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Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

airbus.com

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Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#51

Post by Dylan16807 »

remarkEon wrote: post #49
icegreentea2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think we are underestimating and/or forgetting that the enemy gets a vote, and remote piloting something from Virginia all the way out to Japan or Korea or Taiwan involves many signals integrity steps along the way. This is to say that you should assume these signals are interrupted and you will not be able to maintain continuous control of the aircraft from whatever datacenter box the "pilot" sits in. That means f…

> This is to say that you should assume these signals are interrupted and you will not be able to maintain continuous control of the aircraft from whatever datacenter box the "pilot" sits in. That means fully autonomous decision making, functionally for the entire journey, and independent release authorization.

Only if every mission is absolutely critical. If disruptions are rare then you don't need autonomy.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#54

Post by esseph »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
budman1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mistakes in A/A combat can have serious repercussions. not only loss of expensive air vehicles, but things like civilian airliners. 'loyal wingman' gives the kill / no kill decision to an Air Force officer. And having the decision maker geographically close eliminates jamming, delays, and the requirements to have a satellite infrastructure (like is required for Predator UAV's). i hope we never assign a piece of code,…

> i hope we never assign a piece of code, AI or not, to be the decision maker. This is already a past station, just not at Airbus.

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

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#55

Post by rzerowan »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #51
remarkEon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we are underestimating and/or forgetting that the enemy gets a vote, and remote piloting something from Virginia all the way out to Japan or Korea or Taiwan involves many signals integrity steps along the way. This is to say that you should assume these signals are interrupted and you will not be able to maintain continuous control of the aircraft from whatever datacenter box the "pilot" sits in. That means f…

> This is to say that you should assume these signals are interrupted and you will not be able to maintain continuous control of the aircraft from whatever datacenter box the "pilot" sits in. That means fully autonomous decision making, functionally for the entire journey, and independent release authorization. Only if every mission is absolutely critical. If disruptions are rare then you don't need autonomy.

Or more interestingly with the low-earth sat/data network. Seeing as projectssuch as starlink are basically mil in nature with a side of barely profitable civilian use. The whole data centers in space makes more sense. These are not for running cat blogs and video streaming , which is waht they are/will be marketed as. Realworld application will always be a command and control node spanning the globe for the mil use. And as its rolloed out globally can basically provide jammingfree links for the autonomous commands from space.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#56

Post by ipeev »

I misread “uncrewed” as “unscrewed” and for a moment this became a much stranger, better aerospace story. Not autonomous aircraft, but aircraft apparently liberated from screws. A future of pilotless aircraft is plausible enough; a future of screwless aircraft is much weirder.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#57

Post by alephnerd »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
budman1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mistakes in A/A combat can have serious repercussions. not only loss of expensive air vehicles, but things like civilian airliners. 'loyal wingman' gives the kill / no kill decision to an Air Force officer. And having the decision maker geographically close eliminates jamming, delays, and the requirements to have a satellite infrastructure (like is required for Predator UAV's). i hope we never assign a piece of code,…

> i hope we never assign a piece of code, AI or not, to be the decision maker. This is already a past station, just not at Airbus.

> just not at Airbus

Airbus has publicized that it is working on a Project Maven style project with France's DGA [0][1].

Thales also publicly launched and demonstrated SkyDefender a couple days ago [2].

Mistral AI also announced in January 2026 that it is working with the DGA to productionize it's models for military applications [3] - ironically similar in manner to how the DoD was using Claude but is now using Gemini and GPT.

No country is going to leave networked, autonomous offensive and defensive capabilities on the table.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airbus-wi...

[1] - https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/defence/ai...

[2] - https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/air/thales...

[3] - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marjorietoucas_were-happy-to-...

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#59

Post by zarzavat »

remarkEon wrote: post #49
icegreentea2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think we are underestimating and/or forgetting that the enemy gets a vote, and remote piloting something from Virginia all the way out to Japan or Korea or Taiwan involves many signals integrity steps along the way. This is to say that you should assume these signals are interrupted and you will not be able to maintain continuous control of the aircraft from whatever datacenter box the "pilot" sits in. That means f…

The reason that FPV drones are so easily disrupted is that they are too light to carry anything more than a radio and fly low.

Disrupting the signal for a normal-sized aircraft is much harder. If you're flying at 10s of thousands of feet and have a line of sight to multiple satellites it's going to take some serious weaponry to disrupt that.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#60

Post by Gravityloss »

ipeev wrote: post #56

I misread “uncrewed” as “unscrewed” and for a moment this became a much stranger, better aerospace story. Not autonomous aircraft, but aircraft apparently liberated from screws. A future of pilotless aircraft is plausible enough; a future of screwless aircraft is much weirder.

Not as weird as one might think, fasteners produce local loads and require holes, so designing without them would be much better. It has been a goal for decades but progress is slow! Maybe uncrewed vehicles can be iterated on more rapidly.
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