These aircraft were built with human limitations in mind, take away the human dependency and you can engineer aircraft capable of much higher Gs for longer.
That's going to be the ticket for the AI Wingmen. One of the F22's biggest teething problems when it entered service was pilots passing out because the thrust vectoring made it way too easy to pull high Gs in maneuvers. They had to put in software limits and train pilots to be careful not to push it the jets too far.
High G is one limitation of human pilots. The added mass and aerodynamic compromises needed for human operation are another. Pilot fatigue is yet another. Training cost is probably the greatest problem. Pilot shortages has to be in the list somewhere as well. This solves a lot of problems.
Yes and no. In principle you could engineer something to support higher Gs but that is not a critical part of the performance envelope in modern combat and it comes at the cost of heavier weight and reduced weapons capacity. Since modern aerial combat is sensor-driven, you'd be better off with a lighter and less maneuverable airframe and larger weapon capacity. You can see this with the recent evolution of combat aircraft being converted into "missile trucks" with massive weapon stores that unavoidably hamper agility.
Bomb trucks is what better sensors/networking enabled. Perfromant AI piloting can enable other tactics, i.e. high performance, high G UAVs with great energetics and endurance can feasibly out evade anti air missiles to bruce force through IAMDs at scale. Sensors would matters less if hardware can't intercept because targetting performance envelop without meatbag limits is harder. Being able to detect =/= being able to effectively engage. Not saying AI pilots have impunity, rather it shifts balance towards offense, i.e. instead of taking 2 missiles to have 95% probability of kill, now need 10 missiles, aka all of a sudden the entire structure/feasibility/economics of all sorts of air defense stops making sense. Imagine mutual air superiority in AI vs AI fighters because it's just too wasteful / impractical to shoot each other down, so everyone goes strait for support nodes on land... or carrier aviation. Imagine a carrier group with DDGs, and air wing designed to deter 100 human pilots now being penetrated/overwhelmed by 20.
These drones won't be that much cheaper. The life support isn't the most expensive part in high performance fighter jets, it's the airframe, sensors, and engine. The airframe will still have to have some sort of stealth and the engine will be similar to those in other fighters, especially if they're expected to be supersonic too.
Not necessarily, there is a balance to be found. For example, there is no point sending thousands of mini-drones if a simple jammer can make them all fall out of the sky, or if they can't reach their target because their range is too limited, or because they are too slow and visible for a surprise attack.
Modern fighters are big and expensive because of their capabilities like speed, range, stealth, weaponry, counter-measures, radars, etc... And they are not just made to blow up stuff (we have missiles for that), they are also complete platforms for reconnaissance, communication, etc... And the pilot is not just there to control the plane, he is also an officer on the battlefield with all that implies regarding situation awareness and decision making.
The F-16 was original meant to be cheap, not even having a radar. But by the time it reached production it had far more equipment and weight, for better or worse.
It's original designers thought we should have 10x the aircraft in the sky for the same price. This would result in more fighter pilot deaths, but, as callous as this sounds, maybe that's okay? I mean, it's funny how much expense will go towards saving the life of a fighter pilot while soldiers on the ground can't get proper armor on their vehicles.
I have long maintained that command and control aircraft will be the only piloted things in the future (and just so they can evade easier). Have them stand off and be able to control directly via line of sight/hard to jam comms (likely by relay of some comms drone network), but also have relays back to other controllers in case the primary command and control becomes unable. By 'control' though it is clear that this will just be authority based and much higher level 'patrol over here weapons free' not 'turn left to 180'. The future is drones, either single use (missiles, TLAMs but with more autonomy, etc) or multi-use like reapers, etc but all of them with much more autonomy.
The fighter pilot mafia mentality is hard to change though just like the bomber mafia. Ukraine is likely changing that mentality a lot right now though. This feels like a battle ship vs aircraft carrier moment for aircraft so maybe this shift will happen sooner than I thought. Not that that is a good thing unfortunately, just an inevitable one.
Higher Gs isn't a significant advantage anymore. Sidewinder missiles hit 60-70Gs and no plane you can make will out pull one. Modern dogfights often last for a single turn or even less. It's often a matter of who sees the other first. Israel's new Python-5 is able to attack jets in a 360 degree sphere and has lock after launch. Countermeasure rejection has gotten so good a merge is essentially a death sentence.
The real reason we are working on autonomous fighters is that we can build jets faster than we can raise and train pilots. It takes 4 years and $5 million dollars to train a pilot, and they will take decades to become seasoned. You can make an F-16 in a few months for $30 million.
High G can significantly reduce no-escape zone of AA missiles with limit fuel for final maneuvering. A performant unmanned fighter with more endurance to play the energetics game can make anti air very expensive, and possibly impracticable depending on context.
I often wonder if drones even need to look like they do or if there is a more efficient design that we don't use simply because "things that fly look like this" where "this" includes a place for a cockpit.
The basic design of wings sticking out from a pointy cylinder isn't going to change, because of aerodynamics.
But in the case of the Predator drone, for example, it didn't reduce the volume of the "cockpit" -- it expanded it into a big bulge to fit the satellite antenna and all of the sensors.
That's already happened, look at how many have a pusher prop configuration to balance out all the electronics and sensor equipment going where the cockpit used to be.
That plus the cockpit and all that human support equipment. We're essentially looking at high-speed UAVs. I wonder if the speed even still makes sense at that point? Just look at the Ukraine-Russia conflict, once decent enough ant-aircraft systems were setup, it makes little sense for either side to fly them any more.
Instead of a few fighter jets, the future might be a tonne of slow high-altitude UAVs that are always present.
This is quite a dangerous mindset, pushing for AI weapons with limited constraints:
> “I think the future is becoming clearer,” Kendall continued. “I think the only question that really may remain is who’s going to get there first? And what are the constraints we want to place on ourselves that will limit our operational effectiveness compared to our adversaries and how we manage our way through that.”
It has some resemblance to the arms race to develop a nuclear weapon. Several people were exposed to radiation, tests killed civilians, all because both sides were afraid of not being the first.
As of 2023, it is the world's most common fixed-wing aircraft in military service, with 2145 F-16s operational. [1]
and several countries are phasing them out in favor of the F35. Pilot training is a slow and expensive affair (ask Ukraine), so it makes sense to concentrate scarce resources on the top model - unless the legacy one can fly itself.
Do you know how much time passes between "let's make a whole new platform without human-required accommodations" to an even an aerodynamic model? Not even talking about the first flight.
Seeing term "loyal wingman" - meaning an unmanned combat air vehicle - makes me ask: Are the human pilots not considered loyal enough? Maybe so. The humans might hesitate on an order to shoot whereas the AI will not. I prefer the human that at least hesitates to shoot at a target that will cause substantial "collateral damage".
Historically at least, one of the significant jobs of a wingman has been to act as bait. With dogfighting, with cannon fire, fighters are most vulnerable when they're trying to shoot down another plane, because they need to be pointing to their target so they tend to be going in a fairly straight and predictable direction. The idea was the wingman would lure one of the enemies onto their back, and then the their partner would dispatch the relatively easy target. This is one of reasons why fighter aces in WWII had such a lopsided kill count compared to everyone else. In order for this all to work, the pilots have to trust each other, and it was certainly the case that some fighter aces put a higher priority on getting kills than preventing the death of their wingman.
I'm not terribly knowledgeable about these things (and most of it is theoretical anyway because most of this tech is untested), but I suspect that there will be a similar mechanic with modern stealth and beyond-visual-range air warfare, whereby firing missles makes you easier to locate and ultimately target, so having a wingman who's willing to act as target practice while another pilot waits for an enemy to betray their location could be useful.
I think it's in reference to delegation 'wingman' and availability 'loyal'. I like the Russian word Sputnik for 'fellow traveller' but obviously that would not be appropriate for US weapons.
I think what is important to note is that fighter jets already make use of highly sophisticated and automated weapons. E.g. Air-to-air missiles, which can accurately track and hit a target over extremely long distances.
It seems quite unsurprising that humans don't excel at flying modern fighter jets.
I think the idea is that the pilot in the manned vehicle is supposed to be the one to decide on weapons employment. Also it's much harder to jam communications at sub-mile distances between a pilot an their LWMs.
If you flipped it, you may as well omit the manned fighter.
Faster ODA loop, much shallower incorporation of energy tactics and greater strategy. F-16 is not an energy fighter though, it's a dog fighter (at least in original design). Not surprising to see much faster ODA loop win out.
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Modern fighters are big and expensive because of their capabilities like speed, range, stealth, weaponry, counter-measures, radars, etc... And they are not just made to blow up stuff (we have missiles for that), they are also complete platforms for reconnaissance, communication, etc... And the pilot is not just there to control the plane, he is also an officer on the battlefield with all that implies regarding situation awareness and decision making.
It's original designers thought we should have 10x the aircraft in the sky for the same price. This would result in more fighter pilot deaths, but, as callous as this sounds, maybe that's okay? I mean, it's funny how much expense will go towards saving the life of a fighter pilot while soldiers on the ground can't get proper armor on their vehicles.
The fighter pilot mafia mentality is hard to change though just like the bomber mafia. Ukraine is likely changing that mentality a lot right now though. This feels like a battle ship vs aircraft carrier moment for aircraft so maybe this shift will happen sooner than I thought. Not that that is a good thing unfortunately, just an inevitable one.
The real reason we are working on autonomous fighters is that we can build jets faster than we can raise and train pilots. It takes 4 years and $5 million dollars to train a pilot, and they will take decades to become seasoned. You can make an F-16 in a few months for $30 million.
The basic design of wings sticking out from a pointy cylinder isn't going to change, because of aerodynamics.
But in the case of the Predator drone, for example, it didn't reduce the volume of the "cockpit" -- it expanded it into a big bulge to fit the satellite antenna and all of the sensors.
Instead of a few fighter jets, the future might be a tonne of slow high-altitude UAVs that are always present.
> “I think the future is becoming clearer,” Kendall continued. “I think the only question that really may remain is who’s going to get there first? And what are the constraints we want to place on ourselves that will limit our operational effectiveness compared to our adversaries and how we manage our way through that.”
It has some resemblance to the arms race to develop a nuclear weapon. Several people were exposed to radiation, tests killed civilians, all because both sides were afraid of not being the first.
Why are they trying to retrofit an F16, a whole new platform without human-required accommodations would make more sense..
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_(video_game)
Because there are lots of them,
As of 2023, it is the world's most common fixed-wing aircraft in military service, with 2145 F-16s operational. [1]
and several countries are phasing them out in favor of the F35. Pilot training is a slow and expensive affair (ask Ukraine), so it makes sense to concentrate scarce resources on the top model - unless the legacy one can fly itself.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting...
I'm not terribly knowledgeable about these things (and most of it is theoretical anyway because most of this tech is untested), but I suspect that there will be a similar mechanic with modern stealth and beyond-visual-range air warfare, whereby firing missles makes you easier to locate and ultimately target, so having a wingman who's willing to act as target practice while another pilot waits for an enemy to betray their location could be useful.
If these "loyal wingmen" only shoot when ordered to by a human, these can be seen as reusable missiles more than actual human wingmen.
There is a spectrum of expected reusability, even with human piloted aircraft.
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It seems quite unsurprising that humans don't excel at flying modern fighter jets.
It would consist of the unmanned, loyal wingmen that would support a manned fighter.
How long before that's flipped and the manned fighter is supporting the UAV?
If you flipped it, you may as well omit the manned fighter.
Especially since this is a dogfight and not an air-to-air missile exchange.