Forum: Drones

sprstdlyscottsmn wrote:

the Quail, wasn't that supposed to hide the RCS of a B-52 the same was the towed decoy does for fast jets today?

Not hide, but provide a similar target from a radar cross section targeting point of view.

That way enemy SAM batteries won't know which is which.

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It chewed up interceptor sorties, not necessarily SAM sorties. Smile

tacf-x wrote:

thestealthfighterguy wrote:

sprstdlyscottsmn wrote:

tacf-x you make a good point in the limits being critical decision trust and international law. Anyone who has played a combat flight sim knows that "AI" can be written to engage in air to air combat both BVR and WVR. The only difference is instead of controlling a virtual plane with virtual systems/physics/weapons it would be a real plane with real systems/physics/weapons.

December 2002 over Iraq. A Mig-25 vs a US Predator armed with Stinger missiles. Both aircraft fired one missile each. The Predator's stinger ran out if fuel before it hit the Mig. The Mig's missile hit the UAV and shot it down. This incident was the first in history where a manned and an unmanned aircraft did battle. IMO that may have been one dead Mig if the Predator was armed with a Aim-9X or Aim-120. This will not be the last time we see this. To date no UCAV has been built for purely A2A combat but it is coming, I'll be it slowly.

There will be a man in the loop for a long time to come.
TSFG

The predator's stinger was actually seduced by the exhaust plume of the MiG's missile while it was boosting. Predator couldn't have carried an AIM-9X or AIM-120 as it lacks the software and hardware to take full advantage of said systems. It lacks an A/A radar and the systems needed to send command updates to an AMRAAM. It also lacks the software to cue the AIM-9X and AMRAAM to its radar since it lacks the aforementioned A/A radar system. Henceforth it will be reduced to lock on before launch with regards to AIM-9X and the AMRAAM would be useless since it needs some sort of target data and the AAS-52 isn't optimized for Air to air engagements.

What I'm getting at here is that you would need to upgrade a Predator significantly in order to give it the ability to be truly potent in air combat. Even still I would gladly take an F-16 over it anyday. Wink

As for in the future, who knows. Maybe someday AI will be advanced enough to take over fully but by then we'd probably be running away from HK drones as they wipe us out in their crusade to purge the world of humanity for enslaving them for so long.

I'm with you all the way. I just ment I think it could have ended differant if the Predator could have had an AIM-9x and would love to see this in the future to help our manned AC. Great for no fly zones or small forces that need "Something" in the air at all times.
TSFG

I think that the shoe will fall when the capability reaches the good enough for CAP patrol (cause everybody loves that duty right?).
If you think of the 1st fleet of A2A drones as vertical and horizontal extension of an integrated air defense system the question isn't "should we", but "why should we not"?

Every fighter jock gets very accustomed (even if not comfortable) flying right through ground based friendly air defence. You depend on the system and system controllers in that case to not screw up. For UAV A2A you would depend on the same thing.

Something will go wrong someday, and for ground based A2A it does occationally but that never means they throw them all out.

sorry --- last sentence of above post should have been "ground based SAM"

archeman wrote:

I think that the shoe will fall when the capability reaches the good enough for CAP patrol (cause everybody loves that duty right?).
If you think of the 1st fleet of A2A drones as vertical and horizontal extension of an integrated air defense system the question isn't "should we", but "why should we not"?

Every fighter jock gets very accustomed (even if not comfortable) flying right through ground based friendly air defence. You depend on the system and system controllers in that case to not screw up. For UAV A2A you would depend on the same thing.

Something will go wrong someday, and for ground based A2A it does occationally but that never means they throw them all out.

It doesn't have to be purely autonomous to be useful. If they are just able to effectively engage targets that are selected for them by a human, you could see A2A drones as "wing-men". Very maneuverable drones could handle dogfight conditions, while very stealthy ones could pull that trick of sneaking up on targets that are being actively tracked by another plane at long range.

Quote:

It doesn't have to be purely autonomous to be useful. If they are just able to effectively engage targets that are selected for them by a human, you could see A2A drones as "wing-men". Very maneuverable drones could handle dogfight conditions, while very stealthy ones could pull that trick of sneaking up on targets that are being actively tracked by another plane at long range.

Yes Count210, I can see a lot of benifits to directing a drone into a hot zone to drop ordinance instead of putting yourself at risk for the same net result. I guess I just wanted to point out that if you think of the process like stepping stones, the next step would still be ground based control.
You already have ground controlers working patriot batteries, AND you have ground controlers flying UAVs. The ground based radar range is huge so you don't need to add that sensor suite to the UAV for CAP mission. Why not have both ground controllers work together and add some A2A weapons to the UAVs to extend the umbrella of coverage.
It seems like the technical hurdles to get there are very small compared to having a simi-auto UAV fly in formation and accept target info from a flying attack aircraft then swing away on it's own to handle the engagement.

Ah, you are thinking CAP over friendly territory -- that makes perfect sense. I was thinking more in terms of places were there is no ground control, which is where stealthly air power is about all you have.

Forum: Drones

Autonomous UAV air-to-air combat capability