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F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

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Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#211

Post by mschuster91 »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #161
mrtksn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that might turn out to be irrelevant as the drones prove detrimental in a warfare. With the advancements in AI in recent years, it will probably get harder and harder to justify carrying a biological being and all the support systems onboard. At some point, a warplane capabilities might become irrelevant and the only important aspect would the the implications of carrying a solder onboard and making the downing o…

How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming? I suppose they have some way (autonomous would be one way), but it seems to me that if communications are cut off, having a pilot with human judgement to respond to changing conditions will almost always have some advantage. Although, you could get a pretty advanced autonomous system that responded to changes from a pre-programmed attack plan.

> How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming?

For one, by making it harder to jam in the first place. Starlink with its extremely directional antennas is a good example - an opponent would need an equally massive fleet of satellites or high-altitude ECM planes to jam it, and the latter ones can easily be targeted by anti-radar rockets.

This is why the US government has been pushing insane amounts of money into SpaceX... Starlink is the future of interconnected wars.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#212

Post by pjc50 »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #161
mrtksn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that might turn out to be irrelevant as the drones prove detrimental in a warfare. With the advancements in AI in recent years, it will probably get harder and harder to justify carrying a biological being and all the support systems onboard. At some point, a warplane capabilities might become irrelevant and the only important aspect would the the implications of carrying a solder onboard and making the downing o…

How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming? I suppose they have some way (autonomous would be one way), but it seems to me that if communications are cut off, having a pilot with human judgement to respond to changing conditions will almost always have some advantage. Although, you could get a pretty advanced autonomous system that responded to changes from a pre-programmed attack plan.

The plane-sized drones are capable of some autonomous operation. It may or may not be possible to spoof that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

The smaller drones are not usually autonomous. See the Starlink alleged incident.

Inertial guidance is popular but very expensive to do accurately with laser gyros. I'm surprised there haven't been more "terrain following" systems.

There's probably always going to be a continuum between manned and unmanned platforms, and a discussion about SEAD.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#213

Post by mschuster91 »

kkielhofner wrote: post #202
kjkjadksj wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fighter response to 9/11 was proof enough of the incompetence of the modern american air defense system.

Even after that event and two decades it's still a joke.

Which is why the regulations on passenger aircraft got tightened up, it's easier to get rid/impede the attack vector than to overcome the physical limitations of a radar antenna in a fighter jet's nose cone vs a many meters large ground radar antenna.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#214

Post by pjc50 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #211
brobdingnagians wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming? I suppose they have some way (autonomous would be one way), but it seems to me that if communications are cut off, having a pilot with human judgement to respond to changing conditions will almost always have some advantage. Although, you could get a pretty advanced autonomous system that responded to changes from a pre-programmed attack plan.

> How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming? For one, by making it harder to jam in the first place. Starlink with its extremely directional antennas is a good example - an opponent would need an equally massive fleet of satellites or high-altitude ECM planes to jam it, and the latter ones can easily be targeted by anti-radar rockets. This is why the US government has been pushing insane amounts of…

SpaceX is not fully under operational control of the US government, if some of the reports from Twitter about geofencing are to be believed.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#215

Post by ceejayoz »

mrtksn wrote: post #203
brobdingnagians wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming? I suppose they have some way (autonomous would be one way), but it seems to me that if communications are cut off, having a pilot with human judgement to respond to changing conditions will almost always have some advantage. Although, you could get a pretty advanced autonomous system that responded to changes from a pre-programmed attack plan.

> How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming The same way the F-35 does I guess. Besides, it's pretty common for AI systems to overtake human capabilities these days, so when jammed they can just carry on. Sure, they do mistakes but humans do these too and the advantage of not carrying 80kg of fragile human and all the life support systems onboard is quite significant. It makes the thing much cheape…

> The same way the F-35 does I guess.

No, because that's in part "let the human pilot make decisions".

> Besides, it's pretty common for AI systems to overtake human capabilities these days...

Not in the realm of "should I shoot that thing?" sort of decisions.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#216

Post by bumby »

ncallaway wrote: post #128
cypress66 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of very low volume niche Chinese phones for reasonable prices. So it doesn't need to be so expensive. You could argue that an iPhone would cost over a billion because you need to develop iOS. But why would you do that instead of modding android for 1/100th of the cost, if you're only gonna make 40?

The hardware for the niche Chinese phones can only be so cheap, because an ecosystem exists around the mass production that is built around the mainstream iPhone and Android devices. If not for the insane scale of phones being developed, the components that go into those cheap Chinese phones would be far far far more expensive than they are today.

This assumes the aircraft analogy uses all one-off parts, no? It would be interesting to see if there's any data available on this. I would expect big ticket items like the engines to be bespoke, but even they would likely use some common parts. I'd imagine it's not likely every seal or bolt would be unique to that airframe.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#218

Post by foxyv »

btbuildem wrote: post #70

An 80's movie dream is playing out for some rural kids, where they stumble upon a smouldering high-tech wreckage and as they explore it, men in suits pour out of black SUVs and talk to them in taciturn ways. Seriously though, these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be.

Fighter jets in general are a constant maintenance marathon. They are pushing the edge of engineering and performance. That means that they are less reliable and more expensive to maintain than a 777 by a wide margin. However, the F-35 is significantly more reliable than it's predecessor the F-16.

The F-35 represents the result of a changing model for warfare. Less dogfights and missile duels, more managing a fleet of strike drones, loitering ordinance, ECM, and acting as an observability platform. With the advent of extreme long range, datalink guided, air breathing, air to air missiles, BVR is transitioning to over the horizon combat. I see you, I kill you. F-35 is a reaction to that.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#219

Post by mrtksn »

ceejayoz wrote: post #215
mrtksn wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming The same way the F-35 does I guess. Besides, it's pretty common for AI systems to overtake human capabilities these days, so when jammed they can just carry on. Sure, they do mistakes but humans do these too and the advantage of not carrying 80kg of fragile human and all the life support systems onboard is quite significant. It makes the thing much cheape…

> The same way the F-35 does I guess. No, because that's in part "let the human pilot make decisions". > Besides, it's pretty common for AI systems to overtake human capabilities these days... Not in the realm of "should I shoot that thing?" sort of decisions.

let the human pilot make decisions == let the machine make decisions

It's not like pilots are making political decisions. They pilot and shoot predefined targets, avoid hostile actions. AI is capable of doing this.

> Not in the realm of "should I shoot that thing?" sort of decisions.

On the contrary, AI is very capable of making that decision. There are no philosophical dilemmas or children in the skies and even if there were we are at the point where we can tell the device not shoot children. There will be mistakes but human pilots makes mistakes too.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#220

Post by ggambetta »

Fluorescence wrote: post #56

This sounds too ridiculous to be true. I'd be more inclined to believe that it's a gambit to flush out an intelligence leak rather than an inability to find their own $160M plane.

I guess I don't watch enough spy movies, but... how do you use a not-really-missing jet to flush out an intelligence leak?
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