The Sixth Generation Fighter Program Can't Afford Pilots
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- Опубликовано: 17 сен 2024
- Dr. Justin Bronk returns to the channel to discuss how the development of a next-generation fighter as part of the Global Combat Air Program risks being held back by unrealistic cost and investment estimates.
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Dr. Bronk never ceases to astound me with the breadth and depth of knowledge he has on the subject. He is truly a world class expert in his field and a peerless resource to those who are interested in the subject.
I propose that we deem people of Justin's level of expertise in a subject to be of the "Bronk class"
I second the designation 'Bronk class'. Can we put his name on a frigate?
But in % of Bronk: this guy is 75% Bronk.
I loved what Justin said about anyone can make a stealthy looking aircraft and that certainly seems to be the trend with the recent reveal of the Turkish KAAN but as he so poignantly illustrates, it goes much deeper than what an aircraft looks like in terms of true stealth and 5th or 6th Gen capabilities. Excellent livestream.
Very insightful! Justin Bronk is truly a renaissance man when it comes to defense and military aviation. Great paper too by the way: so much food for thought in there, it's a gold mine. Thanks the both of you for the outstanding work.
Very intelligent podcast, thanks Justin and Ward!!
Thank you for having Professor Bronk on the channel again. You two make a great team!
This is excellent as usual!
Thanks for these videos. I've learnt so much on many issues. Costs, old 'fighter mafia' comments, new generation of planes and benifits. Things can be so confusing when you have only partial understanding of the issue. Kept up the good work Ward!
bronk is stronk. thank you once again sir, i always look forward to your vids and you run your interviews so well. justin bronk is definitely my favourite guest of yours, I'm very grateful for his time
Justin episodes always rock!
Tempest was a US national security program for electronics and computers, going back to the 60s or 70s. Standards included things like EMI/RFI blocking hoods for CRT monitors, so no one could snoop on the emissions. Which is surprisingly cheap and easy, a great espionage tool.
Yes - I was the Tempest Officer for my command in late 80's / early 90's.
Very interesting conversation. I hope (As a Brit), that we along with the other GCAP Nation's make sure we fund the project adequately. Very excited to see what it could achieve, especially with Japan's involvement.
Bronk is like a great beer you have on tap at home. Mooch can just pour him into a video when we need refreshing.
The fact that RUclipsrs like, say, Perun are household names around r/NCD and Bronk is still niche is a travesty. Somebody get this man a podcast and a social media publicist, stat.
@@deneshkandiah2194 Well, I did say NCD. Which has been more credible for the past year, bizarrely enough. Yeah Bronk is referenced there as well, he's not completely unknown, but I'm just saying; he could/should be a first rate personality. People won't shut up about channels like Perun and I'm like yeah, he's *alright* but... he just rarely says something particularly novel or insightful.
@@vigilante8374 Because Perun just parrots what people already want to believe and Bronk doesn't. Reality will always be less popular than the echo chamber.
Well, the fact is Bronk is a professional focused on the aviation side of things while Perun makes presentations of a wider range of topics. Niche doesn't mean less popular but more narrow focused, which is in fact true.
Don't forget that Bronk is a professional PhD analyst, who writes for RUSI, and is read and used by policy decision makers, rather than RUclips commenters. Most viewers of Perun probably won't be reading hundreds of pages of details on military aviation.
Two different audiences though with some overlap, so silly to compare, and judge by popularity online.
@@wyskass861 IMO he's more than got the skills to appeal to both audiences (and benefit from the synergy.) There are plenty of PhD-holders and all kinds of other "professionals" that also do RUclips or other social media on the side.
Heck, Ward himself is a retired professional and yet here he is with his own RUclips channel.
@@vigilante8374 That's assuming he has time and desire to do after work what he does at work. Ward is retired from daily full time responsibilities.
My point was to your statement suggesting him being niche is a bad thing, when it's just about focus of topics. Alss, that you can't make the assumption that his goal is internet popularity, as if he's failing at it.
Would be great to see Germany Italy and Japan partner on some sort of war related activity.
Classic "dark humor" many younger peeps will miss for lack of appreciation for history.
@@greenfire6924 Maybe so, but I hope the most basic facts of WW2 aren't yet forgotten.
@wyskass like if you have Moskow on the horizon, do not turn your forces to Stalingrad
@@wyskass861WWII ? Most have forgotten, IF they even knew anything about it, the Vietnam war. Even Desert Storm and the Iraq War are distant memories and only spring to their minds due to video console games.
Off topic, I just finished the Punk trilogy and loved them.
One of the lessons that I learned early on with procurement and systems engineering, the government can’t control what the second and lower contractors decide. Thus when the prime goes to a subcontractor, those subcontractors can decide to procure from places like China or Russia. Program offices have very little power to control that behavior because we’re using a COTS model for items that aren’t COTS.
Ward could you do an episode on the Nordic countries combining their Air Forces? Love your channel; wish there was a channel like this for Navy ships etc.
Sub brief
Great video, a lot of new analysis and insight on a relevant aircraft program.
Bronk gave the most cogent analysis of the options facing GCAP. It's the kind of lucid thought that is missing in much of military procurement policy.
(I am also overly amused by the homage to Top Gun 1886 in the title of his RUSI article.)
Screaming guitar intro. As we used to sort of say on Wall St., “Can’t fight the tape.” Last week I saw a Rainer Hersch video on RUclips, where the screaming guitarist played along with a classical orchestra’s live performance of the Colonel Bogey March. Worth studying. Thanks for the video.
I would absolutely love to see Justin and Mooch join the NAFO round table with LazerPig and friends.
That would be perfect
These guys are so above LazerPig lmao. Not the same tier of discourse.
@@XxTheGreatDestroyerx oh you’re 100% correct it would just be fun
Oh lucky day! Justin Bronk is on!
Admiral, we've got the aircraft in on time and under budget.
Great, how did you manage that?
We deleted the stick/throttle interlink.
Lol
If we would had went with the YF23 it would be the perfect fit in todays and tomarrows Super Sensors and Super Efficient Fire first Systems. The F22 was less radical and the Safer of the 2. Even todays Super Computers that are 30 years in advanced of when the YF23 was designed show the design was well in advance of its winning competitor in many,many regards that are current today and tomarrow.
Critique this idea: pour the big development bucks into UCAVs, the manned fighter portion can simply be a further development of Gen 4.9 fighter jets.
If the manned jet is going to play "quarterback", as so many commentators are fond of saying, why can't it just hang around in the back & let the UCAVs be the tip of the spear? If it's a 150-250 km from the target area, there will be a much reduced requirement for stealth. The money that is to be spent on developing current 4.x gen jets can be focused on sensors & sensor fusion. This will be far cheaper.
Amazing quality !!!!
Conclusion: The US has enough money to re-do it 2 and 3 times, while supporting all the different iterations.
For more simple missions, perhaps a UCAV could have an optional cockpit that could be removed and replaced quickly with a fuel tank. The cockpit could be similar to that of an advanced trainer to be easier for the pilot to familliarize with.
Anyone who views this video is orders of magnitude more informed than the general public. We need to get this channel out there.
With respect for human pilots, humans require limits to G-loads, etc. that limit performance of platforms so next gen fighters may want to augment humans with UCAV for performance reasons. What do you think about the "wingman" concept where a human pilot's judgement is key to the "loop" but the force is multiplied by these UCAV systems. It seems that this is part of the strategy for the U.S. going forward but I'd like to hear from an experienced hand.
There is not as much benefit to design an UCAV wingman as other UCAV as it costs about as much as a fighter does. The main benefits of UCAV comes from making savings in features compared with manned fighters, but a wingman needs all the fighters systems to work.
A interview with Paul was on recently where he said that the album being recorded was going to be called Everest but they decided that it would not be productive to haul everyone who would have to be involved in shooting the album cover all the way to the Himalayans. So kicking around a few ideas someone said that they should name it for the EMI Abby Road studio, go outside and take a photo and that would take care of the problem. Seems to be far to easy but it was Paul who said it.
For now, AI agents aren’t capable of doing all of the things that humans can do. I think that the robot wingman approach makes sense for 6th gen fighters. By the time that 7th or 8th gen fighters are in development I bet there will be a conversation had of completely unmanned fighters. As of now I don’t believe that’s a viable option
Wow. Erudite heavyweight intelligence. Massive respect - literally listened to every word and syllable.
Here's the opening to Justin's article
_"The development of a next-generation fighter as part of the Global Combat Air Programme risks being held back by unrealistic cost and investment estimates. Either it must be funded properly, radically downscaled in ambition, or not done at all."_
As an Australian I'll add this
The development of a next-generation *SUBMARINE* as part of the *AUKUS Agreement* risks being held back by unrealistic cost and investment estimates. Either it must be funded properly, radically downscaled in ambition, or not done at all.
And so you all get what I mean (in Australian dollars) and adding in an almost insane A$200M/yr operating costs for 35 years when current estimates for operating an Astute is around $25M/yr.
The cost of a Virginia Class A$5 Billion + A$7 Billion = A$12 Billion
The cost of an Astute Class A$3 Billion + A$7 Billion = A$10 Billion.
The cost of 3 *SECOND HAND* Virginia Class and 5 AUKUS is $268 - 368 Billion or *A$33.5 - 46 Billion EACH*
Reminds me a bit of Elon Musk's comment that "anyone can build a prototype (car, in that case)", but actually developing the manufacturing capacity for a new vehicle is "a 1,000 times harder".
Actually the opposite is true. Elon bought Tesla for 1.4 million after that work was done and ended up in court with the guy that probably worked for peanuts under stress levels that Elon couldn't even contemplate. I assume Elon threatened him into being quiet. So how would Elon possibly know? His first cars were also built by Lotus, hence why they looked like Lotus sports cars. It certainly requires a lot of money, though.
@@kevinchadwick8993 Hi Kevin. Please check your facts. If you do so, you will see that Tesla's mass manufacturing capability was developed long after Elon took over the company. However, I am not sure that my comment is relevant to the next-gen fighter conversation, since fighters are manufactured in relatively small numbers and I think the level of manufacturing automation is much less than in the auto industry.
@@jimroth7927 Indeed but my point is that Elon didn't do the Tesla car lithium electrical work that founded the company. To be honest he probably didn't do much if any of the scaling work either but atleast he was around at the time for that part. So how could he know, which is harder? I'm certain it is the ground breaking design work personally by a huge margin. Think of it this way. Which is harder, developing a stealth fighter or attempting to copy it and mass manufacturing it in China?
Forgot one thing advocating against UCAV…”glory” that gets you promoted.
Here's my take on drones that is often overlooked and I haven't watched this all the way through (yet).
You can put up a wing of drones and sacrifice one without lose of a trained pilot.
While upper echelons may not like it, "aviators" can draw adversaries into disadvantageous positions without fear of the loss of their own life.
That, and drones can pull far higher Gs.
And then some kid in Korea hacks into your Drone Fighter wing, turn them around and blow the bajeesus out of your FOB…
I am far more worried about China in 2 to 6 years, than Russia crossing into NATO alliance terrority any time soon. Next, as Justin stated, the US is incredibly wasteful with multibillion dollar programs, that waste MUST be reduced (example: F15 EX is now being reduced from 144 units. What was the purpose of the program if your going to purchase a suboptimal number of units (like F-22)?) Just need more partnerships to reduce overall costs while maintaing the current budget for next generation weapons (like air to air missiles.)
You missed the point of him saying that: the US is more inefficient with its programs, but at the same time they end up with vastly more capable and thoroughly developed platforms. You can reduce the waste from political lobbying or program mismanagement a decent bit, but the majority of that comes from them not recognizing or understanding that the sticker price doesn't tell the whole tale. Then they start looking at retrofits like the EX and F16V that are never going to be as dominant as the F-35 is, and when they don't give the capabilities that eventually are required and they have to spend again, it becomes a cheapskates pay twice scenario.
The F15EX wasn't necessarily a wanted program either. The Air Force has stated on multiple occasions its intent to have a F-35/NGAD fleet as they recognize the capabilities issue the same as Justin does. The Pentagon on the other hand saw that it needed to throw a bone to Boeing to keep them afloat and tried to justify the aging F15C fleet with new EXs to fill the air superiority role when it can technically speaking be done by the F-35 should you absolutely need to missile truck it since it has the payload and fuel for it and the systems are a generation ahead.
More partners isn't a guaranteed effective cost reducing measure either. Case in point, the development cost alone of trying to shoehorn in the XA100 to reduce costs via competition was $6B; that's enough to buy current engines for half the F-35s still being planned on order. The fact of the matter is, and as Justin and the Mitchell Institute (good source of info btw) pointed out, the Air Force needs a larger budget to effectively develop its programs or it'll have to keep ending up with programs behind, overbudget, or worse case scenario even cut, and then end up funding another program to develop the systems it should've already had.
I can see why Justin is currently unpopular! Telling the truth is usually hated by the entrenched establishment. Thank you, Justin! Very interesting points.
Was hoping you'd have also briefly discussed Justin's recent paper discussing how unprepared Europe in particular is to fight a real war - in terms of available air frames, munitions stockpiles, pilots, maintainers, transport and refueling infrastructure, etc. Hope that's something you might touch on when you guys next chat. I also hoped you guys might touch on the S. Korean and Swedish strategies for producing indigenous fighter capabilities with limited budgets. BTW - I've thought Sweden & S. Korea might consider partnering on a more stealthy iteration of the K-21 Bora made with an internal weapons bay and more.advanced sensors and SA.
You mean like this? ruclips.net/user/live93rzmvTiegI?feature=share
Thx Ward .. my bad .. I did listen to that one and remembered seeing on Twitter that Justin had published a new paper - but it was about lessons learned about the.VKS from the 1st 15 months of the.UKR conflict and you mentioned at the end of.this latest video that you'll touch on this topic next time.
At what point does the UK recognize Justin as a very valuable national asset and either employ him or “make” him brief government regularly?
Also, how does one socialize his expertise to acquisition professionals on our side of the pond?
They brief parliament all the time.
Note, BAE Systems owns a big chunk of the US defense industry, including major EW shops like cold war Sanders. Pilotless has been around since WW1, the question is how much capability do you want. if and when available, at the price you want. Also, seems pilots are running out of G's in contested airspace?
Things are getting real. I vote unmanned with AI assisted direct link to a human pilot for command and control. Like wearing a Japanese Robot battle suit. There has got to be some kind of technology that can be built into giant swords.
Yeah I can see why such an article would ruffle many feathers. Several months ago I was wondering why there were so very many Sixth Gen fighters under development, wouldn't that be wasteful? So maybe I was right?
Conceivably, the different European sixth generation programs could share investment in sensors and some avionics to reduce costs. They could also increase scale of production.
I suspect there is a lot of fiddling by pretending to do something but not doing it. This could lead to cost overruns by trusting a partner that's just sucking away funds.
You best recent video.
Biggest problem w/ the F-35 program was the whole premise: a "Design on the Fly" approach, a deliberately LOW initial bid to get the contract, staggering cost$ and production delays, and as with the F-22 [program.....the cost per copy so prohibitive that the numbers requested.....CAN'T be produced. In the end the best weapons systems aren't the best.....just the products pushed by the Best "salespeople", in and out of Congress. Ok Class, what industry is Number One in the US? DEFENSE Industry!; Weapons. Planes.
Ward, I have that same shirt. Sadly my Gibson Flying V Custom Shop didn't come with one for its absurd price.
I find it interesting, but not surprising that a handful of countries aside from the US, post-WW2, are not neglecting their militaries as much.
France
Israel
Poland
All three were conquered or have to fight constantly, and thus understand how important a good military is.
UK as well.
The F-35 program produced a Technological Tour De Force. This cost money. For political purposes, not efficiency, we also had to share production and maintenance with both our overseas partners and all 50 American States. The US did throw a impossible amount of money at impossible requirements and produced the remarkable aircraft we see today. Late and over budget! SURPRISE.
Thanks!
Ward, Great content as usual!!!
Justin is smart, informed, so interesting...priceless 😇
Hi Ward, The zebra crossing markings on Abbey Road are not in the same position as it was for the Beatles album cover. It's been moved nearer the junction.😮💨
Thanks.
Providing for, and committing to funding for the long term is what Australia is doing with SSN AUKUS. The headline number is scary but the public generally accepts it.
TLDR version: either spend the money and do the job right, or be happy buying off the shelf options from the US and continue to let your in-house industry to die.
The Bronk delivers, always
Born in the 90s Justin B.: “Who are the Beatles?”
Build the capability and maintain that capability now vs dealing with years of capability shortages and unnecessary loss of life during times of war.
if the same money is spent with industry on the production and maintenance of unmanned combat vehicles as manned industry will continue to employ a similar number of people, what would change is the number of aircraft, sounds like you could have 10 times as many unmanned as manned aircraft.
Maybe. But keep in mind that the crew of a fighter-bomber is one pilot and one WSO (maybe) while the crew of a UCAV is four to eight. Call the UCAV crew a stick. Each stick has one officer and three to seven NCOs. Likely fewer maintenance manhours per flight hour versus a manned machine, but likely about the same workload for ordinance and fuel.
So far RPVs have increased -- not decreased -- manning requirements. Will AI change that? Dunno.
Thnx for this unbiased episode carroll.
Can someone ask Bronk, or if they know themselves, can the EuroFighter Typhoon Tranch 1-through-3 be upgraded to the Tranche 4 standard? Or are the differences too great?
Excellent!!
Time to come up with exciting tech that new blood will want to work with. I imagine a 6th/7th gen LO (low observable) fighter capable, not only of air-superiority, but also truly omni-role... and VTOL will be the norm.... A two-in-one aircraft, where both separate at the merge (if it actually comes down to it at all) .... The unmanned "loyal wingman" is armed only with guns, some fuel... minimizing weight enabling enhanced superior super-maneuvering... The manned "lead" carries the rest-fox missiles, aew sensors.... able to " quarterback" the battlespace.... able to re-arm & re-fuel the LW.... Both lead & wingman use twin engines, with F-35 like thrust vectoring nozzles (in a tandem configuration similar to what toy drones use), for VTOL.... Pre-armed Drone LW swarms can be vectored to form up & join any "lead" while the bingo LW can RTB to refuel & re-arm....
There is apparently a single US fighter plane that can fly at 5000 mph, can hover, can do 90degree turns, can go into space, is completely stealthy, oh and can go underwater. It's called the 'tic tac'
Thanks to both of You for extra interesting videos and thanks Moch for draging Justin to streams.
Ps- is that a GPU on a right side from stick ?
Yes it is a GPU. His old Nvidia card before he upgraded to a 4090.
2070 card.
The main advantage of a remotely or autopiloted UAV is cost. You can put 10 to 50 UAVs in the air for the cost of 1 manned flight. Your ground based operation becomes much, more important, and bigger. In the future, UAVs may constitute 80% of an air wing. In 100 yrs, who knows? 100%?
So the question about the USA approach: is inefficiency, in actuality, a hidden cost of doing business, ie, the inefficiency ultimately produces a superior product or, is inefficiency a useless cost the can and should be eliminated by better management and control?
I think what he's saying is it's both; while the US is very very inefficient, for a certain level of quality and capability vast quantities of capital and resources do have to be put forth. To put it simply, the UK could have developed the F35 for half of what it cost us, but a tenth is just not any near a realistic figure.
Agreed with Mocha: it's a combination of the program being badly handled early on leading to unnecessary spending, but at the same time they have to pay for next gen systems development and that's inherently costly as well. It's like Bronk said in the video: the F-35 was always going to cost more, it simply requires more resources to build the kind of technologic magic under the hood, but at the same time as evident by its exercise record, it's justified: 20:1 kill ratios is a pretty cost effective number when it comes down to actual battles.
The problem is that you have to convince Congress that the sticker prices are worth it and well...good luck is all I can say, especially when the people you need to convince have ties with competing companies (something something rhymes with 'going'). There's also a need to help fund companies who are technically objectively not superior, but are necessary to prevent monopolies from developing. Case in point: the _Air Force_ didn't ask for F15EXs and is laser focused on a 5th centric fleet, but the Pentagon said otherwise.
All in all it's almost like a pay-to-play game, technically speaking the most efficient way to win is to spend nothing and skill your way through, but dropping the odd $50 might save much more time and get you more capable units, and when it comes down to war day you don't want to be the guy who loses because they thought they were saving money and could make up for it in numbers. It's as Justin said here as well, making something relatively 5th gen looking is fairly easy, _actually_ doing what makes the F35 awesome runs you up costs like the US incurred, even if you weren't to make the same developmental mistakes. It's part of the reason the US shouldered the developmental costs of the program with several other nations and why they're using the program's technologies on other platforms like the B-21.
The US was the first through the gate. First cannot avoid the mistakes and pitfalls because we do not know they are mistakes and pitfalls at first sight. Those who come after will say, "No, that's a mistake. Don't do that."
The upside is that those mistakes are behind the US. The downside is that the US paid dearly for them.
What burns me up about the F-35 is that it is a McNamara plane: build one plane and let everybody fly it. So we have one model for the Air Force, one model for the Navy, and a third for the Marines. Can you say F-111? Can you say F-4? We have been down that path before. It was a Charlie-Foxtrot then, and it is a Charlie-Foxtrot now. We should find the whizkid who had this idea, arrest him, try him, convict him, hang him on the capitol steps, and leave his body to the birds. Pour encourager les autres
UCAV pilots must have a valid IFR license, hencethey need flight training They also need flight training on the actual UCAV systems, syntheic training is not enough. Almost all the other requirements that apply to the manned jets, including rest, briefing and debriefing apply to the UCAV pilots too.
Could be interesting to have a insight of why the French and the German went on their way for the new gen aircraft obliging UK and Italy to do the same (joined then by Japan) instead of having all together like the consortium who developed the EFA.
I think that the biggest weakness of the sixth generation fighter is that from the time of observing the target and analyzing and sending its information to the pilot, until the time the pilot receives the information and reacts and sends the pilot's reaction information to the sixth generation drone, this There will be a few seconds of wasted or peak time, which few seconds can reverse the outcome of a battle or operation, especially when the aircraft speed is above Mach or close to it.
...and also most of our missions are dropping bombs on third-world people who only even have a SAM if we've had a proxy war against Russia in their country before.
I believe the wingman drones will be autonomous.
Maybe. Except the sixth gen "drone" will receive the identical data simultaneously so the human will only need to command to fire if "free fire" was not previously enabled. I see drone "free fire." as being an option for high threat environments- as in any legit "wingman" should have the capacity to make decisions on the fly. (I'm thinking the air-to-air fight would pan out as largely drone vs drone).
Most of this would happen WAY before the so called "Merge."
AEGIS already operates in this fashion, takes in the whole battle space picture from multiple sensors all data linked, assigns threat levels to what is in it's space, prioritizes targets, selects the appropriate launch platform and defensive measures, etc. No human has to notice a sea skimming missile, select it with a cursor, pick which weapon is best to engage it, go weapons hot, and then manually fire. 6th/7th Gen if that same defensive/offensive capability is warranted it will be implemented.
@cadennorris960 @greenfire6924 @msytdc1577
Thank you all for reading my comment and replying to it, it is true that artificial intelligence is likely to be placed in these birds to speed up the conflict without the need for a pilot, but keep in mind that artificial intelligence is not that advanced yet. that can successfully operate independently. During the Gulf War, the Patriot, which was designed as an artificial intelligence, fired several times by mistake at its own planes and those of its allies, and it can be said that the American Patriot system had shot down more planes than the Iraqi Air Force and Defense Force could shoot down, and That this system can also be hacked and it will not be completely without penetration, like the American RQ drone that was hacked by Iranian electronic warfare and they landed the drone safely on the ground in Iran!
The Bronk 💪
He is scary smart.
I like Justin alot but his English heritage forces him to take 15min to make a 3 minute point. Super smart super in depth but we could get to alot more topics if Mooch stepped in more often. That's why I love Pako. Very detailed and to the point equals lots of great info. Thanks Mooch!!!! Great show
Hard for me to understand his “English” lol 😂
@@michaelripperger5674 English.....the language of the English.
When I lived in the UK I noticed the Brits put far more value in finding the correct nuance in every statement.
The vocabulary of an educated Brit is impressive.
But I guess using very and great in every sentence is another way of making a point.
I’m just not sure it’s the point you intended to make. 😉
Let's face it, the big issue in the military right now is recruiting personnel. A smart military would try to figure out how to leverage technology to do more with less people.
Here in the UK it doesn't matter how much the current political party promises. The next one will cancel the previous parties promises. Just look back at the TSR2 program. Or for that matter Canada had a similar program which was totally destroyed. Not even leaving one for a museum.
No the Canadian Avro Arrow was destroyed because they had chose between that or St. Lawrence river which will connect Montreal to sea.
While i agree with the decision over the abandonment of pilot G limitations, i swear these budget cuts are gonna put our country in some serious shit.
Hey Ward, could you do a video on what you possibly think a mass production fighter could look like if tensions were to boil over with China in the next few years and we did lose 200-400 fighters like some "experts" and analysts are predicting
Ward would you be interested in interviewing a Air Force Academy graduate who was a whizzo for his 1st enlistment then became a Catholic Priest/Chaplin USAF.
Why not merge the Manned and unmanned aircraft into one. The plane will fly it self and engage targets automatically and the person in the cockpit is just decision maker like in Star Trek flying a shuttle craft. The person can make those decisions and identify situations that a extremely difficult to program and the plane can do the task that would otherwise require extensive flying training can just do it automatically. You already have the helmet mounted sighting. Imagine you just look at a target with your eyes and push a button and the plane automatically kills the enemy plane for you. All you need is some emergency controls for basic flying.
"Optionally manned"
Openly talked about by SAAB since 2013
Australia doesn't do MOTS, we always have to "Australian-ise" it. and it screws it up
Drones, my son wants to fly a drone, plays DCS
Funny how not funding the last remaining US titanium producer and allowing the purchase of foreign titanium enhances the odds of the your titanium coming from the biggest and cheapest titanium producer in the world, VSMPO-AVISMA. Or possibly from Baoji Titanium Industry Co., Ltd.
We need to insure the US political machine (ie Defense Super PACs) don’t hold the US transition to pilotless aircraft from not only developing but implementing before China goes this direction
Moving away from manned military assets and becoming ever more dependent upon automation is a very bad idea.
We cannot go a few months without some major Technological scandal involving Strategic assets being hacked, and we want to make our air defence systems more susceptible to hacking?
Our European friends don't have serious Military Development Programs that keep pace with the evolving threats any longer. They only start major aircraft or armor or ship building programs for defense jobs and for export $$$$. Building 100 fighters are great for airshows, but not serious attempts to match advanced Russian and Chinese platforms.
Speaking of drones, are you going to report on the recent news about UAP? There were some very effective drones presenting information to congress recently.
Mooch, ask Rick Beato. 🤣
My question is how "sentient" would the UCAV's be? Would they be able to recognize the small details that turn a legitimate military target into a war crime?
Ah yes... Skynet isn't very far away...
"Still not Kensington"
Hey Ward, when are you going to bring Alex Hollings on here?
Billions of dollars 😮 , I just need 1200$ to finish my model railroad😅
Is there not also a risk with "funding it up front" where the various players involved will just end up driving up costs to meet that new level of funding, and then still going over?
It is inevitable that plane performance will eventually kill pilots as the design specifications of humans become exceeded.
Off topic question: why are piloted platforms not leveraging the fact they are in fact piloted platforms and use the potential of the 2 seat configuration. For either managing ucavs or just simply better awareness. For me as a amateur it seems that a single pilot is the worst of both worlds either fully automated or piloted platforms. Wouldnt be the complicated f-35 for example much more capable with a second person?
Because the Apache Guardian already exists. No jet engineer wants to copy a helicopter's design.
Because personnel costs are a huge portion of overall lifetime program cost. Many nations are also struggling to even get enough recruitment with their all volunteer militaries, access all branches, but the pilot shortage is very acute. Doubling the number of pants in seats needed would need a very very strong argument made to justify the increased difficulties. As it stands currently it's easier and cheaper to continue to automate away pilot tasks to the airframe so that the pilot essentially fills the second person role in combat.
ALICE sounds like HAL9000 predicting the failure of the AE-35 unit....
I agree with that, except, Mooch, you're going to need 6 years to prepare for the conflict over Taiwan, with everything you have, and you really might not even have a year. It's hard to say. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor when they did because they felt like they had to, without delay, because the trends were growing worse for them as time went on. Either the trends will remain in China's favor for the next 6 years, which isn't good, or else, they could take out our air fields in Guam and Japan, hoping we'll just give up after they over-run Taiwan initially, before we're able to respond. Or maybe they think we might just think it's not worth it, especially if Ukraine goes badly? What if it happens next year, and two of our carriers go down with the opening salvo. Have you heard that the rain-fed locks at the Panama Canal are running dry due to persistent drought? What if the Russians trade half their best hypersonic and nuclear technology for 1,000 trains worth of artillery shells? What if we could have avoided the Ukraine conflict, but we cannot avoid an invasion of Taiwan, sometime between now and whenever the Chinese determine that the trends are turning against them, or next year, of if we are lucky, maybe not till 2027? These are things that we needed to plan for back while we were occupying Iraq, which didn't end well either, due to bad strategy, if I can be honest.
If China goes for it, we set the middle east on fire and they lose 500 million from famine in less than a year
Maybe the only way is for german Franco project to join with Japan uk project.
This nonchalant ignorance of the Unmanned aircrafts vulnerability to cyber attacks should be studied in a lab. Also, there’s no way one of these AI fighters is out-dogfighting elite pilots
World is 'falling appart' right now, so wouldn't it be better anyway to order NOW New Tranch-4/5/6/7 Typoons?
(With uprade routes on Sensors, EW, modular Software, the new Engines, Trust-Vectoring, Terrain following mode,..)
so no need to worry about storing that bag that pilots carry with them… wth is in that thing anyway? where does it go?? whats with the black teardrop on the side of pilots helmets??? and whats all that other gear???
If you want inefficiencies you should look at the time and wasted effort that was put into voice commands for the F-35. Think. A whole software development team worked on Voice commands for everything you could want the aircraft to do, and presumably it was tested to oblivion and made sure it never made a mistake. And from all of the interviews I've seen not a single pilot has EVER used it. Maybe that's what the MoD and the RAF is thinking when it comes to efficiency, but they are still way off with their procurement budget.
They don't often use their parachute either, but it's there just in case. My guess it will be used more when there is more to do such as ordering drones to do stuff.