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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

#81

Post by tonfa »

jonplackett wrote: post #71

Does this just continue the ‘western way’ of spending a crap load of money on each military item, instead of getting good at making A LOT of something really cheaply? Ukraine and Iran are both showing it quickly becomes a war of attrition and fancy weapons get very expensive very fast, or run out very fast.

> instead of getting good at making A LOT of something really cheaply?

also you'd want to maximize dual usage (civil/military) of components so that your production capacity can be easily switched back and forth more on demand.

(Otherwise you just end up a stockpile of obsolete drones/weapons)

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#83

Post by mikkupikku »

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…

My read is that the "loyal wingman" thing is a ploy to get around all the pilots / expilots in Air Force brass who might otherwise gatekeep anything they think is a threat to the careers of human pilots. These people want the Air Force to be about hotshots flying planes; this is part of the reason the US spun off the space stuff, because Air Force brass is institutionally incapable of taking anything other than manned flight seriously.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#84

Post by simonh »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #80

Ukraine and Iran are showing us that scrappy low-cost and improvised drones are the future. The asymmetry with slow procurement, long-term and very expensive delivery is so stark that I feel Europe (Ukraine excluded) and the US have no good answer here.

Cheap systems are certainly a game changer, but I don't think they completely deprecate high performance, high end systems like this. Cheap drones by definition lack powerful long range sensor suites and associated power systems, because such a package would mean they'd no longer be cheap. They have limited range, are slower, and are less able to react dynamically to a changing combat situation.

I can see a system like this acting as the sensor and control node for a flight of cheaper drones. We've had cruise missiles for many decades now, and they're drastically more capable than cheap drones, but they didn't deprecate manned fighters. Something like this might.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#85

Post by jacquesm »

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...

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.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#86

Post by Paradigma11 »

rzerowan wrote: post #55
Dylan16807 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

How do you defend them?

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#87

Post by numpad0 »

fpoling wrote: post #76
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…

FPV drones cannot have powerful GPU yet to enable truly autonomous flight. And the issue is not only weight/energy restrictions, but also cost.

Autonomous flight is significantly easier than autonomous driving. You just fly between points in space, and there's nothing but air inbetween. The ground control handles most of collision avoidance, and if that's not available, it's easily achieved by moving 300ft/100m up or down.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#88

Post by rainworld »

SapporoChris wrote: post #40
Barrin92 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#90

Post by bzzzt »

fpoling wrote: post #78
zarzavat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Latest FPV drones in Ukraine became much more resistant to electronic countermeasures. Plus other drones are used as retranslators.

Seems they are using kilometers of fibre optic cables, so they fly tethered and communication can't be disrupted.

I'd hate to be part of the clean-up crew when that war ends. Broken fibre is nasty stuff.

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