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Comment by woeirua | Hacker News Reader

Probably not as much as you would think. Modern airframes are still not capable of sustaining as much acceleration as missiles. You just can't outmaneuver today's missiles.

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> Modern airframes are still not capable of sustaining as much acceleration as missiles.

Are those limits what they are because there wasn't any point in designing stronger airframes if the pilot was just going to black out under higher G forces?

If you take the vulnerable human body out of the equation I wonder if airframes strong enough to withstand that acceleration would actually be feasible.

It's sometimes possible to overstress airframes (even ones that use FBW, and should in theory always operate within limits) in high-G maneuvers, as they have stress limits (g limits), which depend on the airframe as well as load-out for fighters.

It's mostly a matter of mass. You would need crazy amounts of power to make a large aircraft make the same kind of turns that a small missile can do effortlessly, besides that it is much easier to make a small structure very strong. Try killing a flea if you want more proof of that.

A plane is, conceptually, just a platform from which to launch ordnance closer and at a higher starting potential energy than you would be able to from the ground.

Given that a plane, then, needs to be capable of carrying multiple pieces of ordnance (otherwise, it's pretty much just a guided missile), it's pretty much fundamentally going to have a higher mass than whatever missile you're launching at it.

That sounds like it means dogfighting doesn't matter at all. You just need an autonomous missile platform with good enough ECM to avoid getting splattered by the enemy missile platform.

That's the basis behind F35's design and why it can't outmaneuver a F16 in a visual range dogfight but is never expected to get into one.

>That sounds like it means dogfighting doesn't matter at all

There has not been an aerial dogfight in this millennia. The last ones that would really count happened over Bosnia in the 90s. I think a Rafale took down a 1960s era MIG-23 in the Libyan Civil war, but modern fighters are either too hard to hit or too expensive to risk.

> If you take the vulnerable human body out of the equation I wonder if airframes strong enough to withstand that acceleration would actually be feasible.

Take the human body out, and the airframe is a (possibly, bus) missile.

I don't know why this keeps getting brought up. Humans may be a factor in the maneuverability of an aircraft but the days of dog fighting are over. There are effective countermeasures against guided missiles that don't involve high G forces.

Today it's all about spotting the enemy first and then the usual logistics of deploying as many weapons on the enemy as possible. An aircraft that can carry 4 missiles and runs out should head back so that it can sortie tomorrow again with a fresh load of missiles instead of starting a desperate dogfight. An expensive plane that can only carry 2 missiles but is guaranteed to return home is more valuable in a war than a cheap one that carries more missiles but gets shot down frequently.

Just remove the aircrafts altogether, use only a cloud of AI-enabled missiles....

There's a saying that drone warfare enthusiasts keep reinventing the guided missile. Proponents point out that drones are cheap and disposable compared to the value of the targets they attack. But a drone can travel further, faster, and with more armor and ordinance if it doesn't carry fuel to return or equipment to land.

The problem with missiles is that they have a limited amount of propellant. Most missiles will spend the majority of their flight time gliding toward their target after the initial boost phase. Fighters can spend hours in the sky, and fly thousands of miles away from their home base. Missiles are limited to a range of several hundred miles and a few minutes max, even with advanced loitering technologies.

If it's loitering, or intended to come back, it isn't functionally a missile.

And why in the hell would you fire a missile without a target that would require it loiter unless you were doing something completely mad like Project Pluto? That just doesn't really make sense at all. Though it reminds me of a torpedo from a Michael DiMercurio book that had to be sedated due to it's carbon based computing matrix being smart enough to basically guarantee a hit on an enemy combatant submarine, but not smart enough to understand IFF.

Loitering missiles are excellent at destroying targets of opportunity; a radar site that is only active temporarily, a convoy of armor moving from its lager, etc etc etc.

Isn't that what a Predator/Reaper is for? Maybe I'm lacking imagination, but a loitering missile seems very difficult to make.

So we’ll have AI controlled missiles instead? With small missiles attached to them to fire at enemy aircraft.

maybe this would lead to smart missiles or a platform to launch them that can loiter near the battlefield, directed by a pilot or controller nearby

Smart loitering munitions already exist.

Loitering in the sense of expending fuel load until a hypothetical target arrives? Or loitering in the sense it's there for reconissance and isn't intended to directly destructively interact with the target?

There's a big difference between a Predator with Hellfires, a tomahawk, A Global Hawk, or a man portablerecon/kamikaze drone, and finally Project Pluto, the ultimate "F you" device likely ever contemplated.

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