Hacker News seems to love fighter planes recently. They are pretty cool. However, there is one fighter plane that I absolutely hate everything about. The F35.
I'm not even sure why we're building this style of fighter jet at this point. A remotely operated or fully autonomous fighter jet seems like the future.
Sure there is some lag introduced if it is remotely operated, but then it has the benefit that without a pilot on the inside, it can preform maneuvers that would cause a human to black out. Plus you can have an unlimited number of copilots looking at radar/video looking out for other aircraft.
If the US were at war with China or Russia, they could certainly shoot our satellites from the sky or locally jam communications with their own drones. You can't remote control a vehicle your signal can't reach.
That seems a naive sentiment to me. You say "go fully autonomous" as if that's a capability that exists when it doesn't.
I don't believe that an autonomous computer program today is capable of deciding when to shoot missiles at people, when to shoot down another aircraft, or when to drop bombs on a building. I don't think a program, with no human input, no GPS, at night, in inclement weather, in the face of enemy sensor jamming, is even able to decide if it's reached its target accurately enough to then attack that target. I also don't think any computer program, even operating only in a simulation, can perfectly evaluate the acceptable level of collateral damage to civilians and infrastructure from its decisions -- to decide, for example, whether it should complete its mission of bombing an enemy unit if that unit enters a home or a hospital. I also don't think either of us is more informed and smarter than the US military and US congress, both of which have decided that there is still a future for manned aircraft for all these reasons.
I don't believe you really think otherwise either. "At this point", we don't even have autonomous cars that work in the real world. With all the best minds in AI working on the problem, with a working GPS and a paved road, our "Google cars" are still foiled by such simple things as a foggy morning blinding the LIDAR. It's going to be a long time before you replace the human pilot in an F15 or a B2.
It is a huge waste of money ~$200m each.
The project has been plagued with technical problems (it doesn't meet its performance specifications, it has structural problems, etc.).
It does not perform any better than current fighter planes in war game simulations.
It is being made for a war that we will never fight with fighter planes. I wonder if America has fought its last human controlled air-to-air dog fight, or it will be extremely rare.
And it was shoved down the Pentagon's throat by lobbyists.
Take a look for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_...
> I wonder if America has fought its last human controlled air-to-air dog fight, or it will be extremely rare.
Yes. Drones and long-range weapons delivery (either high energy or SCRAM-driven missiles). Fighter jets? Might as well call out the buggy whips and horse drawn carriages.
Obligatory A-10 shoutout: We still need something that can provide air-to-ground support to ground troops with a long dwell time, but high-speed cruise to fast deployment (shamelessly stolen from The Avengers: http://www.impdb.org/images/a/ae/Avengers2012CGI_2.jpg).
There is a F-35 variant that's designed to provide close air support, but it's the USMC variant and it's designed to replace the Harrier, which is little consolation to the Army.
Of course, designing the same airframe to replace both the Harrier and the F-16 is a ridiculous notion and the F-35 suffers for it.
Frankly, for the type of wars we're likely to fight in the foreseeable future, the most common mission would call for something like a cheap prop-driven plane with a ton of ordnance hardpoints. Take the flight surfaces off, stuff 3-4 of them into a C-17 and fly them to the theater of operations, go to work.
Pilot here. The aviator community loves pretty much anything that flies and won't get us killed doing it. :)
The role you're describing is currently filled - very well, I might add, by the A-10. It can fly low and slow (has a stall speed of right around 140mph), it's heavily armored and can carry massive amounts of armament. Not to mention an enormous gun that can decimate pretty much anything in its path.
They're slated for retirement soon, though. Long term, I think this role will eventually be filled by drones.
I'm not 100% sold on drones. Yes, they work, they're cheap, and they don't expose squishy & expensive pilots to danger. But even with frequency-agile radios, they're vulnerable to jamming and ASAT missiles taking out important stuff in orbit.
I was expecting someone to jump in with the dog-fight argument against using low & slow aircraft. Unlike in Vietnam, today's missiles are reliable and effective, so even a prop plane can engage and defeat a jet at extended ranges... as long as positive hostile ID can be made early enough.
AC-130 is significantly more of a sitting duck to infantry-deployable surface to air missiles. They have to be fairly low and fly in slow circles with the broadside facing the target. It would be hard to imagine a better missile target. One was shot down in the gulf war by one such infantryman/SAM and all 14 crew were killed. A-10s can loiter and provide extended ground support, but can come in/leave quickly, maneuver well, use terrain to hide from ground fire, etc.
I agree with you, but the original description was that of a cargo plane turned into an assault platform. I was assuming the intention was creating something more along the lines of the Flying Fortress, but the AC-130 was the closest thing I could think of that's still in service.
