"Navy Plan For Carrier-Based Drones Takes Flak From Lawmakers" Topic

"A U.S. Navy plan for aircraft carrier-based drones has launched a dogfight in Washington over the role of the robotic planes in combat.

The Navy has asked contractors for reconnaissance drones — essentially spy planes, with only limited ability to carry out bombing missions behind enemy lines.

But key congressional leaders want cutting-edge warplanes, stealthy drones that can attack key targets in contested areas with little more than a mouse click. If they get their way, the program, which would produce the military's first carrier-based drones, could end aviation as the Navy has known it, observers say…"

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Amicalement
Armand

Ah . . . so the pilots are striking back and talking to their lobbyists?

> Ah . . . so the pilots are striking back and talking to their lobbyists?

I think you read it backwards. The congress is asking for dogfight capable drones. Unless you meant the pilots are asking to put themselves out of business.

Fact is that somebody was going to make a stink either way, drones or new manned fighters…

Yes, some one is always going to be "upset" about something … I'm betting when the 5 newly released Taliban eventually get back to Afghanistan. Probably long before the year they are to stay in Qatar. To continue their "good" work with Mullah Omar, drones will be sending the lot to Allah … or where ever … Something you couldn't do while they were at Gitmo … Drones are perfect for the continuing War on Terrorism, which regardless what some may say is not over … Some of the newly released Taliban already stated they would continue their jihad against the US … IMO, Drones and Cruise Missiles is a good thing in this type of war …

I'm not sure a drone will ever be capable of dogfighting, but I can sure see the desire for drones that can do SEAD/Iron Hand/Wild Weasel missions!

Off course a drone can be dog fight capable. Just replace the Hellfires with a Sparrow, and put a AA Radar on it.

Sounds like the drone manufacturers got themselves a few Congressional supporters. Let's hope it ends better than the A-12 fiasco did.

I knew it. Drones are the wave of the future. Our F-22s are too expensive to risk in combat. Drones are comparatively expendable. Armed drones can also operate from ships that are much smaller and cheaper than our super carriers.

So, apparently they aren't watching the 2014 TV series of "24" currently.

What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, I suspect the progress is inevitable, and preferable to getting our pilots shot down, or even worse, captured, given the most recent deal made to retrieve our soldier.

I hope they come up with some far better encryption for their comms, and/or even better, just add in a digital data pack of the mission profile, which can't be changed, or hacked while it's airborne.

Yea, I agree, dogfighting drones should be fairly easy to develop, if desired, especially with AAMs, but also with guns, given the Swedish and Russian tech used to fire them when the sights are on target, already.

Both have had that capability for quite some time, apparently.

Getting to an autonomous dogfighting drone is a heckva lot harder than people think. Taking it slow may be the best route. (Although some form of SEAD mission might be particularly useful).

dogfighting drones should be fairly easy to develop,and would out fly any maned air craft as easy as they can make a 20 plus G turns and loops for hours. Not a human in the world can do that and stay flying and fighting the air craft. Also used the new helmet tech from the F35 for the UAV controllers and you have better battle awareness then any maned craft could have.

Lag, you're forgetting the lag. There is still the slight lag between what the drone is doing and what the controller sees. Add in the complete lack of situational awareness (this problem is already a headache) and your drone would be dead meat.

if you fit them with bvr missiles (amraams)or longer and have them fight stand off only (fire and flee)
what kind of loss ratio would be acceptable
how many unmanned can we lose in exchange for 1 enemy manned aircraft downed

No time lag, if the drone is autonomous.

If they can teach an old supercomputer to beat a chess expert repeatedly, I suspect they can get aerial combat drones to maneuver wildly against manned opponents, at least well enough to get into missile-firing parameters, and to fire.

Gunnery combat will be a little more difficult, but again not overly so, since they can "think" so quickly.

Getting a drone to autonomous dogfighting mode is one heckva of a tech hill to climb. It'll happen (eventually) but certainly not in the next (or one after that) procurement cycle.

BVR is all fine and dandy… if your ROEs allow blindly firing without visual confirmation. And that is definitely NOT the rule.

Combat-capable autonomy is far on the development horizon. Heck, let's just get to an AI that's smart enough to "go home" when in trouble, like it's up-link being hacked, so we don't end up with another RQ-170 in the hands of the Iranians.