What's the biggest practical limitation to switching to unmanned drone fighters?
The Air Force.
The biggest limitations aren't practical, they're political.
The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
41–50 of 233 posts
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
So get rid of the USAF / fold it back into the Army, this way the Navy has an air wing, and the Army has an air wing. Large sky battles are unlikely to happen ever again... the USAF was designed to deal with those, right around when they had become obsolete. Hooray for Parkinson's laws. The A-10 is a magnificent brute of a plane and does exactly the job it was designed to do, very well... so of course they want to mo…
The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess. In addition, it would certainly be blown up immediately if it came within shooting distance of a tank by any number of man-portable anti-air missiles. What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry, but replacement parts for the plane or the molds to create them don…
As far as I can tell from this list[1], five A-10s have ever been shot down, while destroying at least 1500 battle tanks and AFVs[2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_combat_losses_of_United... [2] http://www.2951clss-gulfwar.com/statistics.htm
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#43I've never understood how any engineer would think that a plane could be built to fulfill all of the demands from all military branches. My guess is that they don't, but they get to play with cool tech. And hey, the money is flowing so why not try?
The F35 program has been pretty much a disaster. But, that said, the concept of departing from a model in which every service branch and every allied country to which we sell military hardware has largely unique equipment for every mission isn't inherently a bad one. But we've apparently discovered that, among other problems with the program, it's harder to come up with a viable common design than many apparently tho…
The bulk of the requirements for the F-35 are perfectly reasonable; a stealthier replacement for the F-16 and F/A-18, which essentially perform the same role but the Air Force chose one and the Navy chose the other. If you could get a next generation light fighter-bomber to replace both, and make it stealthy enough to replace the F-117 at the same time, that would be the perfectly reasonable aircraft. As it stands, the Navy already hedged their bets with the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, which has been a complete success.
The only thing that did in the Joint Strike Fighter was the requirement to develop a STOVL close-air-support platform for the Marine Corps, to replace the Harrier. That should have been a separate project. STOVL and conventional aircraft have entirely different aerodynamic requirements, and there's no real requirement for a stealth close-air-support platform because it's not like the enemy isn't going to notice the slowly hovering jet plane that's strafing them and shooting missiles at them. But it's so hard to get Congress to fund any replacement aircraft at all that everyone decided to go ahead and put all their hopes and dreams and lobbying efforts behind a single plane.
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#44What's the biggest practical limitation to switching to unmanned drone fighters?
Had a big argument with a coworker about that this week, actually. What's usually brought up is that having a human being physically in the battle space affords you situational awareness and experience that just can't be replicated, as of yet, with a Drone. What happens if the enemy somehow cuts off the link between Drone and control? You can set the null to fly it back to home or wherever if that happens, but, generally, a human pilot can do a lot more than that - right now. I don't disagree that on a technical level Drones would be able to, eventually, out do a pilot in theory. They aren't limited by having to keep a human alive or conscious in-flight. But there are some pretty scary moral implications if we start affording more and more autonomy to Drones in warfare.
The question shouldn't be an "all drones" vs "all pilots" argument. It should probably be more of a "how do we intelligently and operationally integrate the capabilities of Drones into our strategic goals" conversation. That just doesn't seem to be happening with the F35.
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
So get rid of the USAF / fold it back into the Army, this way the Navy has an air wing, and the Army has an air wing. Large sky battles are unlikely to happen ever again... the USAF was designed to deal with those, right around when they had become obsolete. Hooray for Parkinson's laws. The A-10 is a magnificent brute of a plane and does exactly the job it was designed to do, very well... so of course they want to mo…
The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess. In addition, it would certainly be blown up immediately if it came within shooting distance of a tank by any number of man-portable anti-air missiles. What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry, but replacement parts for the plane or the molds to create them don…
"I don't see why mothballing the A10 is a poor decision"
Because we do not have any aircraft that can stay on station above our troops stuck out in the middle of nowhere and keep them safe by shooting for multiple hours. Every other aircraft (drone include) is a drop-a-few-and-leave. That is not good enough.
Where have we faced modern main-battle tanks?
We should remove close air support from the Air Force's mission and give it back to the Army.
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#46I am still shocked the Navy is ok with a single engine fighter.
They flew single-engined jets in the 1950s and early 1960s when engines were horrifically unreliable ( most notoriously the F3H Demon with the shocking J71 ). And that didn't deter then from doing it again later with the A-7, A-4 and F-8.
And then they learned from that lesson and today they operate the F/A-18, which, if you count all of its variants, is one of the most successful naval aircraft of all time despite having a very ambitious multi-role mission.
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a friendly reminder why governments and large corporations can't develop shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
Nearly everything you do with computer tech was seeded by government/large corps. For a military contracting specific account: http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/d...
It was seeded by wartime/cold war governments and large corps.
But back then government was at least somewhat independent of the large corps.
Today Washington is the wholly-owned political arm of the mil/ind/fin complex.
The tail isn't just wagging the dog, it's controlling it with direct brain implants.
If you don't accept this, please explain how the F35 was allowed to happen.
The scale of wastage and - let's call it what it is - establishment-sanctioned corruption is almost impossible to comprehend.
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#48The United States will probably land men and women on Mars before this jet is fully operational.
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#49Just the logical following of the F22 disaster: a plane so expensive that they won't ever dare endanger it in real operations... because $1 billion apiece!
Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a friendly reminder why governments and large corporations can't develop shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
Totally agree with you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
Nice rebuttal. The Apollo program was also delivered on time (JFK's "before this decade is out" deadline). I'd also add the Manhattan Project to this list.
I wonder: why can the government execute Apollo and Manhattan projects, but botches such simple projects as the Bradley APC carrier?