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In the context of dogfights, why do you even need an aircraft at that point? A swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones with a kamikaze AI sounds like the end o

In the context of dogfights, why do you even need an aircraft at that point? A swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones with a kamikaze AI sounds like the end of human-piloted warplanes to me.

dragontamer 6y ago
I don't think dogfights are the future of air-to-air combat. > A swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones with a kamikaze AI sounds like the end of human-piloted warplanes to me. This already exists. We just call them surface to air missiles or air-to-air missiles. Modern air superiority combat is point-and-click. Send your air superiority fighter over, shoot a missile from beyond the sensor range of the other craft, and then blow them up. ---------- Air support fighters need guns (see A10 warthog) and other ammunition. But will we really be using guns in the future of air to air combat?
- bob33212 6y ago
  Runways, SAM Sites, Fuel Depots are hit at the same time. You gain air superiority very quickly
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    Bombarding the opponent with rockets and artillery usually wins. We've been doing that for decades. The issue is that advanced opponents (ie: Russia or China) will have air defense of their own. How do you expect to take down a SAM site? Its specifically designed to destroy air targets as they approach. With what, with air-drones? Against a hardened anti-air specialty base? This is where electronic warfare comes in handy: "jamming" the radar of a SAM site for example will blindfold them. But the battle of information (jamming, stealth, and advanced radar) is constant, there's no guarantee that your jamming or stealth technology will be good enough for the next generation of Radar. And no. You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air. US Patriot systems can take out SCUD missiles traveling at Mach 5. And if your "kamikaze drones" are flying at Mach 5 with an explosive payload, that makes them effectively a SCUD missile.
    - wins32767 6y ago
      There are reams of doctrine about how to approach a SAM site from the air. Look up Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) or Destruction of Enemy Air Defense (DEAD). Jammers (think emit a huge amount of energy on the frequency the radars use) and anti-radiation missiles (think radar homing) are a big part of it.
    - enkid 6y ago
      How many incoming bombs, cruise missiles, and other threats can a modern SAM system engage at once? According to wikipedia, a SA-20 carries 4 missiles per TEL, and each command vehicle can control up to 12 TELs. That gives the command vehicle 48 missiles to play with. There is a 0.7 chance of intercepting a "tactical ballistic missile," which is the equivalent to a SCUD, and is probably the easiest thing to intercept. If you fire two missiles at each TBM, you have about a 91% chance of intercepting each missile, meaning you only need to fire 7 TBMs at a site in order to have a fifty chance of one of the missiles making it through, if they fire two missiles at each one. In the meantime, the SAM sight has expended 14 very expensive surface to air missiles. BTW, the .7 figure is likely under favorable conditions, which most battlefields would not be, as there would be jamming, decoys, cyber attacks, and lots of other clutter. This is also for ballistic missiles. Terrain following cruise missiles and precision guided munitions would likely be more difficult to target. [1] In modern warfare, the offense still has the advantage, if you don't run out of ammunition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#S-300PMU-1/2_(SA-20) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#S-300PMU-...
    - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      > And no. You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air. This is completely mistaken. SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) is one of the most basic and important missions the air force and naval aviators train for. The US absolutely does attack SAM sites from the air, and has done so going back to the Vietnam war. In 91 Saddam had a state of the art integrated air defense system that was systematically demolished by air in the initial days of the counterattack, long before ground troops got close to say Baghdad. Google what the acronym at the bottom of the "Wild Weasel" patch means for a laugh.
- usrusr 6y ago
  > This already exists. We just call them surface to air missiles or air-to-air missiles. GP was effectively describing SAM with loitering capability and those surely don't exist yet.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    *AAM (air-to-air missile)
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    Certain anti radar missiles have a loiter capability where they deploy a parachute, looking down and waiting until their target lights up.
  - dhruvmittal 6y ago
    Not as rare as you'd think. Even Iran seems to have them. https://www.google.com/search?q=loitering+sam https://www.google.com/search?q=loitering+sam
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  > Air support fighters need guns (see A10 warthog) and other ammunition. But will we really be using guns in the future of air to air combat? That transition has already happened. In recent conflicts the US has favored precision guided munitions over gun runs, even when sending the A-10 in somewhere. The A-10 is an internet favorite, but the reality is that it's expensive and obsolete. It's honestly a travesty congress keeps throwing money at it.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Bullets are cheap. There's a reason pretty much every 3rd world air force slings gun ponds under its ground attack aircraft. No reason to spend a multi-thousand dollar bomb when 20mm will do.
    - nradov 6y ago
      That no longer works when the adversary has any sort of credible air defense. Can't risk manned aircraft at low altitude any more.
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
        OTOH, an plane with a very precised gun may "win" an encounter by circling above a well-defended area, having SAMs shot at it, shooting down the SAMs as they approach, while being cheaper to operate (and replace when it eventually does get hit) than the missiles shot at it. While at the same time occasionally dropping bombs at targets to make ignoring it not an option.
        dodobirdlord 6y ago
        The defender in this scenario has a seriously disadvantage, in that the local SAM sites can send many missiles at the same time, and the anti-missile suite of the plane has to defeat every single one. A gun that would succeed in this scenario would be a massive technological leap. The US Navy uses gun-based anti-missile setups, but they are more of a last ditch sort of defense that can defeat a small number of incoming missiles by putting an absurd amount of bullets in their way.
ThrustVectoring 6y ago
You'll want a two-stage system of some sort anyhow. There's a fundamental tradeoff between the ability to carry the fuel needed to gain height, maneuver into the correct position/heading/speed, loiter, etc, and to have the extreme power-to-weight ratio and maneuverability for a suicidal final attack run. A plane that is flying high enough and can travel fast enough is essentially immune to ground-based interception. Your launch has to spend a significant amount of time and energy just to get high enough, and launches like this are extremely loud to the defending plane's sensors. If you launch too early they can just turn around and fly out of range; too late, and they can overfly and outrun your range. Essentially, the position + velocity interception state space for smaller kamikaze designs does not necessarily include ground level & stationary for a large portion of the design space. And once you start up-scaling things to get the endurance necessary to attempt intercepts, then you lose the maneuverability and cost advantage for making kamikaze attacks, and attaching parasitic missiles or drone aircraft for the final attack run makes a ton of sense.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Please show me a swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones that can't be avoided by using radar and outdistanced/outmaneuvered. To do that you need medium to large and expensive drones.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jdmichal 6y ago
  Well, as others have mentioned, the current version is called "missiles". They require a platform to launch from.

In the context of dogfights, why do you even need an aircraft at that point? A swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones with a kamikaze AI sounds like the end of human-piloted warplanes to me.

dragontamer 6y ago

I don't think dogfights are the future of air-to-air combat. > A swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones with a kamikaze AI sounds like the end of human-piloted warplanes to me. This already exists. We just call them surface to air missiles or air-to-air missiles. Modern air superiority combat is point-and-click. Send your air superiority fighter over, shoot a missile from beyond the sensor range of the other craft, and then blow them up. ---------- Air support fighters need guns (see A10 warthog) and other ammunition. But will we really be using guns in the future of air to air combat?

bob33212 6y ago
Runways, SAM Sites, Fuel Depots are hit at the same time. You gain air superiority very quickly
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Bombarding the opponent with rockets and artillery usually wins. We've been doing that for decades. The issue is that advanced opponents (ie: Russia or China) will have air defense of their own. How do you expect to take down a SAM site? Its specifically designed to destroy air targets as they approach. With what, with air-drones? Against a hardened anti-air specialty base? This is where electronic warfare comes in handy: "jamming" the radar of a SAM site for example will blindfold them. But the battle of information (jamming, stealth, and advanced radar) is constant, there's no guarantee that your jamming or stealth technology will be good enough for the next generation of Radar. And no. You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air. US Patriot systems can take out SCUD missiles traveling at Mach 5. And if your "kamikaze drones" are flying at Mach 5 with an explosive payload, that makes them effectively a SCUD missile.
  - wins32767 6y ago
    There are reams of doctrine about how to approach a SAM site from the air. Look up Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) or Destruction of Enemy Air Defense (DEAD). Jammers (think emit a huge amount of energy on the frequency the radars use) and anti-radiation missiles (think radar homing) are a big part of it.
  - enkid 6y ago
    How many incoming bombs, cruise missiles, and other threats can a modern SAM system engage at once? According to wikipedia, a SA-20 carries 4 missiles per TEL, and each command vehicle can control up to 12 TELs. That gives the command vehicle 48 missiles to play with. There is a 0.7 chance of intercepting a "tactical ballistic missile," which is the equivalent to a SCUD, and is probably the easiest thing to intercept. If you fire two missiles at each TBM, you have about a 91% chance of intercepting each missile, meaning you only need to fire 7 TBMs at a site in order to have a fifty chance of one of the missiles making it through, if they fire two missiles at each one. In the meantime, the SAM sight has expended 14 very expensive surface to air missiles. BTW, the .7 figure is likely under favorable conditions, which most battlefields would not be, as there would be jamming, decoys, cyber attacks, and lots of other clutter. This is also for ballistic missiles. Terrain following cruise missiles and precision guided munitions would likely be more difficult to target. [1] In modern warfare, the offense still has the advantage, if you don't run out of ammunition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#S-300PMU-1/2_(SA-20) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#S-300PMU-...
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    > And no. You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air. This is completely mistaken. SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) is one of the most basic and important missions the air force and naval aviators train for. The US absolutely does attack SAM sites from the air, and has done so going back to the Vietnam war. In 91 Saddam had a state of the art integrated air defense system that was systematically demolished by air in the initial days of the counterattack, long before ground troops got close to say Baghdad. Google what the acronym at the bottom of the "Wild Weasel" patch means for a laugh.
usrusr 6y ago
> This already exists. We just call them surface to air missiles or air-to-air missiles. GP was effectively describing SAM with loitering capability and those surely don't exist yet.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  *AAM (air-to-air missile)
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Certain anti radar missiles have a loiter capability where they deploy a parachute, looking down and waiting until their target lights up.
- dhruvmittal 6y ago
  Not as rare as you'd think. Even Iran seems to have them. https://www.google.com/search?q=loitering+sam https://www.google.com/search?q=loitering+sam
jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
> Air support fighters need guns (see A10 warthog) and other ammunition. But will we really be using guns in the future of air to air combat? That transition has already happened. In recent conflicts the US has favored precision guided munitions over gun runs, even when sending the A-10 in somewhere. The A-10 is an internet favorite, but the reality is that it's expensive and obsolete. It's honestly a travesty congress keeps throwing money at it.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Bullets are cheap. There's a reason pretty much every 3rd world air force slings gun ponds under its ground attack aircraft. No reason to spend a multi-thousand dollar bomb when 20mm will do.
  - nradov 6y ago
    That no longer works when the adversary has any sort of credible air defense. Can't risk manned aircraft at low altitude any more.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      OTOH, an plane with a very precised gun may "win" an encounter by circling above a well-defended area, having SAMs shot at it, shooting down the SAMs as they approach, while being cheaper to operate (and replace when it eventually does get hit) than the missiles shot at it. While at the same time occasionally dropping bombs at targets to make ignoring it not an option.
      - dodobirdlord 6y ago
        The defender in this scenario has a seriously disadvantage, in that the local SAM sites can send many missiles at the same time, and the anti-missile suite of the plane has to defeat every single one. A gun that would succeed in this scenario would be a massive technological leap. The US Navy uses gun-based anti-missile setups, but they are more of a last ditch sort of defense that can defeat a small number of incoming missiles by putting an absurd amount of bullets in their way.

ThrustVectoring 6y ago

You'll want a two-stage system of some sort anyhow. There's a fundamental tradeoff between the ability to carry the fuel needed to gain height, maneuver into the correct position/heading/speed, loiter, etc, and to have the extreme power-to-weight ratio and maneuverability for a suicidal final attack run. A plane that is flying high enough and can travel fast enough is essentially immune to ground-based interception. Your launch has to spend a significant amount of time and energy just to get high enough, and launches like this are extremely loud to the defending plane's sensors. If you launch too early they can just turn around and fly out of range; too late, and they can overfly and outrun your range. Essentially, the position + velocity interception state space for smaller kamikaze designs does not necessarily include ground level & stationary for a large portion of the design space. And once you start up-scaling things to get the endurance necessary to attempt intercepts, then you lose the maneuverability and cost advantage for making kamikaze attacks, and attaching parasitic missiles or drone aircraft for the final attack run makes a ton of sense.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Please show me a swarm of small, cheap, explosive drones that can't be avoided by using radar and outdistanced/outmaneuvered. To do that you need medium to large and expensive drones.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jdmichal 6y ago
Well, as others have mentioned, the current version is called "missiles". They require a platform to launch from.