM missiles.

For air superiority, again, you could equip a UAV with more modern air-to-air missiles and up-to-date detection equipment. Those missions would have to be semi-autonomous, to have a human confirm a airborne target as a bogey and not a neutral (or allied friendly), but the remaining functions could be done autonomously. Granted, they would suck in dogfights, but, in reality, how many dogfights are actually necessary nowadays?

For close air support, you could again use a UAV equipped properly, but it would need to have some human control in order to minimize fratricide. But, again, it's not like that stuff isn't happening now.

UAVs have one other big advantage: human factors engineering is not required to make them go. The biggest limitation on aircraft design, to my knowledge, is the amount of stress you can put the pilot under. If it wasn't for the pilot, you could design an aircraft to be far more maneuverable and agile than it they can now. (How many humans could take a 14G turn?)

The downside is that you have to absolutely have reliable, high speed, jam resistant data links in order to maintain human control (when required). But, proper control of wild weasel missions can remove jammers (which would wreak havoc on CAS aircraft). Besides, data links are part of the deal right now anyway (how do you think they control smart bombs and make adjustments to T-LAM missions today?)

So what I'd do is to make a transition to unmanned aircraft with an increased number of air control aircraft (where the pilots would be located).

Just IMHO.

60 posted on 08/08/2009 6:54:29 AM PDT by markomalley (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus)
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To: Nosterrex

Reasonable disinformantion... And no not in the US. Russia in planning stage for 6th gen - US no plans.


65 posted on 08/08/2009 9:12:41 AM PDT by PIF
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