Fifth generation fighters crucial to air superiority

Defense Talk ^ | 3/4/2012 | Defense Tech

[lentulusgracchus]

Modern manned aircraft with complex weapons systems are far too reliant upon their repair and resupply facilities.

And UAV's aren't? That was my original point. Getting them just to work in combat is going to be a major achievement. And somehow the UAV's sensors are going to be better than those available to J-20 and F-22 drivers?

You make it sound like all we need to do is wind up their little rubber bands and they'll go forth and conquer entire air fleets of "Flankers" and "Finbacks". I guess we just disagree about this.

In the 1930's there was an idea floating around that, in future, air war would include a chemical component, consisting of aircraft equipped with big tanks of enormously toxic agents of some sort, poisoning the atmosphere cubic miles at a time to determine outcomes -- "better dying through chemistry." I think the "fighter UAV" concept to be something along the same lines -- a credible but specious pipe dream.

[af_vet_rr]

And UAV's aren't?

In our hypothetical war with China, our UAVs would probably be based off of carriers. I don't see South Korea, Japan, or the Philippines rushing to offer us airfields, and airfields in Taiwan won't last long. That leaves us with carriers while China will most likely be launching from static airfields, leaving them much more vulnerable.

And somehow the UAV's sensors are going to be better than those available to J-20 and F-22 drivers?

Do you think the only UAVs in development are for ground attack?

You make it sound like all we need to do is wind up their little rubber bands and they'll go forth and conquer entire air fleets of "Flankers" and "Finbacks".

You make it sound like we have fleets of aircraft to counter those. We don't. Look at a map. We may have a lot of allies in the region, but they ain't going to be hot to trot when it comes to hosting our aircraft in a fight with China. That leaves us with carriers (or very long flights from American territory which means very tired pilots), and based on the procurement orders, that means very few F-35s, which leaves us with the good old F/A-18 going up against J-20s, and those F/A-18s will probably be outnumbered. That's not exactly a good scenario.

And if there are still "fleets" of Chinese fighters a few days into our hypothetical scenario, then that means far too many airfields weren't being hit, which means the USAF and USN have screwed up royally.

In the 1930's there was an idea floating around that

And in the 1940s, we spent money on a system that would put pigeons inside of missiles to guide them. Hell, the Russians were strapping explosives to dogs and trying to train them into taking out German tanks.

You think that the idea of a UAV engaging in aerial combat is a pipe dream, but do you honestly believe that 50 years from now we'll still have manned combat aircraft?

[hattend]

It's nothing new - back in the 1970s, the AF rigged some existing fighters to be unmanned and then had them go up against manned fighters. It wasn't pretty. When you take the human out of the cockpit, it's amazing some of the maneuvers an aircraft is capable of, even an aircraft designed for humans.

At Holloman in 1970's when I was there we had a buttload of F-102s and Navy Skynights converted to drones.

They blowed up real good when confronted by Phantoms and Eagles.

What drones are you talking about?