SuperNinjaToad: Because you can't dogfight with a UAV.

Dogfight? You mean like what they did in WWII?

When was the last time a fighter was shot down in a dogfight? 1991? I don't mean our fighters, I mean any fighter, anywhere.

Get the drone close enough to get a visual bead on the target (usually 20 miles), launch four Python-5s, and turn around and go home. Even a short range missile like the Sidewinder still has a range of over 10 miles.

Dogfight. Heh.

AngryJailhouseFistfark: sammyk: I really do not understand why we aren't developing our next generation fighters as unmanned. You can really increase performance and reduce engineering complexity when you don't have to deal with a pressurized cockpit and keeping a pilot alive. Bonus: You do not need to do a search and rescue opration when a bird goes down. Either self destruct or do a bombing mission to destroy whats left of the aircraft.

Clearly you've never heard of the Fighter Pilot Mafia. This is the magical inner core of the USAF who believe the best man for any job is a fighter pilot. Of course, in order to have fighter pilots you must first have fighter planes in which they can qualify and earn their hours. Therein lies the need for life-support systems aboard the aircraft. After all, if you don't have the life-support, how can you have a fighter pilot? And with no fighter pilot, who will run Your United States Air Force?

The US Army's Cavalry bitterly opposed going from horses to motor vehicles using arguments similar to those opposing the UAV: Only the horse can get to the hard-to-reach locations to provide accurate reconnaissance; a trained horseman on his mount is more reliable than some newfangled "auto-mobile"; tradition, etc.

They got over it. Mostly.

One of the places my cmpany had me at was a place where there were a ton of retired AF pilots. The way they talked about any new plane you would think they got a cut of it. And they hate UAVs with a passion. They did have cool stories though. And I got lots of cool souviners from that place.

The Jami Turman Fan Club: When was the last time a fighter was shot down in a dogfight? 1991? I don't mean our fighters, I mean any fighter, anywhere.

About 2007.

Oznog: The Air Force has been looking into about a dozen unexplained incidents related to hypoxia, or oxygen deficiency, with pilots but has been unable to pinpoint the cause, Air Combat Command has said.

[unrealitymag.com image 450x338]

Take my breath awwwaaaaaaaayyyy.....

/it's a long shot, but possibly lack of oxygen?

Kelly, eh. Let this take your breath away...



/Hot
//not

moothemagiccow: sammyk: I really do not understand why we aren't developing our next generation fighters as unmanned. You can really increase performance and reduce engineering complexity when you don't have to deal with a pressurized cockpit and keeping a pilot alive. Bonus: You do not need to do a search and rescue opration when a bird goes down. Either self destruct or do a bombing mission to destroy whats left of the aircraft.

How about we stop bombing other countries and calling it defense?

Shut yur' l'brel mouth, dirty hippie!

The Jami Turman Fan Club: When was the last time a fighter was shot down in a dogfight? 1991? I don't mean our fighters, I mean any fighter, anywhere.

Yes, 1991. The last time we fought someone with an actual, if badly trained, air force.

Fast forward to fighting someone else with an actual air force. You seem to want to fight the last (or current) war, instead of the next one.

sammyk: namatad: sex, race, age
FFS, you could have multiple people controlling different aspects of the device. rather than one or two people.

/this would make a fun raid

That's what I was thinking. A pilot with insane reaction times controlling a craft that could pull way more G's than any human could live through, An egghead doing nothing but electronic counter measures, A weapons guy....Then the command structure could be sitting in the same room FFS. Direct communication with the joint chiefs and President with live feeds for them to have realtime info....

namatad: you have to deal with jamming. but that is technically a non-issue.
you toss in automation for when the bird is not connected to base.

The drone program has been dealing with these issues for over a decade with great success.

Do we know anything about the current lag time between pilot and drone? I know this dates me, but in the Battle of Mogadishu one of the big problems was command having info that lagged behind the rate of change. What times are we talking about with the current drones? One second? Two? Five even?

davidab: Do we know anything about the current lag time between pilot and drone? I know this dates me, but in the Battle of Mogadishu one of the big problems was command having info that lagged behind the rate of change.

IIRC, a lot of that had to do with information being passed through multiple people. The eyes in the sky would talk to a guy at base who would pass the information along to a different operator who would relay it to the guys in the convoy. With direct control, the lag would be measured in ms rather than seconds, and the largest hit to speed would likely be encryption/decryption.

How is "about a dozen incidents" a plague?

Levarien: The F-22 came in way over price and over budget. That said, the lessons learned will hopefully be applied in getting the F-35 up to speed with minimal problems.

Lesson #1: Don't buy anything more from these mortarfarkers.

We need to make a great military-industrial movie about the F-22. It needs to feature a rock score about 25 years past what is current. Maybe some pilots talking about how it flies so well, and featuring a possible future Senator.

/It also needs a poopy suit song.

Enemabag Jones: We need to make a great military-industrial movie about the F-22. It needs to feature a rock score about 25 years past what is current. Maybe some pilots talking about how it flies so well, and featuring a possible future Senator.

/It also needs a poopy suit song.

Or how about a teenager who rescues his father with a stolen F-22 from a nondescript Middle Eastern strongman all while listening to screaming guitar solos on his iPod. We'll call it something catchy like Aluminum Falcon or Steel Pigeon.

Flint Ironstag: And, as others have pointed out, you now have a far greater pool of talent to chose from because you now don't have to worry about the pilot being physically fit to any standard above "average cubicle dweller". Plus now that your aircrew can live in a nice US suburb and work a nice 8 hour shift and be back with their wife, or husband of course, and children for dinner you'd get far more applicants to chose from and be able to keep them working for decades longer.

AIR FORCE

ALL THE CHILDREN YOU CAN EAT

This text is now purple: namatad: you have to deal with jamming. but that is technically a non-issue.
you toss in automation for when the bird is not connected to base.

That's fine for recon or com planes. It's trickier for fighters/bombers. We usually insist on a human in the loop for weapons-hot situations. We don't need Skynet wandering off to look for Sarah Connor.

THIS.

We don't have any AI's we'd trust with the decision to fire live weapons. Not even close. I think Brass, and the suits back in Congress, are EXTREMELY skittish about giving the authority to go weapons hot to a machine. Something something Sarah Connor.

Overall the F-22 is an excellent fighter, quite possibly one of, if not the best overall air superiority fighter and interceptor ever built.

Biggest problem is the famously glitchy life support system, and fark-all if I know why that's going on. I'm an intel guy in an army aviation unit, I'm not aviation life support or a USAF technician or anything.

Also, it's ridiculously expensive per-unit compared to other fighters, and it comes down to the idea of is it worth it to have a superfighter like that, when it's just that plain expensive and other alternatives like the F-15SE Stealth Eagle are on the table providing comparable performance at a much lower price using mostly off-the-shelf technology with a very proven airframe refitted with stealth technology.

The Jami Turman Fan Club: SuperNinjaToad: Because you can't dogfight with a UAV.

Dogfight? You mean like what they did in WWII?

When was the last time a fighter was shot down in a dogfight? 1991? I don't mean our fighters, I mean any fighter, anywhere.

Get the drone close enough to get a visual bead on the target (usually 20 miles), launch four Python-5s, and turn around and go home. Even a short range missile like the Sidewinder still has a range of over 10 miles.

Dogfight. Heh.

you know how I know you know absolutely ZERO about air warfare? by your line of reasoning why even bother making any fighters at all? or even equip them with cannons?..... might as well just convert old B-52s and B29s with modern A2A missiles and can call it a day.

blackhonda: Ok, how many basement dwelling Farker gamers have been approached to be "Pilots"

Rapmaster2000: Enemabag Jones: We need to make a great military-industrial movie about the F-22. It needs to feature a rock score about 25 years past what is current. Maybe some pilots talking about how it flies so well, and featuring a possible future Senator.

/It also needs a poopy suit song.

Or how about a teenager who rescues his father with a stolen F-22 from a nondescript Middle Eastern strongman all while listening to screaming guitar solos on his iPod. We'll call it something catchy like Aluminum Falcon or Steel Pigeon.

We'll call it Titanium Hawk?

Maybe have Samuel L. Jackson co-star as a grizzled veteran pilot who acts as a mentor and partner-in-crime?

From the 60 Minutes interview last night, it seems that the charcoal filters for the oxygen system are failing and possibly even poisoning the pilots. They also referred to their condition as the "Raptor" cough -- as in a bunch of pilots in a room, you can identify the F-22 pilots simply because of their cough brought on by failing oxygen system.

vodka: Actually those were manned. The machine itself was alive.

There was no human in them, it was a drone.

I still feel this is sabotage, I would rip out the entire F-22 O2 system and start it over from scratch, with micro-chips from US supplies only.

/or at least check for "funny" chips in the planes.

Flint Ironstag: Take a F-22, replace the pilot with a RC system and a video link and have a pilot sitting in a comfy chair somewhere and that F-22 would be able to easily out maneuver a manned F-22, even if you ignore the weight saving from taking out all the pilot, the life support, ejection seat etc. All that has got to weight far more than the RC system and they already have the radio and data link stuff.

Well, gee. I guess you have it all figured out!
The best engineers at Lockheed, Grumman, Boeing, USAF, DoD, etc, etc, etc can all go home. Some random dude on Fark has it all designed out. AND can do it with random video game players in between bites of Doritos.

We'll just hand wave away the physics concerns, the 2 way comm factor, and reduction in stealth from continuously radiating that comm signal.

/ignore the hard parts, and everything is easy

squidgod2000: How about we buy one less F-22 and instead build the five best schools in the world? Or send 4,000 kids to college?

We already have the five best schools in the world.

One of them is richer than most African nations.

Flab: Fubini: It'd be extremely hard to fool enough of these systems to legitimately trick something like a UAV or a missile.

Yet, the Iranians apparently did. I'm sure that they weren't the first to think of sending fake GPS signals to trick a UAV (or advancing ground troops, for that matter). I'm sure even North Korean generals have seen Die Hard 2 by now and said "Neat! We need to try this one day!"

Fubini: Inertial Navigation
Fubini: Accelerometers

These two are synonyms, by the way.

I know it's been all day at this point, but in case you still care about this conversation:

I haven't seen any credible journalism that indicates that Iran actually used some kind of electronic warfare to force a drone to crash. I haven't seen anyone credible endorse this idea, other than the Iranians themselves. The drone they claim to have is fully able to hold position or return to base in the event that outside communications are interrupted, so we have the following possible scenarios:

1) Iran was somehow able to send a signal to the drone instructing it to crash land

2) Iran shot down the drone

3) The drone was ordered to crash land

4) The drone malfunctioned and crashed

Almost certainly event 3 did not happen, unless this is a totally through-the-looking-glass style mission by the CIA.

Event 2 is possible, though Iran claims that they shoot down our drones all the time, and to date they haven't produced any evidence of their ability to do so, other than this one isolated incident. Given the weight of history on this subject, it seems unlikely.

The only other explanations for what happened are events 1 and 4. Between them, which one honestly sounds more likely? This is a country that is unable to shoot down our drones with guns and missiles, what makes you think they're so capable when it comes to electronic warfare? I'm even willing to entertain the idea that it's a combination between 1 and 4 (that the Iranians could have jammed a control signal and this induced some secondary malfunction), but I'm highly reluctant to accept the idea that they could independently develop the technology to send our drones false commands.

Finally- an accelerometer is a sensor that measures acceleration. If you had one in your car you could use it to figure out how fast you were speeding up or down, or how fast you were changing directions. Inertial navigation is a navigational technique that only uses acceleration data to figure out where you are in relation to some point in the past.

A drone could use accelerometers to perform inertial navigation, but it could also use one to cross check altimeter and map readings as well. If you have a highly accurate ground radar altimeter you can detect small variations in your height above the ground. If you have an accurate map of the earth you can tell how high you should be above the ground at your current location. If your altimeter starts giving a different from expected reading from your mapping data, and your accelerometer cannot account for an inertial change that yields that difference, then your system knows that one of those readings is incorrect- either the radar altimeter, the map, or the accelerometer.

If the altimeter and the accelerometer agree, then it means your map might be faulty or that you are not where you are. If your map and the altimeter agree, it means your accelerometer might be faulty. Etc. This kind of analysis is basic systems work, and I highly doubt that the US drone engineers fail to take use of discrepancies like this.

The Jami Turman Fan Club: SuperNinjaToad: Because you can't dogfight with a UAV.

Dogfight? You mean like what they did in WWII?

When was the last time a fighter was shot down in a dogfight? 1991? I don't mean our fighters, I mean any fighter, anywhere.


Well, a very quick cursory check shows the following air-to-air engagements after 1991 with manned aircraft only that resulted in weapons being fired (the USAF scored 39 air to air kills in the Gulf War, 36 were by F-15's):

(Also, this isn't close to complete, this is just when I got tired of typing this in to show that there have been air to air dogfights after the Gulf War)

Iraq No Fly Zone:
December 27, 1992. Iraqi MiG-25 shot down by US F-16

January 17, 1993. Iraqi Su-22 fired on US F-16. Missile missed, Iraqi aircraft fled and was allowed to disengage and flee.

January 9, 1999. Four Iraqi MiG-25's engage two US F-14's and 2 F-15's. After missiles missed, Iraqi aircraft used their superior speed to flee (MiG-25's on full afterburn can exceed Mach 3. . .but destroys the engines after doing it, apparently they decided to trash their engines rather than get shot down).

September 9, 1999. US F-14 fired on Iraqi MiG-23. Missile missed, Iraqi aircraft fled and was allowed to disengage and flee.

Balkans War.
March 25, 1999. Two Yugoslav MiG-29's shot down by US F-15's
May 4, 1999. One Yugoslav MiG-29 shot down by US F-16.

Turkish/Greek Conflict (1996)
Greek government claims they shot down 1 Turkish aircraft. Turkish government denies this.

Eritrean-Ethiopian War (1998-2000)
February 25th, 1999. A flight of Ethiopian Su-27's shoot down 3 Eritrean MiG-29's
February 26th, 1999. Ethiopian Su-27's shoot down 1 Eritrean MiG-29
March 18, 1999. Ethiopian Su-27 shoots down 2 Eritrean MiG-29's
May 16, 2000. Ethiopian Su-27 shoots down 1 Eritrean MiG-29's
May 18, 2000. Ethiopian Su-27 shoots down 1 Eritrean MiG-29's

Fubini: Some tweets from the article:

Did you know that F-22 supercruise speeds are greater than Mach 1.5 without afterburners?

So does the F/A-18 Super Hornet only it does it in combat instead of on paper and for only 25% of the cost.

I never knew twitter could be so much fun.

You know that is great and all, except for it's wrong. The F-18E/F can not super cruise, period. The design of the aircraft, and the thrust of the engines prohibit it.

And then there are the "drones can do everything a manned aircraft can, only better." Anyone that claims that has no idea what drones can do in real life. Theoretically drones would weigh less, and have greater capabilities, but because (smartly I might add) that we want a man in the loop, they are severely limited by the laws of physics, namely the speed of light. The fastest response time you will get out of a UCAV via a satcam link is 1second, and that is before any encryption lag.

Line of sight comm links are used for operations that need real time interaction, like landing, and taking off. Other operations like using weapons in close proximity of rapidly moving forces are not done.

Now I do see a future where you have a single aircraft orbiting over a battlefield, and directly UCAVs attacks like an airborne combat controller. They would be able to use LOS comms to reduce the lag issues. That would allow the USAF to increase their ability to deliver munitions on an enemy dramatically, without increasing man power requirements.

Flint Ironstag: Take a F-22, replace the pilot with a RC system and a video link and have a pilot sitting in a comfy chair somewhere and that F-22 would be able to easily out maneuver a manned F-22, even if you ignore the weight saving from taking out all the pilot, the life support, ejection seat etc. All that has got to weight far more than the RC system and they already have the radio and data link stuff.

Except for all that pesky bandwidth.
Behind kinematic maneuverability, situational awareness is the most important part of an air superiority aircraft. Without a human onboard, you need to have a minimum of about 6 super-high-definition cameras sending data back to the operator station just to come anywhere close to the effectiveness of a human's eyes in the cockpit. And this is in addition to the radar data and any input from thermal sensors, plus telemetry from the vehicle itself.
Consider downloading about 6 blu-ray movies at once. That's a metric farkton of bandwidth. And you have to do this wirelessly. Over a range of hundreds of nautical miles, despite intervening terrain. Using radio spectrum that won't interfere with existing technology. With dozens of aircraft operating in the same area using up your communal bandwidth. And you have to do all this with extremely low latency and a maximum signal loss rate on the order of milliseconds per minute.

That's to say nothing of the enemy jamming signals, intercepting its output, feeding the drone bad data, or straight up hacking the datalink. Any signal can be jammed with enough transmitting power, and there is no such thing as an unhackable computer.

As for fatigue and endurance you can refuel and be on station for hours, even days, at a time with refueling. Swapping the crew would be as easy as a new guy siting down next to you and saying "I have control".

An aircraft carrier has essentially the same capability.

And politically if lost you can press the self destruct and not have to worry about losing a pilot or having him paraded on you enemy's news as a POW.
And, as others have pointed out, you now have a far greater pool of talent to chose from because you now don't have to worry about the pilot being physically fit to any standard above "average cubicle dweller". Plus now that your aircrew can live in a nice US suburb and work a nice 8 hour shift and be back with their wife, or husband of course, and children for dinner you'd get far more applicants to chose from and be able to keep them working for decades longer.

These are all reasons not to use drone vehicles to replace manned ones. To say nothing of the legal snarls this can create in the event of a war crime taking place, a "no risk" model of waging war is an unbelievably bad idea. Drones are already being used to wage secret wars without the consent of the American people, and they represent only a tiny percentage of our armed forces. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

When Lee said "It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it," he didn't know how prescient that remark would seem a century and a half later.

Flab: I agree with you that the weakest link in the current generation of fighter planes is the 150-175lbs of meat they have to carry, however, UAVs can't self-destruct, at least not in a big badaboom! way.

There was an article a while back that said some of the drones do have some method of self destruction. The article said these systems were not put on the stealth drone that was lost over Iran because they added a lot of weight.

Pure speculation, they wouldn't have to use explosives. Something attached to the sensitive systems that burns but doesn't explode could work, maybe thermite?

Antimatter: I still don't understand why we pay them to R&D somethign, then pay them to fix their problems, then pay more for the finished product.

You'd think we've do a half-now half when we get a goof, final product, and make the building pay for any fixes. The current system does nothing but encourage delays, overruns, etc.

Lockheed's contracts are primarily "Percentage of Completion" based. They get a percentage of the contract value for making their delivery milestones, contingent upon customer acceptance. In this case, the military accepted the planes, so they got paid for that part of the work.

/ Just did a detailed financial analysis of Lockheed.
// Lotta debt, one huge customer.

I always liked the F-35 better anyways.

YouPeopleAreCrazy: The Jami Turman Fan Club: When was the last time a fighter was shot down in a dogfight? 1991? I don't mean our fighters, I mean any fighter, anywhere.

Yes, 1991. The last time we fought someone with an actual, if badly trained, air force.

Fast forward to fighting someone else with an actual air force. You seem to want to fight the last (or current) war, instead of the next one.

Anyone. Anywhere. Don't just limit it to us. Find me one case of a dogfight in the last 20 years.

Futz the F-22. Build asteroid miners for James Cameron!

Antimatter: I still don't understand why we pay them to R&D somethign, then pay them to fix their problems, then pay more for the finished product.


That's because its free market capitalism at its best when Lockheed Martin gets the no bid contracts.

In a real world these frauds wouldn't get a contract for janitorial service.

The Jami Turman Fan Club: Anyone. Anywhere. Don't just limit it to us. Find me one case of a dogfight in the last 20 years.

See Silverstaff above. There have been a few.

But that does not matter What you're saying is there will never, ever be another air to air engagement, therefore we don't need to plan and build for it.

The current conflicts (Afghanistan/Libya/Iraq) do not warrant any real air to air assets. But who will the fight be between in 20 years?

YouPeopleAreCrazy: But who will the fight be between in 20 years?

The few wealthy, that defend the F-22, and their hired hands will be fighting mostly the rest of us.

Delay: The few wealthy, that defend the F-22, and their hired hands will be fighting mostly the rest of us.

Maybe, but that's a whole different argument.