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Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

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Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#121

Post by jacquesm »

nradov wrote: post #111
jacquesm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really what they meant. They meant that the weapon is guided by software that decides which targets to pick and autonomously makes that decision without a human in the loop. The device seeks you instead of you going to it. A landmine has no friend-or-foe-or-noncombatant decision engine, it will kill you or maim you just like it will kill or maim the guy that laid it or any other passer by.

You missed the point. The Mk 60 Captor is not a "land" mine. It is guided by software and autonomously makes the decision to launch a homing torpedo without a human in the loop.

A homing torpedo/release mechanism is not AI by the normal definition of the word. You're welcome to redefine words as much as you want but it's a bit silly. We also don't use that term for heatseekers or for line followers.

The 'signature' bit is interesting, but I'd still not label that AI, and neither does anybody else. It is a loitering munition, I'll give you that, and I think that that brings it closer to the 'mine' definition of things than the 'AI killbot'.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#122

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

jcfrei wrote: post #99
numpad0 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those low-cost drones are just a fad. Fiber optic TV guided exploding thing is literally the oldest kind of anti-tank missiles. Russian winged cruise missiles are even older, early cold war kinds of stuff. It just so happens that none of Ukraine, Russia, Iran etc has air dominance nor proper war time production capacities, and so they must resort to substituting military equipment with remixes of AliExpress stuffs. J…

The war in Iran proves the opposite: It is actually the future. The US could easily establish air dominance over Iran, yet it can't stop their military from launching smaller drones both in the air and at sea. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed and air power alone seems unlikely to fix the situation. If you want to effectively eliminate an opponent nowadays you need an army of drones - the economics don't wor…

Right - the relative cost matters very much.

A Shahed drone costs $20K each. The Patriot missile interceptor costs $4 Mil each.

And the inevitable result is that the interceptors run out first

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-war-israel-tells-us-...

https://www.economist.com/international/2026/03/13/gulf-stat...

https://bsky.app/profile/mekka.mekka-tech.com/post/3mgrvx5gr...

The only lasting solution to low-cost drone attacks is low-cost defences. Ukraine knows this. The US apparently does not yet. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/10/what-are-the-ukrain...

But the end result is not "low-cost drones are just a fad." it's drones vs. more drones vs. yet more drones.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#123

Post by remarkEon »

b112 wrote: post #67
remarkEon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But the next rung up the escalation ladder is of course disrupting the satellites.

I envision them all gone seconds into any large scale war. The G forces are another thing. I wonder why they aren't stsrting wth missle platforms instead. Sure, winged flight has uses, but taking a missle platform, adding small munitions instead of a big bang?

I'm not sure about this. Space is big and these satellite constellations are getting very large, with lots of redundancy. I know I'm sort of arguing against my previous point, but bear with me for a sec. You'd need an anti-satellite system that either destroys them kinetically (accepting the cost of the debris field) or one that breaks them electronically (an EMP or another device that defeats them electronically). The United States' underlying philosophy on advanced weapons has, for a long time, been precision so I could see the emergence of in-orbit interception & defeat/disable platforms. But you'd need a lot of them for the doctrine to be effective, which means a lot of mass-to-orbit logistics. Adversaries do not have this, so I would expect e.g. PRC to have an alternate strategy of rendering entire orbits unusable or dangerous, which I think is easier.

Regarding your missile platform question, there are several companies that already manufacturing loitering munitions, and long-range loitering cruise missiles are on the roadmap, so to speak.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#124

Post by nradov »

jacquesm wrote: post #121
nradov wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the point. The Mk 60 Captor is not a "land" mine. It is guided by software and autonomously makes the decision to launch a homing torpedo without a human in the loop.

A homing torpedo/release mechanism is not AI by the normal definition of the word. You're welcome to redefine words as much as you want but it's a bit silly. We also don't use that term for heatseekers or for line followers. The 'signature' bit is interesting, but I'd still not label that AI, and neither does anybody else. It is a loitering munition, I'll give you that, and I think that that brings it closer to the '…

It's odd how some people now think the term "AI" only applies to LLMs. I guess they're just ignorant of computing history.

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/proposed-dod-princ...

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#125

Post by chaostheory »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #23
chaostheory wrote: post #15

Yeah, 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

I think the USA has ~3ish airframes/systems that are roughly in this category: * The Kratos Valkyrie with the USMC in a SEAD role * Anduril (YFQ-44) and General Atomics (YFQ-42) are battling it out for the USAF's CCA Increment 1 contract (we're apparently supposed to get a decision on that this year) - with Increment 2 probably getting spun up pretty soon * USN has the Boeing MQ-25 as an drone tanker... once that get…

Does general atomics have plans on spinning off and going public?

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#126

Post by jacquesm »

nradov wrote: post #124
jacquesm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A homing torpedo/release mechanism is not AI by the normal definition of the word. You're welcome to redefine words as much as you want but it's a bit silly. We also don't use that term for heatseekers or for line followers. The 'signature' bit is interesting, but I'd still not label that AI, and neither does anybody else. It is a loitering munition, I'll give you that, and I think that that brings it closer to the '…

It's odd how some people now think the term "AI" only applies to LLMs. I guess they're just ignorant of computing history. https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/proposed-dod-princ...

No, it obviously does not only apply to LLMs. It just does not apply to loitering munitions from decades ago. And I'm pretty sure nobody ever labeled that thing AI before you did.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#127

Post by JumpCrisscross »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #106
radialstub wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These small proxy wars are irrelevant. Scrappy drones are only used because that is all these small countries can produce. For superpowers, the goal isn't to stockpile mediocre equipment; it is to develop intellectual capabilities. During wartime, manufacturing can then be rapidly ramped up. You cannot invent and develop advanced tech overnight, but you can rapidly scale production. Also fighter jets are capable of d…

I’m not saying scrappy drones are the key to victory in all circumstances. But look at Iran - their air defenses and navy are destroyed. Yet they can inflict massive damage on their neighbors with drones within 10 minutes flight distance, making them hard to stop. By doing so they’re keeping the price of oil high and are able to put economic pressure on the US completely disproportionate to their military capabilitie…

> they can inflict massive damage

Damage. Not massive damage.

Drones seem to have reached their zenith of operational freedom. I’m genuinely surprised the U.S. and Israel don’t field gun- and laser-based anti-drone demonstrators.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#128

Post by eszed »

generic92034 wrote: post #91
dmix wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I get the feeling that the market shifted beneath their feet to drones and these old aircraft companies are using "loyal wingman" to make a half-hearted half-way play between old/new products to stay relevant, which just buys them time to keep selling expensive jets... until pure drone upstarts start eating their lunch. Like when Blackberry tried to make BlackBerry Storm after iPhone and Blockbuster tried to m…

You expect drones to replace civil passenger aircraft any time soon?

I think GP's point is more relevant than your question implies. The vast majority of civilian flights could be flown entirely autonomously right now. (I'm not close enough to the aviation industry to make a confident guess, but +90% wouldn't surprise me.) Humans are there to take (decision or control) over when something goes off the happy path - in fact, pilots are encouraged / required to hand-fly landings that could be done automatically in order to keep their skills current. Obviously no one would accept even a 0.01% crash rate for civilian flights, so we're many orders of magnitude of improvement away from replacing pilots in that sector.

Military calculations are very different. Every military asset - most definitely including humans - is disposable, and all wars are (in some dimension) wars of attrition. Holding mission success constant, when the cost x capability x ability to manufacture for autonomous platforms becomes cheaper than all that plus training / replacement cost of human pilots, then human pilots will disappear. The logic of war being what it is, I expect HITL decision-making to very quickly be dropped as soon as it is seen to be retarding the progress of a cheaper option.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#129

Post by chairmansteve »

maximinus_thrax wrote: post #41
busterarm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU already has the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 10th largest share of global arms exports. Losing the 8th place slot due to Brexit.

Akshually it's the the 2nd (France), 5th (Germany), 6th (Italy), and 9th (Spain) spots. But that's a bad argument, say.. a way of lying with statistics, considering the 1st place has 43% of the market share AND that exporting arms is not very relevant when the topic du jour is military build-up. The muscovites for example export 7.8% of the market share but that's not that relevant considering they're using the lion'…

Yes, arguably imports are more important than exports... It's about what you have rather than what you have sold to others...

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#130

Post by esseph »

nradov wrote: post #66
esseph wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we are ~4-5 years into AI kill-chains now, though maybe only 1-3 with full autonomy.

You haven't been paying attention. We are at least 47 years into AI kill chains. https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/m...

Those don't self launch.

I'm talking about systems that classify thousands of targets at once and can self-launch. Computerized kill chain.

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