After seeing what happened in Armenia & Azerbaijan, I'm wondering if the US's customers are pushing for these cheaper drone options instead of the F35. The F35 has been in development so long, that it's seeing its own combat role supplanted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA
Perfect for the era development started in, but useless for the era when it was finally shippable.
Are you any good at lottery numbers?
Traditional fighters will probably lull in use in between the proliferation of drones, and the proliferation of countermeasures to those drones.
I'm not saying it's a bad argument, but since the hypothesis space is vast (what kind of future conflicts the US/NATO will engage in, what intensity, what kind of economics, what kind of arms race will those bring, etc), and data is sparse, it seems like HN/pundits are not great at really reducing the uncertainty.
Sure, it's still a fuckload of money, and probably it could be better spent on providing new skill training to unemployed/at-risk-workers in those states where the F35 money goes right now, but that's a hard sell, and doesn't really move the needle with regards to air-force capacity.
I do not believe for a second the F-35 was ever designed to be an actual combat jet, I think is was all just a giant smoke screen to serve several political goals on both the domestic and Foreign fronts.
It is simultaneously a prime example of a Jet designed by committee, a 1 Trillion + dollar program that will never serve the purpose it was sold to the taxpayers for...
Do you really think that an aircraft not meant to do something would be fielded by those nations and used to do that very thing?
And of course the program has political goals, every defense acquisition program does, to pretend otherwise would be silly.
It is mediocre in all roles for which was designed to replace. It is not as good at dog-fighting as its counter parts, it is not as good at close air support as its counter parts, it does not have as good of stealth has it counter parts.
It is a 1 Trillion+ Dollar "ok" fighter jet, which is not what we were sold
It was to replace almost all of the jetfighter platforms from the A-10 to the F15 and to replace some of the bomber platforms
The F-15Cs are all pushing 40, Hornets are 30+ and because they're used by the Navy they're used hard, the A-10 is totally obsolete, and no bomber is being replaced by the F-35.
The F-22 was cancelled because the military thought that they didn't needed to spend the money on air superiority fighters and wanted to use the money elsewhere (drones and bombers). I don't think the F-35 was in the discussion that much... they fired the top leaders of the Air Force at this time.
Robert Gates killed the F-22 and fired the chief of staff of the Air Force Moseley and secretary Wynne. Since then we knew it was a mistake and tried to restart the F-22 line. It didn't make sense for cost.
Gates has his own book Duty which references this quite a bit and is a great political read https://www.amazon.com/Duty-Memoirs-Secretary-at-War/dp/0307...
And there is another book that argues it was a bad idea. https://www.amazon.com/Air-Power-Abandoned-Betrayal-Americas...
Also:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20472/retired-general-...
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/05/10...
This one is funny because they talk about the increased costs of the B-2 due to cutting it early..... as they cut the F-22.
https://www.airforcemag.com/schwartz-in-memoir-says-f-22-was...
I wouldn't bet on any nation not being able to pull that off. In fact I can think of some teams of university students who could probably hit a Starlink satellite if you gave them some funding.
And for the space discussion, nothing is as real time as a fighter's sensors airborne, it's pretty bad how long some data can take to reach a platform that can use that data. The military has a problem right now with distributing data real time, they are working to solve that problem. You can find a lot of articles on the ABMS. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2336618/adva...
Platforms should go high and slow (but faster when necessary, when in range of bad times). Ordinance should go fast, very fast, with no people onboard.
Say, you get 500km range if you want to drop 20t of bombs, have 8 planes, and want to have safety margins.
500km is easily within the range of even the most primitive tactical missile like Oka, and retaliatory airstrikes.
On other hand, you will have a very busy forward airfield, with tiny airstrip, with a lot of very expensive planes, and long times to sortie, and very close to the enemy.
And a lot of the flight envelope limitations are just to not squish it too hard.
Nobody has attempted to push what is possible with material science and aerodynamics because there is no point if the pilot wouldn't be able to handle the forces involved. With automation, those limitations no longer apply.
For an example of what I'm thinking of, look at air to air missiles. Sidewinder air-to-air missiles achieve an acceleration of 20g, far more than a human pilot can withstand. Drones in the air superiority role could likewise be designed more like larger, more advanced missiles than traditional aircraft.
I suspect that if engineers design combat aircraft to be pilotless, you'll soon see them executing maneuvers that would be far too punishing if the craft had to support a human pilot.
And remember too that the whole dogfighting concept, the getting behind the other guy for a tail shot, means less and less in a world of all-aspect missiles that can fire in almost any direction.
High-G maneuvers just are not a wildly important part of aircraft operations. Despite what you see in movies, high-G maneuvers aren’t what defeat radar-guided missiles and they’re not the bread and butter of dogfights either (which are all but a thing of the past).
They sure do look good at airshows though.
At the end of the day, if you’re a bomb or missile truck, you’re simply not going to outmaneuver a solitary missile that can perform 20G turns. You’re vastly better off minimizing your radar signature and taking out enemy radar sources using SEAD, at which point you can fly with impunity.
Initial flight envelope requirements are often drafted to be the maximum a pilot can take, but there are other considerations. Designing an airframe that can handle a 20G turn will actually make it less maneuverable overall, as it requires a heavier structure. Fighter design is a delicate balancing act.
...like the F-35? I mean, I don't have any idea at all what the exact percentage is, but that is the apropos isn't it?
>but there are other considerations. Designing an airframe that can handle a 20G turn will actually make it less maneuverable overall, as it requires a heavier structure.
Sure, but 30% heavier? Because if not seems like it would indeed be a win. I don't disagree at all that fighter design is a balancing act, that comes up in quite a few industries that push the edge particularly in aerospace. But fundamentally at least from other industries I am more familiar with there can often be disruptive gains when some single factor changes in a major way since changes so often are compounding. We seem to be on the verge of a big example of that in space with SpaceX and Starship. Far more mass and cadence for radically less money changes design considerations up and down the stack. When every single gram is expensive, it makes sense to use the most expensive materials and components, and as the overall price goes up it makes sense to try to pack in more and more functionality etc etc. When that changes all those effects go into reverse.
We're seeing that directly in fact with Starship development itself. They've got more margin to work with, so they could switch to steel, which is far cheaper and easier to work with, which helps with rapid cadence, which helps with mass manufacturing which further brings down costs, which all helps develop faster and better without bad decisions baked in, which further will help with cadence and ultimate cost, and on and on. The resulting contrast with the SLS program is just staggering. Costs and gains compound on either side for literal orders of magnitude divergence.
I don't know if drones will do the same thing for air superiority, but the potential shouldn't be ignored. And probably won't be indefinitely, because the specter of actual competitive level hostile forces seems likely to focus minds despite lobbying by incumbents. Real world results that grow big enough ultimately can't be papered over.
One of many, many ways that the F-35s cost and development timeline has been blown up by trying to do too many different and incompatible, or at least non-complementary, things with one platform.
As lots of critics were pointing out as a problem with the project from the beginning.
Drones are 'slow moving sitting ducks' that can be easily destroyed by an enemy with basic capabilities.
You need 'some degree of air superiority' to use drones.
That could mean extensive electronic warfare or whatever.
But drones, in the way they are used as we see them today ... are easy targets for anyone with capability.
So they are different things.
Now, that said, it still may make more sense for country ABC to buy drones in a lot of cases.
"Shooting down an MQ-1 Predator or an MQ-9 Reaper, the propeller-driven drones most commonly used to kill terrorists in Pakistan, would be child’s play for a Pakistani Air Force pilot. They’re easy to detect on radar, and they fly at about 100 mph—about the speed of a World War I-era bomber. (The Dassault Mirage 5, one of the most common jets in Pakistan’s military fleet, cruises at just under 600 mph and tops out at nearly 1,500 mph.) They don’t normally carry any weapons that could be used in a dogfight, and their lack of maneuverability makes them vulnerable to missiles fired from the ground. " [1]
[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/06/cia-drone-progra...
I don’t think this needs to be the case. Jets don’t fly fast because they have human inside.
Jets today fly much faster than drones, even as you point out - they don't have the 'pilot limitation'.
There are many reasons for that obviously, not just 'G Force'.
Air Superiority Drones are an entirely different kind of entity, and they don't materially exist today. Also for a variety of reasons. Though they likely will in the future.
Then make drones which are jets, like Boeing and the Royal Australian Air Force are doing:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33271/everything-we-le...
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35806/australias-loyal...
Since they could have made those 25 years ago - and chose not to - you have to contemplate why.
Drones are mostly used for surveillance, tactical strikes, close air support - so they don't need speed, they want to be slower in fact, and have longer loiter times.
One day, over the next generation, those 'fast drones' will be a threat, but they are nowhere near that just yet.
Until then, drones are lumbering fat targets that stick out on radar and have 'shoot me' signs on their backs.
The political role of piloting in the Air Force and the way that replacing that function for a top of the line combat platform would disrupt that.
Or, at least, that was what critics of the decisions made 25+ years ago regarding direction attributed it to, IIRC.
And of course, the internet upon which our drones depend, didn't even exist as we know it now.
Drones were 'new tech' and not until they started being used, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq 2, did it start to become very obvious how valuable they were especially in those kinds of conflicts.
Nobody predicted how incredibly 'useful' they would be.
Put all those pieces together, and you see that drones are what they are today.
And doubling down: completely useless in a conventional situation without support, cover, protection and basically superiority. A squadron of 5th gen. fighters with their great radar and support will take out any number of drones over time. As would ground based systems. With impunity. Predator style will never even come close to being 'in range' of the F35's let alone be able to target them with anything.
Drones light up on the dumbest, easiest radar, they fly relatively slowly, they have no defensive capabilities.
It's like comparing Apaches to trucks with a 50-cal + maybe a guy inside with a crappy shoulder mounted MANPAD out in the desert, with nowhere to hide.
All this talk of 'drones vs. F35s' literally when a drone has never even shot down another aircraft. We literally, just in 2018 were able to test fire some A2A munitions. We know fighters can easily clear out drones ... but the inverse is still purely speculative.
As for F35s: they are the only choice, their deployment is inevitable because there's nothing else on the horizon for a very long time. The development timeframe of new gear is growing quite a lot, surely due to bloat, but also to to complexity - an F35 is not an 'aircraft with a few missiles' - it's a 'weapons platform that happens to fly'.
A long time ago, I visited a distant family member's home in Texas, and his uncle was a senior leader on the F22 project, they were doing trials, it was very exciting! But took another 15 years (!) for that thing to reach maturity.
Surely the Americans have some things up their sleeves we don't know about, but how well deployed and useful can something be if it's a total secret? The old F117 Nighthawk was kept quiet until Iraq 1, but that was before the internet.
We're going to see F35s and upgraded 4th Gen Fighters in the mix for a long time. Canada is using it's F18's something like 3x longer than planned.
But, a counter argument to that is that your adversary can simply launch a wall of 20 drones with one A2A missile for every of your F-35, and 20 more to bomb its airfield, and still win attrition-wise.
If prices for drones will continue to drop at the current pace, soon they will become near disposable by standards of military hardware.
Today, an F35 would clear out a squadron of drones way beyond the horizon, before the drones were aware of the F35.
So yes 'a lot of drones' would be a problem initially, but they would still be cleared out within hours of being airborne.
Basically organized actors have the ability to down drones with impunity, they stand out on radar, and they require extensive networking.
Momar Gaddaffi was not very prepared, but Iran for example, is.
In real conflict, I doubt anybody with a $120m plane would even think of trading it, and a pilot for a drone.
Even a minimal attrition rates like 1 in 40, mean an attrition loss.
We know the 1st wave will be done-on-drone for sure ...
... but the idea Russia is going to be able to man and send up 400 drones (!) for even a single opposing squadron is just far fetched.
40 drones out over the Black Sea? Maybe. But again, as they are 'slow lumbering targets' they will be mopped up pretty quick by a single squadron of F35 and whatever other ground/naval forces are in the region.
Every drone in the air facing a capable enemy is basically on a suicide mission.
There are already many ground based anti drone platforms such as Rafael Systems' Drone Done which can be installed on a pickup truck. If Armenia had any of those, they woulld have had an advantage in the recent war with Azerbaidjan.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-ka...
Ethically there is a reason that war should cost lives on both sides, if we get to the point where War is one sided or worse the only lives lost are civilian non-combatants "collateral" damage that does not seem like it would be "inherently better" for the world.
Past US presidents have already played Judge, Jury and Executioner with the US Drone program, nothing stopping future US Presidents from using fully automated US War machine to commit massive acts of war in the world as there would be no risk to "US Lives"
I do not see such a condition as inherently better
Of course, a 'major directive' to convert f35s into drones would look like something else entirely and may possibly work, but it's all fiction for now.
I don't think I was the only one to miss how that conflict related to the F35. Do tell?
> I'm wondering if the US's customers are pushing for these cheaper drone options
Turkey had a lot of success in its Syria incursion using lots of relatively inexpensive drones. Syria's Russian-equipped air defence systems struggled to stop them. And then Turkey-equipped Azerbaijan used the same drones to great success in the recent war against Armenia.
The message is that the future of warfare is drones that cost $5 million each not fighter jets that cost $100 million each (which is the ballpark the F-35 is in). You can buy 20 of the former for the cost of one of the later. And the question is, what military benefit does that one fighter jet give you compared to the twenty drones you could spend the same money on?
The message is, in low-grade conflicts, with varying situations, 'very small cheap drones' have a role.
Turkey's drones are small, cheap, often used for reconnaissance - not exactly the role of a fighter.
It means we're going to see a lot more drone use for close ground support, but that was inevitable.
But again - a capable enemy has defences against those drones, and generally speaking those drones are not going to be doing deep into territory doing tactical strikes, again those types of drones are easily defended against.
Drones are also not carrying payloads of 500lb and 1000lb bombs and other larger munitions.
The role of drones in Azerbaijan and Libya is quite somewhat different from the what role of the F35 would be.
Edit: I should add - obviously not just in low-grade situations, smaller drones especially will be fairly ubiquitous.
If Armenia had a dozen F-35s with a good stock of LGBs, I am sure they would have gotten the edge on azerbaijan regardless of how many drones the other party uses.
They were just terribly afraid to lose them when the battlefield was so tiny, air was full of near disposable targets, and capable air defence had a field day.
Do you have an idea what kind of air force either party had? Was there anything post 1980s non-upgraded Soviet era jets in Armenia?
Wikipedia is showing only four Su-30SMs and 13 Su-25Ks (both are the older non-modernized variants). That's their entire fighter force according to Wikipedia!
Both sides didn't even bomb each other's airfields for real.
Most drones were launched, and operated in the field.
They seem to care more about delays and possible unreliability than squandering billions of dollars.