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Those are too small for a sizeable contingent of drones the size of small fighter jets. I was thinking along the lines of small aircraft carriers.
by _0ffh 6y ago
Those are too small for a sizeable contingent of drones the size of small fighter jets. I was thinking along the lines of small aircraft carriers.
- krisoft 6y agoI know you were. What makes a small fighter jet the optimal size for these drones? Or what mission do you imagine for them? And about the "sizeable contingent". The Ohio class can launch 144 Tomahawks. That is probably enough to suppress the air defences of most countries. Sorry that I'm picking on these details, it's just people have a tendency to shriek in horror about the future of autonomous weapons, as if we wouldn't be living with them already.
- _0ffh 6y agoOf course I don't know what the optimal size is. Yet, to be competitive in terms of speed, range, and payload, "small fighter jet" sounds about right to me. At least, if you want to convincingly fill most of the roles that manned aircraft fill in a conventional carrier strike group. That'd include not only things like reconnaissance and weather observation, but also air-to-air and air-to-surface missions over sea and land. So, a kind of hierarchical scheme where the carrier deploys the big drones, which close onto the target before deploying the secondary, disposable missiles/drones. You want to be able to stand off any opposition forces well away from your naval group.