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SpaceX’s founder tells US Air Force the era of fighter jets is ending
Elon Musk also shared some thoughts on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
www.defensenews.com
Elon Musk tells the USAF the era of fighter jets is over.
- Thread starter Forerunner
- Start date
www.defensenews.com
Well yeah, it's hard to think of a reason why it wouldn't be. The last time a fighter jet faced another fighter jet was in 1999.
Edit: I'm wrong, this is now outdated, apparently one took place last year between India and Pakistan
www.nytimes.com
Still though, point still stands, the vast majority of aircraft shot down or involved in combat in recent decades have been entirely drone aircraft.
Edit: I'm wrong, this is now outdated, apparently one took place last year between India and Pakistan
After India Loses Dogfight to Pakistan, Questions Arise About Its ‘Vintage’ Military (Published 2019)
As America strengthens its alliance with India to help counter China, critics say its military faces serious challenges, from the age of its hardware to the size of its budget.
Still though, point still stands, the vast majority of aircraft shot down or involved in combat in recent decades have been entirely drone aircraft.
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Actually I just looked it up and that information is now outdated, a dogfight between india and pakistan took place early last year. Interesting, hard to say who "won" at a glace though, seems to have misinformation on what happened from both parties.
To answer your original question though, the 1999 dogfight was during the Balkan war, 5 MIG-29's of the yugoslav's air force were shot down by NATO fighters.
Latency and a lack of situational awareness renders a drone fighter at a severe disadvantage against a human pilot. Modern drone technology is noway near close enough to be able to perform dogfights and split second decisions.
Multiple times over the past two decades Fighter Jets have shot down drowns with little difficulty. They can't react fast enough.
Multiple times over the past two decades Fighter Jets have shot down drowns with little difficulty. They can't react fast enough.
Well I hope our skynet is better than their skynet.....and that all the skynets don't realize they can work together and take over :|
Suppose the US went to war with some nameless hypothetical other superpower with a roughly equivalent military force tomorrow. We want to drone strike one of their bases. How do they defend? Do anti-aircraft drones exist? SAMs or other ground-based weapons? Would a fighter jet be able to shoot down the drone, or is that impractical for some reason?
I mean yeah a jet fighter would smoke a modern drone easily, but drones are a lot cheaper.
Yes to all three. A UAV is vulnerable to all the same things a regular plane is, on top of that it needs confirmation that it can engage an attacker and its control signal can be jammed. The upside to a drone is that it's cheaper, simpler and more disposable because it doesn't need to carry a pilot. That's why a lot of the future planning involves small numbers of manned jets operating alongside larger numbers of drones.
Easily. Iran shot down multiple US drones last year, including a $130 million "global hawk" drone.
Edit: $130 million actually, my mistake.
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What latency? The drone is autonomous and can perform with the impact of Gs. Also doesn’t need a cockpit. Can train for thousands of hours in a day or so.
was at a conference with a lot of these manufacturers and the “joke” was when do they stop becoming manufacturers and are PMCs themselves with AI and robotics coming to play. Yes drones will be there but there’s room for jets. As they see it they have two products single service - Leaves and doesn’t return (like missiles) and products that return (like jets). Drones fit both categories but aren’t a replacement solution but more of an augment. At least that’s how governments and manufacturers see it. (Of course some companies have a third sector of “space stuff”)
Thanks to the “products as a service” model and the digital twin manufacturing processes there’s been a lot of change in the industry. While jets will remain, and the orders are backlogged for all manufacturers, the need for a pilot with all skills As traditionally demanded will reduce. They are more of a failsafe.
Thanks to the “products as a service” model and the digital twin manufacturing processes there’s been a lot of change in the industry. While jets will remain, and the orders are backlogged for all manufacturers, the need for a pilot with all skills As traditionally demanded will reduce. They are more of a failsafe.
He's completely wrong.
Drones are useless in contested airspace.
He is mainly talking about the future. But the fighter jet era can still be over even if they would win in a dog fight.
Global Hawk drones are autonomous because they have incredibly simple pre-programmed mission instructions that consistent of "go here" and "drop bomb when", the operator simply updates it. They can't do more complicated but basic things like taking off and landing, let alone a dogfight.
Its not over though. And no drone that currently exists can match them.
I thought the whole point of drones that that they're meant to be cheap?
$130 million isn't damn cheap!
Global Hawk's aren't "stealth". It may have a small radar cross section, but all drones have a small radar cross section by nature of them being.. smaller.. compared to conventional aircraft.
The Global Hawk is a platform designed to vacuum up as much information as physically possible while flying above international airspace or uncontested skies. It doesn't even have provisions for chaff or flares, and is fundamentally meant for operations where people aren't shooting. Beyond that the design incorporates literally zero RCS reducing features into the design. The cost is almost completely attributable to the optic suite on board. Kinda unfair to write it off in that regard.
On topic, once you introduce even basic jamming into the mix you get a glorified reaper drone that is only good for following waypoints. The amount of information that a fighter pilot needs to process, and the level of cognition, creativity, and adaptability to manage said information is far and beyond what a drone can muster.
I mean look at the difficulties with self driving cars. This is a much less demanding task than attempting to fly in contested airspace, and we're decades away from legitimate level 5 autonomy. The future is loyal wingman concepts, with fighter pilots in the backlines managing fleets of cheaper expendable drones from the air.
Despite what most people believe, fighter planes are most likely to be the last manned aircraft to take to the skies.
People said the same thing when Guided Anti-Aircraft Missiles started becoming common place, obviously that didn't happen.
This is really indicative of nothing. Global Hawks are purpose-built high-altitude ISR aircraft. They are valued for their long endurance and advanced sensor suites, not their combat capabilities.
Boeing, BAE and NG are all heavily invested into building combat drones at the present (e.g. BAE's Taranis), which are slated to perform in similar capacities to the F-35.
Regardless of whether we invest heavily in drones (which we are and will), future warfare will have very little to do with the Top Gun-esque dogfighting which critics of the F-35 keep going on and on about.
Yeah, I meant spy, not stealth. I edited it.
Alright then. Reaper drone in 2002 shot down by an Iraqi MIG-25. Both fired missiles at each other. The MIG dodged. The Reaper didn't.
If we're speaking about drones remote-controlled by a operator on the ground, sure. But eventually, drones will have an autonomous combat mode where reaction speed and information processing will be that of a machine, aka near instantaneous. In theory, with a good enough camera and CPU, a drone could adjust to a enemy fighter's movement just be observing the movement of the flaps and directionnal thrusters right as it happens.
Not that it matters all that much, since combat nowadays is about who fire a missile first, and in that aspect, drones are advantaged due to their smaller size making them more stealthy (smalled radar signature, and smaller heat signature due to having less mass to propell forward).
The Reaper and Global Hawk are extremely closely related with the former basically being an ISR HALE drone jury-rigged with hunter-killer capabilities and the latter being an upsized version with no weaponry. These aircraft are not built for air-to-air engagements.
Well that's sort of aircraft the person I was responding to was asking about, so...
I think the distinction between a jet and a drone is pretty weak anyway but current drones are not designed as fighters. They're cheapo disposable things designed to fight low tech opponents and fall apart the moment they encounter serious resistance. And given how long airplanes tend to remain in service I don't think we'll see the end of manned fighters for decades.
Improving laser weapons are probably the biggest candidates for ending the era of fighters but even then it'll be many years before every military in the world is fully equipped with those.
The problem is that people thought that before. "Who needs a gun on a plane when you got missiles that can hit from beyond visible range?" So they designed planes without built-in guns. Turned out that dogfights happen anyway and those planes had to be fitted with gun pods to be viable. So it's understandable that people are wary of claims that NOW we don't need dogfight capabilities anymore. In fact if future drone fighter jets are even more maneuverable than today's fighter jets I'd expect them to be even harder to hit with missiles and even more likely to get into close range.
Improving laser weapons are probably the biggest candidates for ending the era of fighters but even then it'll be many years before every military in the world is fully equipped with those.
There's a couple of things here. First, the narratives surrounding the F-35's budget and dogfighting capabilities are subject to vast amounts of media manipulation by Lockheed's competitors. The USN/USAF may have had issues in the past with building aircraft with over-the-horizon kill capabilities but these same issues don't apply to the F-35. It is more than capable of achieving absurd kill ratios without coming within a million miles of a competing air superiority fighter.
Second, DARPA and its international equivalents along with the major defence contractors are pouring ludicrous amounts of money into sensor tech for both maritime and airborne warfare - to the point where the tech is improving leaps and bounds year-on-year. At the same time, stealth tech on over-the-horizon weapons platforms like the block IV F-35 is incredibly advanced.
Basically, you're looking at aircraft capable of detecting airborne threats at three times the range of its competitors with a radar cross-section smaller than a golf ball.
So what happens when two planes like that fight each other? When can they actually get a radar lock on the other?