What will the Government buy if the F35 is cancelled?
Discussion
El stovey said:
Evanivitch said:
El stovey said:
At least I know if I get hijacked and intercepted by an F35B (in the U.K.) it’s going to be missiles rather than bullets heading toward the aircraft? Best make sure I subdue the hijackers (with a crash axe) before it gets to that?
Given that we didn't have a requirement for a gun of Typhoon, I think this has been the case for a while...But RAF don't use or train to use it and have never bought the ammo for it. Its effectively no more than ballast in the RAF's a/c as already mentioned.......IIRC of course.
aeropilot said:
El stovey said:
Evanivitch said:
El stovey said:
At least I know if I get hijacked and intercepted by an F35B (in the U.K.) it’s going to be missiles rather than bullets heading toward the aircraft? Best make sure I subdue the hijackers (with a crash axe) before it gets to that?
Given that we didn't have a requirement for a gun of Typhoon, I think this has been the case for a while...But RAF don't use or train to use it and have never bought the ammo for it. Its effectively no more than ballast in the RAF's a/c as already mentioned.......IIRC of course.
eharding said:
El stovey said:
Best make sure I subdue the hijackers (with a crash axe) before it gets to that?
They should make that part of the standard biannual simulator check - the examiner plays the role of the hijacker, and then the crew under assessment start hacking him about with a crash axe. I'm sure the idea has already crossed the minds more more than a few folk sweating their way through a sim check, and it would do wonders for morale. Well, not examiner morale, obviously.Evanivitch said:
Talksteer said:
That's what they tell the leadership of the air force who are all ex fast jet pilots!
In practice this is just a way to get the unmanned assets into service before that manned fighter starts heading further and further to rear, being replaced by someone on an AWACs or in a bunker back in CONUS.
In the next 10 years the DoD is going to build their own version of Starlink with low latency comms to anywhere in the world and probably a multispectral camera or SAR capability bundled in there.
The winner in near peer combat is likely to be the person who gets as many men out of the loop, the manned/unmanned teaming is very much a legacy of a world where the deadly weapons are mostly on our side and thus the greatest threat to our side is our own weapons.
At what point do you consider data links to be impervious to denial?In practice this is just a way to get the unmanned assets into service before that manned fighter starts heading further and further to rear, being replaced by someone on an AWACs or in a bunker back in CONUS.
In the next 10 years the DoD is going to build their own version of Starlink with low latency comms to anywhere in the world and probably a multispectral camera or SAR capability bundled in there.
The winner in near peer combat is likely to be the person who gets as many men out of the loop, the manned/unmanned teaming is very much a legacy of a world where the deadly weapons are mostly on our side and thus the greatest threat to our side is our own weapons.
At what point are you happy to send an unmanned aircraft on a complex mission (patrol, identify and execute autonomously) that it cannot be recalled from?
I have relatively few concerns given progress in computer vision in the last 10 years. My Tesla drives around IDing virtually everything in 360 sweep around the car, it's amazing what you can do with a big enough data set.
Given this I think the idea of a purpose built autonomous system going around attacking its own side or non combatants is exceptionally low as the system isn't going to attack anything it can't identify. It may be more likely to be fooled by enemy action in a away that a human cannot but if it is then the risk is mission success and possibly loss of vehicle. However I'd take that trade in exchange for an order of magnitude more platforms.
Talksteer said:
Evanivitch said:
Talksteer said:
That's what they tell the leadership of the air force who are all ex fast jet pilots!
In practice this is just a way to get the unmanned assets into service before that manned fighter starts heading further and further to rear, being replaced by someone on an AWACs or in a bunker back in CONUS.
In the next 10 years the DoD is going to build their own version of Starlink with low latency comms to anywhere in the world and probably a multispectral camera or SAR capability bundled in there.
The winner in near peer combat is likely to be the person who gets as many men out of the loop, the manned/unmanned teaming is very much a legacy of a world where the deadly weapons are mostly on our side and thus the greatest threat to our side is our own weapons.
At what point do you consider data links to be impervious to denial?In practice this is just a way to get the unmanned assets into service before that manned fighter starts heading further and further to rear, being replaced by someone on an AWACs or in a bunker back in CONUS.
In the next 10 years the DoD is going to build their own version of Starlink with low latency comms to anywhere in the world and probably a multispectral camera or SAR capability bundled in there.
The winner in near peer combat is likely to be the person who gets as many men out of the loop, the manned/unmanned teaming is very much a legacy of a world where the deadly weapons are mostly on our side and thus the greatest threat to our side is our own weapons.
At what point are you happy to send an unmanned aircraft on a complex mission (patrol, identify and execute autonomously) that it cannot be recalled from?
I have relatively few concerns given progress in computer vision in the last 10 years. My Tesla drives around IDing virtually everything in 360 sweep around the car, it's amazing what you can do with a big enough data set.
Given this I think the idea of a purpose built autonomous system going around attacking its own side or non combatants is exceptionally low as the system isn't going to attack anything it can't identify. It may be more likely to be fooled by enemy action in a away that a human cannot but if it is then the risk is mission success and possibly loss of vehicle. However I'd take that trade in exchange for an order of magnitude more platforms.
Your Tesla analogy is similar to an aircraft operating in air traffic. We already have that capability for autonomous aircraft, and I believe a few have been fully approved.
I also think the assumption that autonomous unmanned systems would be more numerous. There's only circa 400 MQ-1 Predators 200 Reaper made, other US Air Force types are double-digits quantities at best. And still at circa $20m per Reaper. It's cheaper, but only around the third of the price of a Gen 4 new build aircraft.
Talksteer said:
Given this I think the idea of a purpose built autonomous system going around attacking its own side or non combatants is exceptionally low as the system isn't going to attack anything it can't identify.
May have already happened.https://www.iflscience.com/technology/an-autonomou...
Evanivitch said:
Talksteer said:
Evanivitch said:
Talksteer said:
That's what they tell the leadership of the air force who are all ex fast jet pilots!
In practice this is just a way to get the unmanned assets into service before that manned fighter starts heading further and further to rear, being replaced by someone on an AWACs or in a bunker back in CONUS.
In the next 10 years the DoD is going to build their own version of Starlink with low latency comms to anywhere in the world and probably a multispectral camera or SAR capability bundled in there.
The winner in near peer combat is likely to be the person who gets as many men out of the loop, the manned/unmanned teaming is very much a legacy of a world where the deadly weapons are mostly on our side and thus the greatest threat to our side is our own weapons.
At what point do you consider data links to be impervious to denial?In practice this is just a way to get the unmanned assets into service before that manned fighter starts heading further and further to rear, being replaced by someone on an AWACs or in a bunker back in CONUS.
In the next 10 years the DoD is going to build their own version of Starlink with low latency comms to anywhere in the world and probably a multispectral camera or SAR capability bundled in there.
The winner in near peer combat is likely to be the person who gets as many men out of the loop, the manned/unmanned teaming is very much a legacy of a world where the deadly weapons are mostly on our side and thus the greatest threat to our side is our own weapons.
At what point are you happy to send an unmanned aircraft on a complex mission (patrol, identify and execute autonomously) that it cannot be recalled from?
I have relatively few concerns given progress in computer vision in the last 10 years. My Tesla drives around IDing virtually everything in 360 sweep around the car, it's amazing what you can do with a big enough data set.
Given this I think the idea of a purpose built autonomous system going around attacking its own side or non combatants is exceptionally low as the system isn't going to attack anything it can't identify. It may be more likely to be fooled by enemy action in a away that a human cannot but if it is then the risk is mission success and possibly loss of vehicle. However I'd take that trade in exchange for an order of magnitude more platforms.
Your Tesla analogy is similar to an aircraft operating in air traffic. We already have that capability for autonomous aircraft, and I believe a few have been fully approved.
I also think the assumption that autonomous unmanned systems would be more numerous. There's only circa 400 MQ-1 Predators 200 Reaper made, other US Air Force types are double-digits quantities at best. And still at circa $20m per Reaper. It's cheaper, but only around the third of the price of a Gen 4 new build aircraft.
If you require an uninterrupted livestream of HD video to effectively operate a UAV then you are pumping out a lot of RF energy and there is plenty of time for an enemy to receive the signal classify it and then decide to jam it.
If you have a UAV that is intelligent and will only report its position if it deviates from a flight plan or it spots an enemy or it needs permission to do some thing. It's messages may be only hundreds of bytes long emitted a few times in a flight. This would be exceptionally difficult to even detect never mind jam. In fact a short message at a high data rate would actually be transmitted in totality before the signal even had time to get to an enemy receiver.
Furthermore with active arrays it is likely that most RF communications will be going to highly directional beams that are again difficult to detect and exceptionally difficult to jam due to the directionality of the system.
GPS interference has been around a while, it works on relatively dumb systems but not on ones which cross reference GPS data with INS. GPS interference is also a 25 year old problem that most force planners are aware of particularly in a near peer conflict. There are plenty of workable solutions from quantum technologies in INS to simply being able to use digital image recognition to locate where you are from mapping data.
It is likely that we will move to aviation platforms being more like munitions which spend most of their life in storage, are not designed to last thousands of hours in the air and are produced at proper volumes in the thousands. Its systems like these that would be expected to have costs much lower than existing manned aircraft. A cruise missile has typical cost of around $1 million
Getting back to the eye watering through-life costs of the F-35.......the USA GAO (Govt Accountability Office) has published another damming financial report on the seemingly unaffordable (even to the USA) F-35....
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/07/07/watchdo...
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/07/07/watchdo...
Evanivitch said:
I'm not sure the ammunition is having teething problems, it almost seems like the round was fired and then the aircraft "chased it", whether that was due to flight profile or not I don't know. The gun is only a development of an existing design, the integration isn't exactly special, and HEI round doesn't appear to be significantly different (The AP being a function of a hardened tip, not a re-profiling).
It’s not a new problem is it?Didn’t a century series shoot itself down when testing the M61?
nikaiyo2 said:
Evanivitch said:
I'm not sure the ammunition is having teething problems, it almost seems like the round was fired and then the aircraft "chased it", whether that was due to flight profile or not I don't know. The gun is only a development of an existing design, the integration isn't exactly special, and HEI round doesn't appear to be significantly different (The AP being a function of a hardened tip, not a re-profiling).
It’s not a new problem is it?Didn’t a century series shoot itself down when testing the M61?
Evanivitch said:
LotusOmega375D said:
So 2 more USAF F-35A squadrons coming to the UK. Will they also be stationed at Lakenheath? Or is another airfield under consideration?
Unless they plan to increase the investment at Fairford, I'm pretty sure it'll be Lakenheath.There are no HAS at Fairford, so wont go there, and no HAS at Mildenhall either.
There are no other options.
They could have gone to Alconbury as still part USAFE there, and thus 110 electrics etc., if only they hadn't dug up the runway...!!
Should have kept Upper Heyford on care and maintainance, or Woodbridge, which is still got all its HAS, and is still MOD, but as such it has long since been converted back to 240 electrics, as was mentioned by many years ago, but short termism won the day.
Evanivitch said:
LotusOmega375D said:
So 2 more USAF F-35A squadrons coming to the UK. Will they also be stationed at Lakenheath? Or is another airfield under consideration?
Unless they plan to increase the investment at Fairford, I'm pretty sure it'll be Lakenheath.https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/19284629....
Trevatanus said:
Evanivitch said:
LotusOmega375D said:
So 2 more USAF F-35A squadrons coming to the UK. Will they also be stationed at Lakenheath? Or is another airfield under consideration?
Unless they plan to increase the investment at Fairford, I'm pretty sure it'll be Lakenheath.https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/19284629....
LotusOmega375D said:
Hard to look further than squeezing them in at Lakenheath really. What about sharing with Marham? Re-activating a former base would take forever. Imagine the local residents’ outcry.
Marham is an RAF base so all the electrics are UK 240v......... all the US bases in the UK are wired for US style 110v with US sockets and everything.OK for a couple of weeks temp detachment on exercise, but not for a full time basing, or long term deployment.
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