In the context of dogfights, why do you even need an aircraft at that point? A swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones with a kamikaze AI sounds like the end of human-piloted warplanes to me.
> A swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones with a kamikaze AI sounds like the end of human-piloted warplanes to me.
This already exists. We just call them surface to air missiles or air-to-air missiles.
Modern air superiority combat is point-and-click. Send your air superiority fighter over, shoot a missile from beyond the sensor range of the other craft, and then blow them up.
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Air support fighters need guns (see A10 warthog) and other ammunition. But will we really be using guns in the future of air to air combat?
The issue is that advanced opponents (ie: Russia or China) will have air defense of their own. How do you expect to take down a SAM site? Its specifically designed to destroy air targets as they approach.
With what, with air-drones? Against a hardened anti-air specialty base?
This is where electronic warfare comes in handy: "jamming" the radar of a SAM site for example will blindfold them. But the battle of information (jamming, stealth, and advanced radar) is constant, there's no guarantee that your jamming or stealth technology will be good enough for the next generation of Radar.
And no. You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air. US Patriot systems can take out SCUD missiles traveling at Mach 5.
And if your "kamikaze drones" are flying at Mach 5 with an explosive payload, that makes them effectively a SCUD missile.
Jammers (think emit a huge amount of energy on the frequency the radars use) and anti-radiation missiles (think radar homing) are a big part of it.
In modern warfare, the offense still has the advantage, if you don't run out of ammunition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#S-300PMU-...
This is completely mistaken. SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) is one of the most basic and important missions the air force and naval aviators train for. The US absolutely does attack SAM sites from the air, and has done so going back to the Vietnam war. In 91 Saddam had a state of the art integrated air defense system that was systematically demolished by air in the initial days of the counterattack, long before ground troops got close to say Baghdad.
Google what the acronym at the bottom of the "Wild Weasel" patch means for a laugh.
> With what, with air-drones? Against a hardened anti-air specialty base?
Yep, air drones (or, to use the more common name, “missiles”, whether launched from the surface or launched from manned aircraft) are by far the most effective technique.
In fact, there are missiles optimized exclusively for that (anti-radiation missiles for taking out radars sites.)
> You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air.
Yes, you usually do.
> US Patriot systems can take out SCUD missiles traveling at Mach 5.
SCUDs are ballistic missiles, which at any given speed are the easiest thing to hit, since they don't maneuver.
> And if your "kamikaze drones" are flying at Mach 5 with an explosive payload, that makes them effectively a SCUD missile.
No, it makes them hypersonic cruise missiles. Which no one, anywhere, has a particularly good counter for right now.
GP was effectively describing SAM with loitering capability and those surely don't exist yet.
That transition has already happened. In recent conflicts the US has favored precision guided munitions over gun runs, even when sending the A-10 in somewhere. The A-10 is an internet favorite, but the reality is that it's expensive and obsolete. It's honestly a travesty congress keeps throwing money at it.
While at the same time occasionally dropping bombs at targets to make ignoring it not an option.
That's what makes unmanned planes special: It doesn't. It just has to force enough missiles to be fired that the missiles are more expensive/valuable than the plane when it ultimately gets shot down.
(Value can be different from financial cost, depending on e.g. supply shortages, influence on the rest of the war, etc.)
Nazi Germany had a credible air defense. We sent bombers anyway. At one point, the expected lifetime (survival) of a bomber crew was a month.
It has been some time since we fought a war that was worth that risk.
They're ultimately just aren't that many aircraft or cruise missiles in modern militaries relative to WW2, and they each cost 2-3 orders of magnitude more than their WW2 counterparts (although the cost increase matches the capability increase).
A plane that is flying high enough and can travel fast enough is essentially immune to ground-based interception. Your launch has to spend a significant amount of time and energy just to get high enough, and launches like this are extremely loud to the defending plane's sensors. If you launch too early they can just turn around and fly out of range; too late, and they can overfly and outrun your range.
Essentially, the position + velocity interception state space for smaller kamikaze designs does not necessarily include ground level & stationary for a large portion of the design space. And once you start up-scaling things to get the endurance necessary to attempt intercepts, then you lose the maneuverability and cost advantage for making kamikaze attacks, and attaching parasitic missiles or drone aircraft for the final attack run makes a ton of sense.