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Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

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Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#91

Post by generic92034 »

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…

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

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#92

Post by eucyclos »

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.

I don't think most people would consider them pre modern either.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#93

Post by GuestFAUniverse »

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.

It's just a project to extract the maximum amount from the "Sondervermögen", while the conservatives are still having a say.

Doesn't make sense. Esp. since the "Bundeswehr" already lacks personal and the resistance against conscription is huge.

Delaying things has become a typical German thing. They always "check" what to do, debate endlessly without results. (Like with their cartel office: no other European country has seen gasoline prices rise as fast and they're still "checking" if there's an illegal cartel agreement -- and their only solution is to lower taxes on gas, which already didn't work back when Russia attacked the Ukraine) They are still able to improve during disasters, like when they raised the LPG terminals within two years. They have to have their -- as they phrase it -- "Arsch auf Grundeis" (ass on ground ice) first, before anything is moving forward.

It's a crude mixture of conservatism, corruption/euphemism: "lobbying", laziness and old fashioned know-it alls blocking real, obvious innovation.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#94

Post by alex7o »

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.

True, but take into account that plants need to be able to fly/fight with instruments only and without vision.

Also dogfights are much rarer now, most people just fling rockets at each other (so you know how much these cost, a b200 seems cheap in comparison)

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#95

Post by numpad0 »

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…

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.

Just in the invasion in Iran we all saw Apache handling drones with ease. They can probably put on the minigun or even microgun on an MQ-9, which is a drone, but not like the ones discussed here. Or someone might realize a turret on a Super Tucano is cheaper than the Reaper ground control trailer. My point is, Ukraine and Russia throwing drones at each others is not a sure sign that that's the war of the future.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#96

Post by radialstub »

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.

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 doing so much more than fpv drones, its actually funny that people think drones are the future.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#97

Post by axus »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #65

Wouldn't uncrewed aircraft, and (hypersonic) missiles merge technologies and become the same at some point? Why are we engineering the two separately? Are missiles by definition exploding themselves rather than releasing payloads? (I'm pretty sure Musk could make them reusable. /s)

As a software engineer who thinks that qualifies me to answer other engineering questions, I think it's too hard to mount payloads external to missiles, but normal for aircraft.

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#99

Post by jcfrei »

numpad0 wrote: post #95
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…

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 work out if you are only fielding expensive ships, planes and missiles. And regarding your point that an Apache can easily shoot down a drone: Roughly 9/10 drones in the Russia Ukraine frontline get shot down and the remaining 10% make up for about 80% of the casualties (rest being mostly artillery and mines).

Re: Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft

#100

Post by danmaz74 »

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.

Except, they're not. And by the way, they are two completely different conflicts.

With Ukraine, if Russia had been able to establish total air dominance early on, they wouldn't have been stopped in their tracks the way they were. The fact that they weren't able to do that has nothing to do with cheap drones, which became a decisive factor only much later.

In Iran, US and Israel were able to establish total air dominance, but they didn't have any plan to follow on with boots on the ground, which is still necessary to actually defeat an enemy. And most successful hits so far were achieved through ballistic missiles, not cheap drones.

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