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Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

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Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#31

Post by dmix »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #10

There are multiple interesting developments wrapped together here. First, these are intended to be "loyal wingman". They'll be commanded (but not really remotely controlled) from manned fighters nearbyish. Presumably, the "shoot authorization" will be delegated down to the pilots. Secondly, the actual unmanned platform (the Kratos Valkyrie) is also part of a program of record for the USMC (US Marine Corps) to act as…

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 make Blockbuster Online after Netflix.

Technology shifts rarely wait for these stodgy middle ground transitionary products to find a market.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#33

Post by icegreentea2 »

dmix wrote: post #31
icegreentea2 wrote: post #10

There are multiple interesting developments wrapped together here. First, these are intended to be "loyal wingman". They'll be commanded (but not really remotely controlled) from manned fighters nearbyish. Presumably, the "shoot authorization" will be delegated down to the pilots. Secondly, the actual unmanned platform (the Kratos Valkyrie) is also part of a program of record for the USMC (US Marine Corps) to act as…

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…

Roughly everyone expects the 6th generation fighters (the ones currently in development like F-47) to be the last manned generation. Most observers expect many/most 6th gen fighters to become optionally manned within their life span.

The real question is basically - is full autonomy both technically possible and culturally/politically acceptable within 5, 10, or 20 years? Because full autonomy isn't really ready now (or else we wouldn't need hundreds to thousands of drone operators in the Ukraine war). And at least the USAF doesn't think remote control will let them do what they need (which is to fly from Japan to Korea or Taiwan, or Philippines to Taiwan, and contest/control the skies in the face of a basically peer adversary).

Because no one knows that answer, everyone (governments, militaries, manufacturers) is hedging, and CCA is part of that hedge.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#34

Post by Barrin92 »

XorNot wrote: post #26
colechristensen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worry being that war will be a lot easier to stomach when none of the combatants are alive.

The history of warfare, hell the literal current warfare happening in Ukraine makes this entire argument unbelievably specious. There were more wars before any type of mechanisation of warfare, with the only slow down really happening after nuclear weapons were developed.

>There were more wars before any type of mechanisation of warfare

yes but they weren't comparable. With the exception of ancient Chinese wars which are a bit of an odd case given the population sizes and that they kept sending farmers to the front until everyone starved, European pre-modern wars consisted of small armies and relatively low civilian casualty ratios.

It's this and the late 20th century that saw civilian death ratios climb up to 80-90% in mass bombing campaigns and urban warfare environments. People like to use 'medieval' as an insult but the medieval age was quite constrained compared to Gaza. And if you take the pilots out of the equation and fully automate this, that's probably only a taste of what people will do to civilian populations.

Because a picture says more than words, this is the kind of thing you can probably look forward to:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G_63OmTawAABeIg.jpg?name=orig

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#36

Post by mlyle »

twalichiewicz wrote: post #24
blobcode wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) Aircraft rarely fly in anything close to formation in combat - large gaps are the norm (1-10 miles), and one would think that increased distance is something that could be exploited by an unmanned platform (able to take more risk, etc.) (2) Remains to be seen. (3) Individual Patriot missiles are around that price point, with S300/S400 anywhere from 500k-2M depending on capability. One would think that cost-per-ki…

At 10-mile intervals you're maintaining a high-bandwidth, low-latency mesh network in a contested electronic environment. If the command aircraft is 10 miles away and the enemy is jamming the link, the drone is going to be making split-second (potentially) lethal decisions without the pilot. You're right about them both costing about the same, so the real leverage only comes if these drones can stay out of the engage…

> high-bandwidth, low-latency mesh network in a contested electronic environment.

Hard to win at jamming, when you're further away and the opponents are frequency agile.

1. They can use directionality more effectively to their advantage

2. Inverse square law works against you (unlike e.g. jamming GPS where it works for you).

3. They can be frequency agile, strongly rejecting everything outside of the 20MHz slice they're using "right now"-- and have choices of hundreds of those slices.

Fighters already have radars that they expect to "win" with despite that being inverse fourth power, a longer range, and countermeasures. They can send communications-ish signals anywhere over a couple GHz span up near X-band. Peak EIRP that they put out isn't measured in kilowatts, but tens of megawatts.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#37

Post by adrianN »

borski wrote: post #12
dlt713705 wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

It turned out to be pretty hard to take out Germany’s factories in ww2.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#38

Post by maximinus_thrax »

tomasphan wrote: post #5
maximinus_thrax wrote: post #3

Good! Great to hear! EU needs to grow its domestic military industry, the French were right all along.

They are reprogramming a US built drone to the German datalink equivalent with some AI sprinkled on top. Unfortunately far away from a real industry.

Some other country started by _stealing_ US tech and now they arguably have a higher military tech throughput. Everyone has to start somewhere..

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#39

Post by ironhaven »

dmix wrote: post #31
icegreentea2 wrote: post #10

There are multiple interesting developments wrapped together here. First, these are intended to be "loyal wingman". They'll be commanded (but not really remotely controlled) from manned fighters nearbyish. Presumably, the "shoot authorization" will be delegated down to the pilots. Secondly, the actual unmanned platform (the Kratos Valkyrie) is also part of a program of record for the USMC (US Marine Corps) to act as…

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…

Manned-Unmanned teaming is not a new concept created in the last couple months to placate fighter pilots in the age of ai. With 5th generation fighter using datalink they to use the active radar in far away AWAC planes for targeting so the stealth fighter can get closer to the enemy without breaking cover by turning on active radar.

If you can outsource the radar on a jet it is not a huge leap in logic to put the very hot missiles onto a unmanned aircraft. All of these concepts where written up 20 years ago by both china and the US

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#40

Post by SapporoChris »

Barrin92 wrote: post #34
XorNot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history of warfare, hell the literal current warfare happening in Ukraine makes this entire argument unbelievably specious. There were more wars before any type of mechanisation of warfare, with the only slow down really happening after nuclear weapons were developed.

>There were more wars before any type of mechanisation of warfare yes but they weren't comparable. With the exception of ancient Chinese wars which are a bit of an odd case given the population sizes and that they kept sending farmers to the front until everyone starved, European pre-modern wars consisted of small armies and relatively low civilian casualty ratios. It's this and the late 20th century that saw civilia…

"European pre-modern wars consisted of small armies and relatively low civilian casualty ratios." I don't think the Napoleonic wars of early 17th century can be considered small armies. French Empire had around 1.2 million regulars in 1813.
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