Autonomous F-16 Fighters Are 'Roughly Even' with Human Pilots(nationalinterest.org) |
Autonomous F-16 Fighters Are 'Roughly Even' with Human Pilots(nationalinterest.org) |
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..
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.
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.
Low cost autonomous hunter killers as area denial munitions is going to be something else though. Once we no longer require man-in-the-middle these drones will be horrifying. You will be able to just say "Kill anything with these characteristics in this area at this time." Then leave the area and wait for the mayhem to begin. Think land mines that place themselves miles away and then get up out of their hole and then chase down whoever gets near enough.
Making them smaller significantly reduces the volume available for weapons, sensors, and fuel too much IMO. See the Predator, which doesn't have a large weapons loadout and still has the cockpit dome for the radar.
Against manned targets sure, US air power can stomp most manned adversaries already. But drive behind autonmous fighters is really about versus against autonomous platforms of peer powers, and really that's PRC, who has AI pilot program of their own. So future scenario that what we'll probably see is a bunch of attritable, high performance loyal wingmans designed to draw as much expensive interceptors as they can against each other, i.e. engagements becomes a unmanned platform attrition / IAMDs magazine depth equation. Question is, who wins in that numbers game? I would say land aviation with better logistics vs carrier aviation with limited magazine depth.
Then what does that mean when this tech proliferates, especially local vs outside power projection - because autonmous piloting removes expensive intitution building layer and will enable many shit-mid tier powers to now have airpower. Maybe even very competent air power depending on training data.
And yet, this is small ball stuff. When I think of all the possible ways autonomous combat aircraft will revolutionize air combat it's a bit overwhelming. We're talking about unlimited, fatigue-less, highly effective, fearless piloting of aircraft that can assume designs that don't have to accommodate or risk a human.
If it isn't yet an arms race, it will be when some conflict sees someone punch way above their weight because they have the supersonic robots and the other guy doesn't.
Should also consider what happens when more actors have supersonic robots if/when this tech proliferates. AI pilots is going to lower barrier for _real_ airpower for small/medium size powers. Not just US is training relevant models. And AI pilots = accepting future is going to be full of attritable platforms, whose going to be making/selling all the cheap disposable defense hardware. Just like drones, commoditizing theatre level air power is going to be gamechanging.