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Elon Musk recently made some remarks about F-35 on Twitter: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860574377013838033 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860574377013838033

by mrtksn 2y ago

Elon Musk recently made some remarks about F-35 on Twitter: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860574377013838033 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860574377013838033 It's exactly what I was thinking about: Having a pilot onboard is overhead and its a limiting factor for the flight envelope as you have to keep it alive. Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. Why just not drop any manned vehicles and go for the remote control + AI? What is the logic? Sunken cost fallacy? Military industrial complex needs it? The only thing I can think of is the political implications of downing plane with a soldier on board.

542354234235 2y ago
First, visible/invisible isn’t a dichotomic distinction, it is a spectrum. Stealth isn’t to make an aircraft “invisible” to radar, it is to reduce its radar signature, which means that radar can’t see an aircraft at all beyond a certain distance, and can make it more difficult to identify and track at closer locations. What that means is that a stealth aircraft can fly “in between” radar stations without being detected, where other aircraft couldn’t, and get closer to an adversaries location before being detected, and be more difficult/take more time to identify it as hostile and engage. That adds up to being able to strike many more of your adversary’s targets and escape without them being able to meaningfully engage you and gives you a significant advantage. It is just like regular camouflage. You cant just throw on a camo jacket and walk around Walmart and be “invisible”. But in the woods, with the right camo, and the right technique, you can move very “stealthily” and if it allows you to get in a position to kill your enemy before they can see and kill you, that is the point. Second, is an issue with AI I didn’t see anyone bring up. Related to my first point, stealth is about minimizing signatures and that that includes sending/receiving signals. Situations where an aircraft is operating in a highly contested environment means it may not be able to communicate reliably or safely and maintain stealth (they do have MADL but I am sure it can’t work 100% and maintain stealth perfectly). You would have to delegate complete shooting authority to the onboard AI. That is very difficult for many reasons, just one being accountability (who is responsible if an AI commits a war crime?).
542354234235 2y ago
>It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. Most anti aircraft radar works by sending out radar pulses and measuring the return. Visual spectrum light is scattered significantly by the atmosphere. It is a physics problem and visual range is just not as good of a medium as HF, UHF, VHF etc radar. Which there are multiple over-the-horizon radars with ranges in the hundreds of miles. And that is before we add in clouds, fog, smoke, snow, or you know, darkness, where radio waves easily penetrate. Visual detection needs far more contrast than radio wave detection. Optical detection is just not well suited. As for using sound to detect and track an object coming at you at faster than the speed of sound, I think it encapsulates this entire comment’s level of thought and insight.
JohnBooty 2y ago
Having a pilot onboard is overhead and its a limiting factor for the flight envelope as you have to keep it alive. The advantages of unmanned craft, and disadvantages of manned craft, are numerous. There are still plenty of cases where you want human pilots present. There's a lot of realtime decision making by pilots when it comes to identifying, selecting, and firing upon targets. Remotely-piloted drones rely on seamless drone-to-base communications so they can be, you know, remotely piloted. These communications can be denied by an enemy. As far as autonomous drones that can act on their own without a datalink go, let's just say I think the current SOTA in automonous anything shows it's going to be a long time until we're there. Also a few of the "obvious" advantages of unmanned craft aren't as relevant as one might think.... Drones can obviously be smaller and more manuverable than manned fighters because they don't have to carry that extra weight (pilot, ejector seat, life support, etc) and because they don't need to worry about g-force restrictions as much. However, the sort of close range high-G dogfighting maneuvering seen in movies is vanishingly rare. It's all about BVR (beyond visual range) missile launches. Additionally, attack aircraft need to carry missiles and bombs. The missiles and bombs need to be a certain size because they need to carry X kilograms of explosive, Y kilograms of fuel, and Z kilograms of guidance electronics. If you want to put 2, 4, 6, 8 of these on a drone, and give the drone itself some kind of large-enough usable flight range, guess what -- it starts approaching the size and cost of a manned fighter pretty quickly. As far as optical detection of stealth fighters goes... (deep breath) Sure, in some cases. Probably not in ways that are as useful as you hope. First, there are these things called "clouds" and "nighttime" that are going to put a damper on the visual thing, no matter how good the camera and how smart the AI. Also I want to point out the scale of modern aerial combat. Air to air missiles and surface to air missiles have ranges up to hundreds of miles. There is probably a role for some kind of sufficiently smart visual spectrum... something... as part of future sensor networks, augmenting radar. Especially in parts of the world (deserts) where you typically have clear skies. And as far as sound goes? Since Musk mentioned that too? I'm just going to point to some basic laws of physics here. Gonna be hard to hear things coming in useful amounts of time if they're going near the speed of sound, and impossible to hear them coming if they're going faster than the speed of sound. There's also some significant lag involved that you don't have with EM spectrum stuff. So even with smart enough analysis the best you're going to be able to do is sort of guess that some stealthy fighters are in an approximate area, assuming you control the ground and have a sufficient number of acoustic sensors scattered all about the place and smart enough sensors. Again, this could be part of some kind of wide-spectrum sensor network fusing lots of different data, maybe, but it's not some kind of "gotcha" that invalidates current stealth hardware.
potato3732842 2y ago
This is already the air force's tentative plan. They made several announcements (10+yr ago) when it was new about the F35 being the last manned fighter and then kinda walked that back because PR but kept pursuing it.
reisse 2y ago
> Why just not drop any manned vehicles and go for the remote control + AI? What is the logic? When the F-35 program was started in late 1980s-early 1990s, neither reliable remote control nor AI existed (I'm not even sure supersonic-reliable remote control exists now). Now, if there exists research programs utilizing unmanned fighter jets, they're likely classified and we won't know about them for quite some time.
- euler_angles 2y ago
  DARPA's Air Combat Evolution program (ACE) began with AIs fighting each other in a simulated environment in a tournament. Then the winning AI fought against a human (USAF Fighter Weapons School graduate) in that simulated environment, and won. The company that developed the winning AI, Shield AI, has gone on to deploy an AI in an actual F-16 that has flown against a human in trials. https://www.darpa.mil/program/air-combat-evolution https://www.darpa.mil/program/air-combat-evolution
  - zcw100 2y ago
    Many people underestimate the challenges of working in this environment. The DARPA challenge is like saying that boxing is the same as hand to hand combat. There are many similarities but the first has rules and parameters and the second has none. I find that people in IT tend to arrogantly proclaim things along the lines of, "I've set up a Kubernetes cluster. This can't be any more difficult." but it's more like setting up a Kubernetes cluster where you're paying someone else just like you to do everything they can to destroy it including giving them a knife and stabbing you. Then letting them loose in the datacenter.
    - euler_angles 2y ago
      I've worked with quite a few people who were part of the AI effort, and my current boss was the architect for ACE a few years ago. All of those people were painfully aware of the gap you describe here and were actively working to bridge it.
lm28469 2y ago
> Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range We didn't wait Musk to know planes weren't literally invisible or silent lmao, maybe don't take your military analysis from a man child with 0 experience in the domain. They either fly high enough that you neither hear nor see them, or low/fast enough that you're dead long before you're even aware something is coming. Also we already have unmanned aircrafts, a lot of them. Internet army experts will tell you f35 are useless because they're not invisible (duh) meanwhile in eastern Europe people are getting killed by 70+ years old tanks and other ww2 era surplus
- mrtksn 2y ago
  Musk can be many bad things, but he is also right in some things. Flying high might make it invisible for human observers but the idea is that it’s not invisible in that wavelength, therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it. Also, this is a brand new machine that is still not ready. Just write it off, liquidate any useful work that might have been done on it and go all in drones. What’s the point of insisting on a job not done when already looks obsolete?
  - lm28469 2y ago
    If a bunch of microphones and binoculars would defeat stealth fighters (or any kind of jets) don't you think someone in the US, Chinese or Russian army would have thought about it ? Just as a reminder the thing is coming at mach 1.5-2 and as soon as it can it'll send a little present coming your way at mach 2-4 > therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it. What's the probability some over worked dude who tweet 20 times an hour came up with something the US military–industrial complex hasn't thought about in the last 50 years ? Remember the early Ukraine invasion when a couple of bayraktars almost single handedly saved the country during the initial wave ? It was neither stealthy nor fast https://defence-blog.com/bayraktar-tb2-drones-saved-the-country-ukrainian-expert-says/ https://defence-blog.com/bayraktar-tb2-drones-saved-the-coun... btw his brand new idea is at least a hundred years old: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eyPsCUn0O68/V8jmQwIYR5I/AAAAAAAAK4g/R_jxLZp6Xa47n9KAVaQ2LEzv0hWWHEeKwCLcB/s1600/acoustic_locator_11.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eyPsCUn0O68/V8jmQwIYR5I/AAAAAAAAK...
wepple 2y ago
> remote control + AI? We might be getting close to advanced AI for a lot of domains, but are we ready to have one making independent decisions with bombs? I’m not a military expert but I’d much prefer having a human making decisions rather than AI for at least the next decade. I’m not sure that remote connectivity is reliable and high bandwidth enough everywhere for a drone fighter jet
- mrtksn 2y ago
  We already have drones that are making independent decisions with bombs, but that’s not the point. You can still have people in the loop, people that are not on board.
  - wepple 2y ago
    For 100% of tasks that an F35 can perform? I know we currently have this capability, but aren’t up to speed if you can rely on it everywhere and every situation.
  - lloeki 2y ago
    Arguably even before drones, missiles have some form of "AI" to autonomously make calls, e.g Tomahawk TERCOM and DSMAC (arguably navigation, but hey, for a missile navigation ends in controlled descent into terrain)
oefrha 2y ago
> it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. That’s not a gotcha you seem to believe it is, it’s like the first thing you learn about stealth technology and has been apparent to anyone following military news to any extent in the past forty plus years. That you somehow think it’s something that went unnoticed and the thousands of people working on this every day has been “pretending” after reading some Twitter posts is absurd and funny.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  Wow really? Someone else already noticed that invisible to radar isn’t invisible to eyesight and event teaching it? lots of smart people out there. I’m happy that you’re feeling smart and superior but that’s not the point, the point is signal collection and processing came a long way, and maybe low radar cross-section isn’t that big of a deal anymore. At least enough to justify spending huge sums on a plane that keeps having issue and falling short.
  - compass_copium 2y ago
    >maybe low radar cross-section isn’t that big of a deal anymore That's simply not true. There is not a peer or near-peer country that is not developing a variety of low-RCS aircraft.
    - fmajid 2y ago
      It’s not as if stealth is foolproof even to radar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown
      - Reubachi 2y ago
        This incident happened precisely because the human controller activated radar twice to get a read on ground AA targets. This is an operational/user fatigue error rather than a fault of the plane. It was completely blind to any and all AA until it turned on it's radar. Which is to say, f35 Stealth characteristics are worth their weight until exactly the moment a human turns off "lane keep assist" because "they can do it better."
compass_copium 2y ago
>Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. There have absolutely been programs to reduce the visual signatures of aircrafts. Yehudi lights, COMPASS GHOST, BoP, etc. Don't get your information on anything from Musk.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  Good point but all these things can be fitted on a drone too.
  - compass_copium 2y ago
    It's not like UCAVs aren't being developed, though. Piloted aircraft have lower latency and are better for some tasks. If UAVs were ready to replace piloted aircraft in all combat roles, they would have. They have almost completely replaced piloted aircraft in ISR, for example, where they are a great fit (no Gary Powers, no latency issues). The Pentagon doesn't want to lose trained pilots.
    - mrtksn 2y ago
      Does it justify the expense and the shortcomings though? Horses also have some advantages over tanks, like refueling from the grass on the roadside but they become mostly ceremonial anyway.
      - JohnBooty 2y ago
        It depends. In a lot of cases unmanned craft are obviously superior. But by the time you load an unmanned craft up with a powerful radar and multiple bombs and missiles - you're also not that far away from the size and expense of a manned craft. The radar is something you might not appreciate. Modern fighters have very large and powerful onboard radars and a lot of onboard processing power. They are not just bomb and missile trolleys, they are powerful sensor platforms. Think about it from another perspective. Scroll down and look at the cutaway drawing of an F-16: https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/why-lockheed-martins-f-16-remains-a-prize-fighter-50-years-after-flight-debut/156291.article https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/why-lockheed-martins-f-... ...clearly, a signficant portion of the plane is dedicated to the pilot. But honestly, not that much. Strip away the cockpit and how much smaller is the plane? 20-30% smaller and cheaper?
orwin 2y ago
Once an AI is able to land aircrafts on any airports, highway or carrier, is able to decide on an emergency landing, or on an emergency discharge an won't crash because of a faulty sensor (MCAS) or weird UFOs that trigger those sensors, i won't be opposed to AI-driven aircrafts. In the meantime, Aircraft+"Ai-driven" drone is a great idea (look up to "nEUROn" if you want an idea of a combat drone capability)
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
> It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range Sure. It's just that radar lets you see tens or hundreds of miles away, and visual doesn't. And sound lets you hear where something is only at the speed of sound, which is less useful for something that can fly faster than the speed of sound. So developing a weapons-quality track from visual and sound data is problematic. That means that, while not invisible, it's "invisible enough".

by mrtksn 2y ago

542354234235 2y ago

First, visible/invisible isn’t a dichotomic distinction, it is a spectrum. Stealth isn’t to make an aircraft “invisible” to radar, it is to reduce its radar signature, which means that radar can’t see an aircraft at all beyond a certain distance, and can make it more difficult to identify and track at closer locations. What that means is that a stealth aircraft can fly “in between” radar stations without being detected, where other aircraft couldn’t, and get closer to an adversaries location before being detected, and be more difficult/take more time to identify it as hostile and engage. That adds up to being able to strike many more of your adversary’s targets and escape without them being able to meaningfully engage you and gives you a significant advantage. It is just like regular camouflage. You cant just throw on a camo jacket and walk around Walmart and be “invisible”. But in the woods, with the right camo, and the right technique, you can move very “stealthily” and if it allows you to get in a position to kill your enemy before they can see and kill you, that is the point. Second, is an issue with AI I didn’t see anyone bring up. Related to my first point, stealth is about minimizing signatures and that that includes sending/receiving signals. Situations where an aircraft is operating in a highly contested environment means it may not be able to communicate reliably or safely and maintain stealth (they do have MADL but I am sure it can’t work 100% and maintain stealth perfectly). You would have to delegate complete shooting authority to the onboard AI. That is very difficult for many reasons, just one being accountability (who is responsible if an AI commits a war crime?).

542354234235 2y ago

>It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. Most anti aircraft radar works by sending out radar pulses and measuring the return. Visual spectrum light is scattered significantly by the atmosphere. It is a physics problem and visual range is just not as good of a medium as HF, UHF, VHF etc radar. Which there are multiple over-the-horizon radars with ranges in the hundreds of miles. And that is before we add in clouds, fog, smoke, snow, or you know, darkness, where radio waves easily penetrate. Visual detection needs far more contrast than radio wave detection. Optical detection is just not well suited. As for using sound to detect and track an object coming at you at faster than the speed of sound, I think it encapsulates this entire comment’s level of thought and insight.

JohnBooty 2y ago

Having a pilot onboard is overhead and its a limiting factor for the flight envelope as you have to keep it alive. The advantages of unmanned craft, and disadvantages of manned craft, are numerous. There are still plenty of cases where you want human pilots present. There's a lot of realtime decision making by pilots when it comes to identifying, selecting, and firing upon targets. Remotely-piloted drones rely on seamless drone-to-base communications so they can be, you know, remotely piloted. These communications can be denied by an enemy. As far as autonomous drones that can act on their own without a datalink go, let's just say I think the current SOTA in automonous anything shows it's going to be a long time until we're there. Also a few of the "obvious" advantages of unmanned craft aren't as relevant as one might think.... Drones can obviously be smaller and more manuverable than manned fighters because they don't have to carry that extra weight (pilot, ejector seat, life support, etc) and because they don't need to worry about g-force restrictions as much. However, the sort of close range high-G dogfighting maneuvering seen in movies is vanishingly rare. It's all about BVR (beyond visual range) missile launches. Additionally, attack aircraft need to carry missiles and bombs. The missiles and bombs need to be a certain size because they need to carry X kilograms of explosive, Y kilograms of fuel, and Z kilograms of guidance electronics. If you want to put 2, 4, 6, 8 of these on a drone, and give the drone itself some kind of large-enough usable flight range, guess what -- it starts approaching the size and cost of a manned fighter pretty quickly. As far as optical detection of stealth fighters goes... (deep breath) Sure, in some cases. Probably not in ways that are as useful as you hope. First, there are these things called "clouds" and "nighttime" that are going to put a damper on the visual thing, no matter how good the camera and how smart the AI. Also I want to point out the scale of modern aerial combat. Air to air missiles and surface to air missiles have ranges up to hundreds of miles. There is probably a role for some kind of sufficiently smart visual spectrum... something... as part of future sensor networks, augmenting radar. Especially in parts of the world (deserts) where you typically have clear skies. And as far as sound goes? Since Musk mentioned that too? I'm just going to point to some basic laws of physics here. Gonna be hard to hear things coming in useful amounts of time if they're going near the speed of sound, and impossible to hear them coming if they're going faster than the speed of sound. There's also some significant lag involved that you don't have with EM spectrum stuff. So even with smart enough analysis the best you're going to be able to do is sort of guess that some stealthy fighters are in an approximate area, assuming you control the ground and have a sufficient number of acoustic sensors scattered all about the place and smart enough sensors. Again, this could be part of some kind of wide-spectrum sensor network fusing lots of different data, maybe, but it's not some kind of "gotcha" that invalidates current stealth hardware.

potato3732842 2y ago

This is already the air force's tentative plan. They made several announcements (10+yr ago) when it was new about the F35 being the last manned fighter and then kinda walked that back because PR but kept pursuing it.

reisse 2y ago

> Why just not drop any manned vehicles and go for the remote control + AI? What is the logic? When the F-35 program was started in late 1980s-early 1990s, neither reliable remote control nor AI existed (I'm not even sure supersonic-reliable remote control exists now). Now, if there exists research programs utilizing unmanned fighter jets, they're likely classified and we won't know about them for quite some time.

euler_angles 2y ago
DARPA's Air Combat Evolution program (ACE) began with AIs fighting each other in a simulated environment in a tournament. Then the winning AI fought against a human (USAF Fighter Weapons School graduate) in that simulated environment, and won. The company that developed the winning AI, Shield AI, has gone on to deploy an AI in an actual F-16 that has flown against a human in trials. https://www.darpa.mil/program/air-combat-evolution https://www.darpa.mil/program/air-combat-evolution
- zcw100 2y ago
  Many people underestimate the challenges of working in this environment. The DARPA challenge is like saying that boxing is the same as hand to hand combat. There are many similarities but the first has rules and parameters and the second has none. I find that people in IT tend to arrogantly proclaim things along the lines of, "I've set up a Kubernetes cluster. This can't be any more difficult." but it's more like setting up a Kubernetes cluster where you're paying someone else just like you to do everything they can to destroy it including giving them a knife and stabbing you. Then letting them loose in the datacenter.
  - euler_angles 2y ago
    I've worked with quite a few people who were part of the AI effort, and my current boss was the architect for ACE a few years ago. All of those people were painfully aware of the gap you describe here and were actively working to bridge it.

lm28469 2y ago

> Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range We didn't wait Musk to know planes weren't literally invisible or silent lmao, maybe don't take your military analysis from a man child with 0 experience in the domain. They either fly high enough that you neither hear nor see them, or low/fast enough that you're dead long before you're even aware something is coming. Also we already have unmanned aircrafts, a lot of them. Internet army experts will tell you f35 are useless because they're not invisible (duh) meanwhile in eastern Europe people are getting killed by 70+ years old tanks and other ww2 era surplus

mrtksn 2y ago
Musk can be many bad things, but he is also right in some things. Flying high might make it invisible for human observers but the idea is that it’s not invisible in that wavelength, therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it. Also, this is a brand new machine that is still not ready. Just write it off, liquidate any useful work that might have been done on it and go all in drones. What’s the point of insisting on a job not done when already looks obsolete?
- lm28469 2y ago
  If a bunch of microphones and binoculars would defeat stealth fighters (or any kind of jets) don't you think someone in the US, Chinese or Russian army would have thought about it ? Just as a reminder the thing is coming at mach 1.5-2 and as soon as it can it'll send a little present coming your way at mach 2-4 > therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it. What's the probability some over worked dude who tweet 20 times an hour came up with something the US military–industrial complex hasn't thought about in the last 50 years ? Remember the early Ukraine invasion when a couple of bayraktars almost single handedly saved the country during the initial wave ? It was neither stealthy nor fast https://defence-blog.com/bayraktar-tb2-drones-saved-the-country-ukrainian-expert-says/ https://defence-blog.com/bayraktar-tb2-drones-saved-the-coun... btw his brand new idea is at least a hundred years old: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eyPsCUn0O68/V8jmQwIYR5I/AAAAAAAAK4g/R_jxLZp6Xa47n9KAVaQ2LEzv0hWWHEeKwCLcB/s1600/acoustic_locator_11.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eyPsCUn0O68/V8jmQwIYR5I/AAAAAAAAK...

wepple 2y ago

> remote control + AI? We might be getting close to advanced AI for a lot of domains, but are we ready to have one making independent decisions with bombs? I’m not a military expert but I’d much prefer having a human making decisions rather than AI for at least the next decade. I’m not sure that remote connectivity is reliable and high bandwidth enough everywhere for a drone fighter jet

mrtksn 2y ago
We already have drones that are making independent decisions with bombs, but that’s not the point. You can still have people in the loop, people that are not on board.
- wepple 2y ago
  For 100% of tasks that an F35 can perform? I know we currently have this capability, but aren’t up to speed if you can rely on it everywhere and every situation.
- lloeki 2y ago
  Arguably even before drones, missiles have some form of "AI" to autonomously make calls, e.g Tomahawk TERCOM and DSMAC (arguably navigation, but hey, for a missile navigation ends in controlled descent into terrain)

oefrha 2y ago

> it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. That’s not a gotcha you seem to believe it is, it’s like the first thing you learn about stealth technology and has been apparent to anyone following military news to any extent in the past forty plus years. That you somehow think it’s something that went unnoticed and the thousands of people working on this every day has been “pretending” after reading some Twitter posts is absurd and funny.

mrtksn 2y ago
Wow really? Someone else already noticed that invisible to radar isn’t invisible to eyesight and event teaching it? lots of smart people out there. I’m happy that you’re feeling smart and superior but that’s not the point, the point is signal collection and processing came a long way, and maybe low radar cross-section isn’t that big of a deal anymore. At least enough to justify spending huge sums on a plane that keeps having issue and falling short.
- compass_copium 2y ago
  >maybe low radar cross-section isn’t that big of a deal anymore That's simply not true. There is not a peer or near-peer country that is not developing a variety of low-RCS aircraft.
  - fmajid 2y ago
    It’s not as if stealth is foolproof even to radar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown
    - Reubachi 2y ago
      This incident happened precisely because the human controller activated radar twice to get a read on ground AA targets. This is an operational/user fatigue error rather than a fault of the plane. It was completely blind to any and all AA until it turned on it's radar. Which is to say, f35 Stealth characteristics are worth their weight until exactly the moment a human turns off "lane keep assist" because "they can do it better."

compass_copium 2y ago

>Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. There have absolutely been programs to reduce the visual signatures of aircrafts. Yehudi lights, COMPASS GHOST, BoP, etc. Don't get your information on anything from Musk.

mrtksn 2y ago
Good point but all these things can be fitted on a drone too.
- compass_copium 2y ago
  It's not like UCAVs aren't being developed, though. Piloted aircraft have lower latency and are better for some tasks. If UAVs were ready to replace piloted aircraft in all combat roles, they would have. They have almost completely replaced piloted aircraft in ISR, for example, where they are a great fit (no Gary Powers, no latency issues). The Pentagon doesn't want to lose trained pilots.
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    Does it justify the expense and the shortcomings though? Horses also have some advantages over tanks, like refueling from the grass on the roadside but they become mostly ceremonial anyway.
    - JohnBooty 2y ago
      It depends. In a lot of cases unmanned craft are obviously superior. But by the time you load an unmanned craft up with a powerful radar and multiple bombs and missiles - you're also not that far away from the size and expense of a manned craft. The radar is something you might not appreciate. Modern fighters have very large and powerful onboard radars and a lot of onboard processing power. They are not just bomb and missile trolleys, they are powerful sensor platforms. Think about it from another perspective. Scroll down and look at the cutaway drawing of an F-16: https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/why-lockheed-martins-f-16-remains-a-prize-fighter-50-years-after-flight-debut/156291.article https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/why-lockheed-martins-f-... ...clearly, a signficant portion of the plane is dedicated to the pilot. But honestly, not that much. Strip away the cockpit and how much smaller is the plane? 20-30% smaller and cheaper?

orwin 2y ago

Once an AI is able to land aircrafts on any airports, highway or carrier, is able to decide on an emergency landing, or on an emergency discharge an won't crash because of a faulty sensor (MCAS) or weird UFOs that trigger those sensors, i won't be opposed to AI-driven aircrafts. In the meantime, Aircraft+"Ai-driven" drone is a great idea (look up to "nEUROn" if you want an idea of a combat drone capability)

AnimalMuppet 2y ago

> It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range Sure. It's just that radar lets you see tens or hundreds of miles away, and visual doesn't. And sound lets you hear where something is only at the speed of sound, which is less useful for something that can fly faster than the speed of sound. So developing a weapons-quality track from visual and sound data is problematic. That means that, while not invisible, it's "invisible enough".