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It strikes me that having an entire fleet of high stealth aircraft is only going to be important for... maybe the first 48 hours of any conflict. I would suspe

It strikes me that having an entire fleet of high stealth aircraft is only going to be important for... maybe the first 48 hours of any conflict. I would suspect that the very first targets in any air war would be radar installations and command and control centers. Once those are down, and air superiority is achieved, stealth doesn't even matter; you could fly B-52 bomb trucks around. Even for that opening stage of the battle, I would suspect that cruise missiles and drones would make more sense.

CharlesColeman 7y ago
>> in a war against an enemy with a strong air defense (against ever other enemy stealth doesn't make a difference anyway) exact how many of these planes can you afford to loose without ruining your air force and your economy with it? > It strikes me that having an entire fleet of high stealth aircraft is only going to be important for... maybe the first 48 hours of any conflict. It goes against the generalist, jack-of-all trades dogma; but I think the air force should have cheaper non/less-stealthy designs of equal or greater performance for almost every role occupied by a stealth plane.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  The air forces if the world are run by air combat pilots, and until that changes there will be manned aircraft and it will be a priority that killing them is difficult. So drones are a long way off in that sense, at least until we have a drone-vs-manned war where the drones win. It should also be noted that in stealth '5th gen' drone vs '4th gen' drone simulation, the stealth drones win convincingly, not because they are 'invisible' but because they can shoot first, before the other drone can get a lock. Personally I think we're more likely to see '5th gen' drone wingmen. Finally each SQNLDR will have their own squadron, albeit robotic. With short range comms are much harder to jam, but it's uncharted territory to see how the leader will guide the engagement.
ranger207 7y ago
You're right, but it's unlikely that any modern near-peer conflict will last much more than 48 hours. The war will probably be decided by then, with only mop-up operations left after that. At that point, if the losing country is nuclear it'll go ahead and use their weapons, and planes, stealthy or not, are going to be mostly useless.
openasocket 7y ago
One issue with using drones in a high threat environment is that it needs to be able to communicate with a controller. Not only can that communication be potentially jammed, it can also be used to triangulate the coordinates of the drone (and controller) which limits your ability to surprise the enemy. Then you need to consider both bandwidth and latency. Latency matters because that lag between the drone operator getting data and sending orders greatly degrades your reaction time, which can be critical in situations like air-to-air engagements. Bandwidth matters because if you have a swarm of these over enemy territory all using satellite communications you won't be able to stream high quality video feeds back to your operators. That matters a lot if you are searching for targets. I think you'd need the drones to have very high autonomy, which is tricky both technically and ethically.
- hef19898 7y ago
  You are basically describing some if the potential concepts. And in addition to all the technical points you raised in scenario like that you would need a lot of drones, not all of which would come back. Which again drives costs up. Would kind of make sense, IMHO, to have a superior, super stealthy dog fighter that can serve as a drone "mothership". Supplemented by droves of cheaper, non-stealthy specialized planes for ground attack, recon, bombing and whatever nasty fun things a future air force might dream of. Otherwise I think the next world war starts with zhe equivalent of a X-Wing and ends with the use wooden bi-planes.

CharlesColeman 7y ago

>> in a war against an enemy with a strong air defense (against ever other enemy stealth doesn't make a difference anyway) exact how many of these planes can you afford to loose without ruining your air force and your economy with it? > It strikes me that having an entire fleet of high stealth aircraft is only going to be important for... maybe the first 48 hours of any conflict. It goes against the generalist, jack-of-all trades dogma; but I think the air force should have cheaper non/less-stealthy designs of equal or greater performance for almost every role occupied by a stealth plane.

angry_octet 7y ago
The air forces if the world are run by air combat pilots, and until that changes there will be manned aircraft and it will be a priority that killing them is difficult. So drones are a long way off in that sense, at least until we have a drone-vs-manned war where the drones win. It should also be noted that in stealth '5th gen' drone vs '4th gen' drone simulation, the stealth drones win convincingly, not because they are 'invisible' but because they can shoot first, before the other drone can get a lock. Personally I think we're more likely to see '5th gen' drone wingmen. Finally each SQNLDR will have their own squadron, albeit robotic. With short range comms are much harder to jam, but it's uncharted territory to see how the leader will guide the engagement.

ranger207 7y ago

You're right, but it's unlikely that any modern near-peer conflict will last much more than 48 hours. The war will probably be decided by then, with only mop-up operations left after that. At that point, if the losing country is nuclear it'll go ahead and use their weapons, and planes, stealthy or not, are going to be mostly useless.

openasocket 7y ago

One issue with using drones in a high threat environment is that it needs to be able to communicate with a controller. Not only can that communication be potentially jammed, it can also be used to triangulate the coordinates of the drone (and controller) which limits your ability to surprise the enemy. Then you need to consider both bandwidth and latency. Latency matters because that lag between the drone operator getting data and sending orders greatly degrades your reaction time, which can be critical in situations like air-to-air engagements. Bandwidth matters because if you have a swarm of these over enemy territory all using satellite communications you won't be able to stream high quality video feeds back to your operators. That matters a lot if you are searching for targets. I think you'd need the drones to have very high autonomy, which is tricky both technically and ethically.

hef19898 7y ago
You are basically describing some if the potential concepts. And in addition to all the technical points you raised in scenario like that you would need a lot of drones, not all of which would come back. Which again drives costs up. Would kind of make sense, IMHO, to have a superior, super stealthy dog fighter that can serve as a drone "mothership". Supplemented by droves of cheaper, non-stealthy specialized planes for ground attack, recon, bombing and whatever nasty fun things a future air force might dream of. Otherwise I think the next world war starts with zhe equivalent of a X-Wing and ends with the use wooden bi-planes.