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There's also a lot of confusion due to the overloaded use of the term 'drone'

Drone could mean remotely piloted $4M Predator firing $140,000 a piece Hellfire missiles

But drone could also mean mass-produced, battery operated quadcopters delivering small scale explosives over the distance of a few kilometers or less (or perform recon). Sometimes deployed in swarms, flying low. Not necessarily remote controlled

Those are two very different military capabilities. The important impact of the kamikaze-drones is that it strongly favors the side with the stronger and more vertically integrated manufacturing base

Dogfights are pretty rare these days. Most air combat between planes revolves about launching & dodging air to air missiles that are fired from beyond visual range, and dealing with surface to air missiles while doing so. Shooting planes down with an actual gun in an actual dog fight is mostly reserved for countries that don't have modern planes (i.e. anything newer than half a century).

Fighter planes do have a few remaining roles. They are delivery vehicles for cheaper missiles and bombs to take out smaller ground targets or lighting up targets for missiles/bombs that are launched from far away. The longer range missiles (e.g. cruise missiles) are more expensive. An additional role would be reconnaissance even though most of that is probably done by satellites and drones these days. Then there is the job of escorting bigger, more vulnerable planes like bombers or just generally patrolling areas of interest (which could be done by drones as well). And finally there's the psychological warfare factor where flying them over the enemy has a demoralizing effect.

Basically a missile is an autonomous drone that happens to destroy on impact. Missiles have a few advantages over fighters: they are much faster and maneuverable. And they are disposable by their very nature which means they can go where no pilot would go except when very desperate. And a few disadvantages that mainly boil down to cost and range. The cost is high because they are 1 time use only. The range is limited by fuel and size. Which is why using fighter planes as a launch platform is common.

Autonomous planes aren't particularly hard. It's mostly the price performance that needs attention. Cheap, autonomous drones already exist. Making them bigger and beefing up their abilities is just a matter of time. That's all there's to it. At some point their abilities encompass most of what fighter planes currently do.

> Autonomous planes aren't particularly hard. It's mostly the price performance that needs attention. Cheap, autonomous drones already exist. Making them bigger and beefing up their abilities is just a matter of time. That's all there's to it. At some point their abilities encompass most of what fighter planes currently do.

Currently the allure of drones is that they are very cheap and can perform some missions as well as their big expensive brothers.

If you make a drone that is equally capable as a modern crewed jet, you bear most of the cost anyway. You’ll save something by excluding the pilot, but have to pay for extra (stealth) communication, infrastructure etc.

Maybe we’ll go away from that, have many types of cheap drones that are specialised and disposable. That’s not the case now.

Bear in mind our perception is skewed by the fact that the last N wars were all fought against at least one country far behind in military technology. But NATO et al are really prepping against a war against an equal. Having a cheap plastic drone with a bomb attached at the bottom won’t do.

> But NATO et al are really prepping against a war against an equal. Having a cheap plastic drone with a bomb attached at the bottom won’t do.

Is that premise actually a valid concern though? Last few "wars" have been proxy wars or insurgencies.

Both world wars were preceded by several decades of tensions and also proxy wars between the power blocks. Since nukes are involved this time around, it's in all side's interest to not escalate to a hot war. But missing preparation for the worst case scenario was what went wrong for many participants in previous hot wars.

I've heard the communication argument but I'm not convinced since the F-35 itself is sold as the "connected platform" which is supposed to be constantly communicating with the base and the troops on the ground and have complete situation awareness thanks to that integrated communications.

If F-35 can stay connected, so can the drones.

Drones also have the inherent advantage to do manoeuvres way beyond of what human can do or withstand, they don't carry the human and the devices that are made to keep it alive and in control.

F-35 is also know for not flying that well, it's not really a dog fight machine and the scenarios where the plane is supposed to excel are stealth operation, remote intelligence gathering, launching missiles way before visual contact etc anyway. I don't see why drones can't do any of that.

I’m not sure you can push that much two-way bandwidth without compromising stealth; it’s one way to push information to the jet, or exchange little nuggets or he other way, but actually steering the thing remotely would make you totally visible to any radar.

Plus, if you could disable an enemy airforce by destroying the infrastructure, that’s an uncomfortably simple way to ground them. An F35 can operate successfully in total radio silence if need be.

I believe there's no fundamental reason to have drones communicate %100 of the time and receive high fidelity inputs, even consumer drones are quite capable to fly without precise controls from the pilot.

These days, a sub 1000$ consumer drone can follow targets, execute pre-determined tasks, navigate around obstacles and fly back home safely when the communication is lost.

Right, but it's not doing all this while trying to dodge SAM missiles, avoid radars, push the envelope of what it's capable aerodynamically, continuously evaluate a dynamic situation, identify the actual goal (it could be moving, hiding etc.), yada yada yada. Also, losing an aircraft, crewed or not, is further liability - ideally you want to scramble the debris before the enemy can get to it to recover whatever intelligence remains.

The months and years that military pilots spend in training is not just "driving license", but how to best operate a sophisticated destruction machine.

Comparing military jets to the capabilities of commercial drones is massively missing the point of the actual challenges of airborne warfare.

These probably aren't unsolvable problems, I'm not saying we can never replace crewed jets with drones, there are just fundamental reasons why this isn't happening right now.

Of course, drones are not a drop-in replacement for fighter jets with pilots but IMHO drones are inherently superior on most aspects and the shortcomings are solvable problems.

A bit like, Archers having some advantages over rifles but overall rifles being vay superior making archers irrelevant.

It's a great analogy actually. See here for example: https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/01/12/89319/the-puzzli...

Firearms took over bows in Europe around 16th century. But they have been around for far longer, as early as 13th century, possibly much earlier too. Even when firearms took over, they were in many ways inferior to bows. The crucial difference was that they required less skill to operate, so much easier from a general logistical point of view. Training longbowmen in medieval England was a whole massive social project.

So even being the long-term solution doesn't make something the right solution right now, the time gap until it takes over can be very long, and even once it is the right solution, it might not be due to actual technical superiority (at least not initially) but rather wider strategic considerations.

And just to stem the thought, this wasn't because people in the past were stoopid, humans have always devoted a huge amount of skill, cunning and attention to warmongering. Technological progress in military technology was always rapid (if likely slower than today), we just don't see it that way, since one bow kinda looks the same as another to us - but could be an enormous advantage.

USA uses drones for decades.

> The first known U.S. drone strike in Yemen was November 3, 2002 (killing al-Qaeda operative Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi)

Sure, US is one of major drone developers and users.

Interesting last point. Could be weighted by how each country values their servicemen, ie. culturally, (at the risk of making this political) one american soldier KIA > thousands of iraqis; makes sense that the US would lean towards safety for pilots. Contrasted with say a WW2 russia "defend the motherland" mentality where losses are acceptable.

Interesting, wasn't that one of the objectives of the F-35? Penetrate (or come close enough) enemy airspace, then orchestrate a squadron of smaller, simpler unmanned aircraft and weapons that are sent in through other means with no particular expectation of returning after combat?

Possibly, I haven’t seen that past any conceptual stage (I’m an amateur btw, nothing to do with defence).

The point stands that the shepherd is a lot more complex than the sheep. F-35 is so packed with sensors: multi purpose radar, IR sensors, I believe there are radio receivers throughout the airframe, turning the whole thing into a phased array receiver. It has sophisticated software and hardware to orchestrate it all. You can configure it to shoot down enemy planes, fight air defences, bomb targets, I’m guessing shoot at ships etc. It can do it all while maintaining stealth and remaining in the air for hours (with aerial refuelling).

This is much fancier than any drone can do right now.