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I think that days of big expensive aircraft like modern fighters / bombers are numbered. They will likely be replaced with a swarm of drones, which are smaller,

I think that days of big expensive aircraft like modern fighters / bombers are numbered. They will likely be replaced with a swarm of drones, which are smaller, cheaper and harder to detect. For $100M (the price of just one fighter) you can field 10000 cheap drones and literally blot out the sun over the field of battle.

dodobirdlord 6y ago
Complemented, and AI-piloted, but not replaced. There are significant positive scale factors in aerodynamics. Larger jets have much better thrust to weight ratios, allowing them to move faster, travel further, maneuver better, and carry heavier and longer ranged weapons and sensor platforms. Light drones and big expensive aircraft will both exist in the future and play separate roles. They also won't interact much, aside from a fighter group spearheading a drone group. A drone swarm is too diffuse to be a worthwhile target for a fighter's weapons, but a fighter is too fast to be engaged by a drone swarm. Air battles of the future will likely be conceptually similar to air battles today, but with light drones replacing bombers with guided bombs. An initial wave of fighters will contest air superiority. If they achieve it they will use it to launch long-range attacks to disable a small number of anti-drone hard points. Once the way is clear a wave of smaller, slower drones can swarm in and bomb a large number of targets with precision.
- taneq 6y ago
  Bigger fighters definitely still have a place, but I'm not sure manned ones do. Imagine a dogfight between a manned fighter jet with a maximum G limit of 15G and an AI fighter jet with a limit of 30G - it won't even be close.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    I said AI-piloted in the first sentence.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    To add another response, (a) dogfighting is not something 5th+ gen fighters need to be good at and (b) no fighter is ever going to tolerate 30G in anything except maybe a straight line. Fighters are big and have big shear stresses and would tear apart long before then.
  - nradov 6y ago
    It isn't feasible to design an AI fighter jet with a limit of 30G. The airframe necessary to handle that strain would be way too heavy, seriously limiting the fuel load. And how would you avoid compressor stall in a 30G turn? Dogfights no longer occur anyway. What matters is early detection.
nordsieck 6y ago
> I think that days of big expensive aircraft like modern fighters / bombers are numbered. They will likely be replaced with a swarm of drones, which are smaller, cheaper and harder to detect. For $100M (the price of just one fighter) you can field 10000 cheap drones and literally blot out the sun over the field of battle. Maybe that's true of regional militaries. The US wants to be able to project power - often quite far from bases. The drones you're talking about just don't have much of a range. I'm not saying they won't be used - I'm sure they will be. But there will also be much larger and more expensive drones as well.
- jon-wood 6y ago
  I could see a hybrid approach, where a bunch of drones are loaded into a mothership, possibly a repurposed bomber with a bomb bay full of drones. That gives you local control of the swarm, and a way to deliver them over much longer range.
  - ohkaiby 6y ago
    CARRIER HAS ARRIVED
    - Alekhine 6y ago
      Headline: America switches to Protoss, rushes Fleet Beacon.
  - xnyan 6y ago
    You've pretty much described the F-35 doctrine that the US is developing. The only major difference is that an aircraft carrier or some other ship holds the drones before launch, which makes sense as the you already need the carrier to launch the flight controller craft (the F-35)
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Come on, let's be serious. What makes your idea distinct from existing weapon systems? Instead of making up new names for old things just look up what is serving the same purpose as your idea. "Drones" are just guided bombs or missiles. "Motherships" are just fighter jets or bombers.
snickell 6y ago
I suspect there will be a fairly long lasting middle step: an AI piloted "mini jet fighter". Say 4x smaller, but faster and more maneuverable by virtue of not having to protect a human pilot, and still capable of carrying existing air to air and surface to air missiles. It will sort of be an auto-piloted aircraft carrier for the missiles, which at some level are the "real aircraft" these days already. The missiles need a larger, fast and hard to shoot down vehicle to carry them into the region of combat.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 6y ago
  Anyone who plays RTS games knows this is about resources, speed of construction, how much damage the unit can project, and how much damage the opponent can absorb.
  - tmpz22 6y ago
    No it’s about the military industrial complex milking the US defense budget for all its worth.
    - ravi-delia 6y ago
      I think that ignores that these drones would be much cheaper, no? Certainly in bang:buck.
scoopertrooper 6y ago
I'm a bit skeptical. For one, how much of a modern aircraft is actually really dedicated to cockpit space, maybe 5% on a small fighter? How much extra fuel and thrust is really required to lug along a ~80 kg human (okay maybe double to account for supporting systems)? Keeping in mind a single Sidewinder missile weighs 85 kg. For a drone (even a swarm of them) to compete with a modern jet fighter, it'll need a reasonably powerful engine and sufficient fuel to keep it up in the air long enough to: seek out and engage the enemy, carry a decent payload, and reach a suitable altitude. That all sounds like a lot of fuel and engine power to me, especially if you're expecting this drone (swarm) to operate outside of the immediate vicinity of the launching area. I see more potential for drones to act as 'screen' for jet fighters once stealth technology is made irrelevant by advances in radar. I foresee the use of, low cost vehicles that resemble fighters (in the ways that count), but carry minimal ordinance (if any) to keep the costs down. They could also provide auxiliary functionality like electronic warfare and scouting. I mean you could in theory develop a drone that exploded on impact and operated within a limited area, but you've just re-invented the guided missile, with a little extra smarts.
- pixl97 6y ago
  You're asking the wrong question. Not how much space the human takes, but how much performance the plane loses because it contains meat jelly.
  - scoopertrooper 6y ago
    I'm not disputing the notion that primary fighters might one day be completely autonomous. My point is that autonomous fighters won't lead to the end of the modern jet fighters as we know them. They'll still be the big expensive machines we know and love (fear?) because most of the factors driving that trend are unrelated to whether the pilot is a human or an algorithm.
    - Kinrany 6y ago
      It seems you misunderstood GP. Their point is that machines have higher tolerances and won't just die of too many g. Unlike weight, this is not obviously irrelevant.

dodobirdlord 6y ago

Complemented, and AI-piloted, but not replaced. There are significant positive scale factors in aerodynamics. Larger jets have much better thrust to weight ratios, allowing them to move faster, travel further, maneuver better, and carry heavier and longer ranged weapons and sensor platforms. Light drones and big expensive aircraft will both exist in the future and play separate roles. They also won't interact much, aside from a fighter group spearheading a drone group. A drone swarm is too diffuse to be a worthwhile target for a fighter's weapons, but a fighter is too fast to be engaged by a drone swarm. Air battles of the future will likely be conceptually similar to air battles today, but with light drones replacing bombers with guided bombs. An initial wave of fighters will contest air superiority. If they achieve it they will use it to launch long-range attacks to disable a small number of anti-drone hard points. Once the way is clear a wave of smaller, slower drones can swarm in and bomb a large number of targets with precision.

taneq 6y ago
Bigger fighters definitely still have a place, but I'm not sure manned ones do. Imagine a dogfight between a manned fighter jet with a maximum G limit of 15G and an AI fighter jet with a limit of 30G - it won't even be close.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  I said AI-piloted in the first sentence.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  To add another response, (a) dogfighting is not something 5th+ gen fighters need to be good at and (b) no fighter is ever going to tolerate 30G in anything except maybe a straight line. Fighters are big and have big shear stresses and would tear apart long before then.
- nradov 6y ago
  It isn't feasible to design an AI fighter jet with a limit of 30G. The airframe necessary to handle that strain would be way too heavy, seriously limiting the fuel load. And how would you avoid compressor stall in a 30G turn? Dogfights no longer occur anyway. What matters is early detection.

nordsieck 6y ago

> I think that days of big expensive aircraft like modern fighters / bombers are numbered. They will likely be replaced with a swarm of drones, which are smaller, cheaper and harder to detect. For $100M (the price of just one fighter) you can field 10000 cheap drones and literally blot out the sun over the field of battle. Maybe that's true of regional militaries. The US wants to be able to project power - often quite far from bases. The drones you're talking about just don't have much of a range. I'm not saying they won't be used - I'm sure they will be. But there will also be much larger and more expensive drones as well.

jon-wood 6y ago
I could see a hybrid approach, where a bunch of drones are loaded into a mothership, possibly a repurposed bomber with a bomb bay full of drones. That gives you local control of the swarm, and a way to deliver them over much longer range.
- ohkaiby 6y ago
  CARRIER HAS ARRIVED
  - Alekhine 6y ago
    Headline: America switches to Protoss, rushes Fleet Beacon.
- xnyan 6y ago
  You've pretty much described the F-35 doctrine that the US is developing. The only major difference is that an aircraft carrier or some other ship holds the drones before launch, which makes sense as the you already need the carrier to launch the flight controller craft (the F-35)
- imtringued 6y ago
  Come on, let's be serious. What makes your idea distinct from existing weapon systems? Instead of making up new names for old things just look up what is serving the same purpose as your idea. "Drones" are just guided bombs or missiles. "Motherships" are just fighter jets or bombers.

snickell 6y ago

I suspect there will be a fairly long lasting middle step: an AI piloted "mini jet fighter". Say 4x smaller, but faster and more maneuverable by virtue of not having to protect a human pilot, and still capable of carrying existing air to air and surface to air missiles. It will sort of be an auto-piloted aircraft carrier for the missiles, which at some level are the "real aircraft" these days already. The missiles need a larger, fast and hard to shoot down vehicle to carry them into the region of combat.

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 6y ago
Anyone who plays RTS games knows this is about resources, speed of construction, how much damage the unit can project, and how much damage the opponent can absorb.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  No it’s about the military industrial complex milking the US defense budget for all its worth.
  - ravi-delia 6y ago
    I think that ignores that these drones would be much cheaper, no? Certainly in bang:buck.

scoopertrooper 6y ago

I'm a bit skeptical. For one, how much of a modern aircraft is actually really dedicated to cockpit space, maybe 5% on a small fighter? How much extra fuel and thrust is really required to lug along a ~80 kg human (okay maybe double to account for supporting systems)? Keeping in mind a single Sidewinder missile weighs 85 kg. For a drone (even a swarm of them) to compete with a modern jet fighter, it'll need a reasonably powerful engine and sufficient fuel to keep it up in the air long enough to: seek out and engage the enemy, carry a decent payload, and reach a suitable altitude. That all sounds like a lot of fuel and engine power to me, especially if you're expecting this drone (swarm) to operate outside of the immediate vicinity of the launching area. I see more potential for drones to act as 'screen' for jet fighters once stealth technology is made irrelevant by advances in radar. I foresee the use of, low cost vehicles that resemble fighters (in the ways that count), but carry minimal ordinance (if any) to keep the costs down. They could also provide auxiliary functionality like electronic warfare and scouting. I mean you could in theory develop a drone that exploded on impact and operated within a limited area, but you've just re-invented the guided missile, with a little extra smarts.

pixl97 6y ago
You're asking the wrong question. Not how much space the human takes, but how much performance the plane loses because it contains meat jelly.
- scoopertrooper 6y ago
  I'm not disputing the notion that primary fighters might one day be completely autonomous. My point is that autonomous fighters won't lead to the end of the modern jet fighters as we know them. They'll still be the big expensive machines we know and love (fear?) because most of the factors driving that trend are unrelated to whether the pilot is a human or an algorithm.
  - Kinrany 6y ago
    It seems you misunderstood GP. Their point is that machines have higher tolerances and won't just die of too many g. Unlike weight, this is not obviously irrelevant.