"Begun, the Clone War has." -Yoda
The worry being that war will be a lot easier to stomach when none of the combatants are alive.
But a robot war is an endless war. There will always be more robots to fight until the economy is completely exhausted.
Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
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Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worry being that war will be a lot easier to stomach when none of the combatants are alive.
But a robot war is an endless war. There will always be more robots to fight until the economy is completely exhausted.
Not necessarily. If the factories that build the robots are taken out, for example. Someone (even a robot) still has to build them.
Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
#13A modern V-2. Nothing could possibly go wrong!
Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
But a robot war is an endless war. There will always be more robots to fight until the economy is completely exhausted.
Not necessarily. If the factories that build the robots are taken out, for example. Someone (even a robot) still has to build them.
What if the factories are located in foreign countries and the belligerents are only buying off-the-shelf products ?
Wars are always bad news and robot wars are very bad news. Many countries will fall into an endless war economy.
Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
#15Yeah, I believe Kratos (who is doing this joint venture with Airbus) and AeroVironment are the current leaders in the space. Not sure what happens when Anduril goes public
Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
#16Is this the EU's version of the Shahed drones? or is it something different?
Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
#17This seems to be the generally agreed upon direction defense companies are going, but a couple architectural concerns come to mind regarding this "Manned-Unmanned-Teaming" approach:
- Even if the XQ-58 has a low radar cross section, a swarm of four drones flying in formation with a non-stealthy Eurofighter significantly increases the aggregate probability of detection. Unless these drones are performing active electronic countermeasures or "blinking" to spoof radar returns, they’re essentially a giant "here we are" sign for any modern radar. I wonder if they've compensated via the flight software to manage formation geometry to minimize the group's total observable signature?
- Anti-air systems will prioritize the command aircraft (the Eurofighter) immediately. If the C2 link is severed (kinetic kill, high-power jamming) what is the state-machine logic for the subordinates? Do they revert to a fail-passive (return to base) or -active (continue last assigned strike) mode? Without a human-in-the-loop, rules of engagement issues are abound. (I'm not even accounting for the fact that the drones probably rely on calculations from the command craft, so edge-computing will factor in as well.)
- They're calling these "attritable," but at $4M a pop plus the cost of the sensors, they aren't exactly disposable. Is the cost-per-kill for an adversary’s interceptor missile actually higher than the cost of the drone it's hitting?
Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
#18> Airbus selling ai-operated strike drones. FTFY
No you didnt
Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
#19Is this the EU's version of the Shahed drones? or is it something different?
It's completely different. Shaheds are low cost one way attack drones. They're basically just very cost efficient cruise missiles with fresh marketing (and to be fair, the cost efficiency is a true categorical difference).
These drones are "helpers" for fighter jets. It's a type of role that is still in development (no one has an operational collaborative combat aircraft as far as I understand), both technically and in concept.
But the basic idea is that you'll have drones that can somewhat keep up with your fighter jets and help it do stuff that might be too risky. Maybe fly ahead, or be the one with the active emissions or sensors or whatever. Or maybe it's just a way to increase the amount of ordnance/sensors you can fly per sortie / generate from a given amount of training/flight hours in a year.