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Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
- markdown 7mo ago> Airbus selling ai-operated strike drones. FTFY
- RobRivera 7mo agoNo you didnt
- layla5alive 7mo agoCylons
- maximinus_thrax 7mo agoGood! Great to hear! EU needs to grow its domestic military industry, the French were right all along.
- tomasphan 7mo agoThey are reprogramming a US built drone to the German datalink equivalent with some AI sprinkled on top. Unfortunately far away from a real industry.
- bluegatty 7mo agoThat's how it was always done. Nobody invented the whole thing from scratch.
- maximinus_thrax 7mo agoSome other country started by _stealing_ US tech and now they arguably have a higher military tech throughput. Everyone has to start somewhere..
- busterarm 7mo agoThe EU already has the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 10th largest share of global arms exports. Losing the 8th place slot due to Brexit.
- maximinus_thrax 7mo agoAkshually it's the the 2nd (France), 5th (Germany), 6th (Italy), and 9th (Spain) spots. But that's a bad argument, say.. a way of lying with statistics, considering the 1st place has 43% of the market share AND that exporting arms is not very relevant when the topic du jour is military build-up. The muscovites for example export 7.8% of the market share but that's not that relevant considering they're using the lion's share of military industrial output to terrorize Ukrainians.
- bigfudge 7mo agoIt is relevant because having an industrial base and know how makes it much easier to scale up. Hopefully that’s what will now happen. Also, let’s see how the 43% holds up when European and gulf states do their next round of procurement.
- chairmansteve 7mo agoYes, arguably imports are more important than exports... It's about what you have rather than what you have sold to others...
- sourcegrift 7mo agoThere's a funny term some cool kids use for them, "drone", I think? Personally I think it's too short to convey the full utility.
- Mistletoe 7mo ago"Begun, the Clone War has." -Yoda
- bluegatty 7mo agoThey are already on in Ukraine.
- colechristensen 7mo agoThe worry being that war will be a lot easier to stomach when none of the combatants are alive.
- dlt713705 7mo agoBut a robot war is an endless war. There will always be more robots to fight until the economy is completely exhausted.
- borski 7mo agoNot necessarily. If the factories that build the robots are taken out, for example. Someone (even a robot) still has to build them.
- dlt713705 7mo agoWhat if the factories are located in foreign countries and the belligerents are only buying off-the-shelf products ? Wars are always bad news and robot wars are very bad news. Many countries will fall into an endless war economy.
- adrianN 7mo agoIt turned out to be pretty hard to take out Germany’s factories in ww2.
- borski 7mo agoOf course it did. War is hard, and lots of people die in it. The parent comment said always. I am saying that always is not true. I made no suggestions it was easy.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- icegreentea2 7mo agoThere are multiple interesting developments wrapped together here. First, these are intended to be "loyal wingman". They'll be commanded (but not really remotely controlled) from manned fighters nearbyish. Presumably, the "shoot authorization" will be delegated down to the pilots. Secondly, the actual unmanned platform (the Kratos Valkyrie) is also part of a program of record for the USMC (US Marine Corps) to act as a partner SEAD (suppression of air defence) vehicle. Thirdly, the "MARS" system chattered about looks to be Airbus' open architecture /system of systems pitch that they were developing for FCAS (the European 6th generation fighter program). MARS and all pitches like it are about ways to make individual platforms as software defined as possible, and to get different platforms/instances to really data/function share as much as possible. If this program goes well, it shows that Airbus' MARS has the flexibility and capability required to just... layer into/ontop of some random other vendor's hardware/software and then "just work". I think it would be major demonstration/validation of the work.
- dmix 7mo agoWhy do I get the feeling that the market shifted beneath their feet to drones and these old aircraft companies are using "loyal wingman" to make a half-hearted half-way play between old/new products to stay relevant, which just buys them time to keep selling expensive jets... until pure drone upstarts start eating their lunch. Like when Blackberry tried to make BlackBerry Storm after iPhone and Blockbuster tried to make Blockbuster Online after Netflix. Technology shifts rarely wait for these stodgy middle ground transitionary products to find a market.
- icegreentea2 7mo agoRoughly everyone expects the 6th generation fighters (the ones currently in development like F-47) to be the last manned generation. Most observers expect many/most 6th gen fighters to become optionally manned within their life span. The real question is basically - is full autonomy both technically possible and culturally/politically acceptable within 5, 10, or 20 years? Because full autonomy isn't really ready now (or else we wouldn't need hundreds to thousands of drone operators in the Ukraine war). And at least the USAF doesn't think remote control will let them do what they need (which is to fly from Japan to Korea or Taiwan, or Philippines to Taiwan, and contest/control the skies in the face of a basically peer adversary). Because no one knows that answer, everyone (governments, militaries, manufacturers) is hedging, and CCA is part of that hedge.
- unangst 7mo agoA modern V-2. Nothing could possibly go wrong!
- chaostheory 7mo agoYeah, I believe Kratos (who is doing this joint venture with Airbus) and AeroVironment are the current leaders in the space. Not sure what happens when Anduril goes public
- icegreentea2 7mo agoI think the USA has ~3ish airframes/systems that are roughly in this category: * The Kratos Valkyrie with the USMC in a SEAD role * Anduril (YFQ-44) and General Atomics (YFQ-42) are battling it out for the USAF's CCA Increment 1 contract (we're apparently supposed to get a decision on that this year) - with Increment 2 probably getting spun up pretty soon * USN has the Boeing MQ-25 as an drone tanker... once that gets up the speed, I'm fairly certain it's going to morph into something strike capable Elsewhere, Boeing Australia's Ghost Bat seems to be doing well as well.
- chaostheory 7mo agoDoes general atomics have plans on spinning off and going public?
- dom96 7mo agoIs this the EU's version of the Shahed drones? or is it something different?
- icegreentea2 7mo agoIt's completely different. Shaheds are low cost one way attack drones. They're basically just very cost efficient cruise missiles with fresh marketing (and to be fair, the cost efficiency is a true categorical difference). These drones are "helpers" for fighter jets. It's a type of role that is still in development (no one has an operational collaborative combat aircraft as far as I understand), both technically and in concept. But the basic idea is that you'll have drones that can somewhat keep up with your fighter jets and help it do stuff that might be too risky. Maybe fly ahead, or be the one with the active emissions or sensors or whatever. Or maybe it's just a way to increase the amount of ordnance/sensors you can fly per sortie / generate from a given amount of training/flight hours in a year.
- lloeki 7mo agoSomehow closest concept I imagine is shmup pods. https://shmup.fandom.com/wiki/Pod https://shmup.fandom.com/wiki/Pod
- twalichiewicz 7mo agoThis seems to be the generally agreed upon direction defense companies are going, but a couple architectural concerns come to mind regarding this "Manned-Unmanned-Teaming" approach: - Even if the XQ-58 has a low radar cross section, a swarm of four drones flying in formation with a non-stealthy Eurofighter significantly increases the aggregate probability of detection. Unless these drones are performing active electronic countermeasures or "blinking" to spoof radar returns, they’re essentially a giant "here we are" sign for any modern radar. I wonder if they've compensated via the flight software to manage formation geometry to minimize the group's total observable signature? - Anti-air systems will prioritize the command aircraft (the Eurofighter) immediately. If the C2 link is severed (kinetic kill, high-power jamming) what is the state-machine logic for the subordinates? Do they revert to a fail-passive (return to base) or -active (continue last assigned strike) mode? Without a human-in-the-loop, rules of engagement issues are abound. (I'm not even accounting for the fact that the drones probably rely on calculations from the command craft, so edge-computing will factor in as well.) - They're calling these "attritable," but at $4M a pop plus the cost of the sensors, they aren't exactly disposable. Is the cost-per-kill for an adversary’s interceptor missile actually higher than the cost of the drone it's hitting?
- blobcode 7mo ago(1) Aircraft rarely fly in anything close to formation in combat - large gaps are the norm (1-10 miles), and one would think that increased distance is something that could be exploited by an unmanned platform (able to take more risk, etc.) (2) Remains to be seen. (3) Individual Patriot missiles are around that price point, with S300/S400 anywhere from 500k-2M depending on capability. One would think that cost-per-kill would be favorable considering the increased capability granted.
- twalichiewicz 7mo agoAt 10-mile intervals you're maintaining a high-bandwidth, low-latency mesh network in a contested electronic environment. If the command aircraft is 10 miles away and the enemy is jamming the link, the drone is going to be making split-second (potentially) lethal decisions without the pilot. You're right about them both costing about the same, so the real leverage only comes if these drones can stay out of the engagement envelope while sending cheaper submunitions (likely using something like these Ragnaroks (~$150k) https://www.kratosdefense.com/newsroom/kratos-unveils-revolutionary-low-cost-cruise-missile-system-ragnarok https://www.kratosdefense.com/newsroom/kratos-unveils-revolu...) to do the actual baiting.
- d_silin 7mo agoIn terms of military technology we now have aerial and naval drones clearly outperforming previous generation of ships and aircraft in "bang for buck". Land warfare is next on the list: https://time.com/article/2026/03/09/ai-robots-soldiers-war/ https://time.com/article/2026/03/09/ai-robots-soldiers-war/
- girvo 7mo agoAirbus' Ghost Bat equivalent?
- emregucerr 7mo agoDid they pick the word "uncrewed" to not use the word "unmanned"? If so, I'm not hopeful. Might be another EuroDrone disaster.
- xp84 7mo agoEven the absence of a person could potentially become offended, I suppose.
- booleandilemma 7mo agoBetter than unpersoned I guess?
- hnipps 7mo ago> MARS also contains an AI-supported software brain called MindShare which not only replaces the missing pilot, but is also capable of coordinating entire mission groups by being distributed across many manned and uncrewed platforms. So this is Skynet v0.1?
- rlarah 7mo agoLet's see how this turns out. The hyped Anduril "cheap" anti-drone tech didn't work in Ukraine and evidently does not work in the Middle East. I have more trust in Airbus than the PayPal mafia though.
- bpodgursky 7mo agoWhether or not Anduril's cheap solution delivered, cheap anti-drone tech does work in Ukraine, interceptor drones are quite effective against Shahed-style drones.
- jnaina 7mo ago"uncrewed combat aircraft"? it is basically an autonomous drone that is trained to act like a wingman. Just a natural evolution of where military drones are heading.
- ipeev 7mo agoI misread “uncrewed” as “unscrewed” and for a moment this became a much stranger, better aerospace story. Not autonomous aircraft, but aircraft apparently liberated from screws. A future of pilotless aircraft is plausible enough; a future of screwless aircraft is much weirder.
- Gravityloss 7mo agoNot as weird as one might think, fasteners produce local loads and require holes, so designing without them would be much better. It has been a goal for decades but progress is slow! Maybe uncrewed vehicles can be iterated on more rapidly.
- alephnerd 7mo ago> a future of screwless aircraft is much weirder This is actually an important part of what makes a stealth airframe "stealthy", along with other stuff.
- dotancohen 7mo agoMuch of the aircraft is rivets, not screws. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/6312/why-are-airplanes-riveted-and-not-screwed https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/6312/why-are-ai... "Airplanes are riveted, not screwed because they are the product of engineers, not lawyers."
- flowerthoughts 7mo agoWouldn't uncrewed aircraft, and (hypersonic) missiles merge technologies and become the same at some point? Why are we engineering the two separately? Are missiles by definition exploding themselves rather than releasing payloads? (I'm pretty sure Musk could make them reusable. /s)
- axus 7mo agoAs a software engineer who thinks that qualifies me to answer other engineering questions, I think it's too hard to mount payloads external to missiles, but normal for aircraft.
- anshumankmr 7mo agoTop Gun Maverick was kinda right.
- jonplackett 7mo agoDoes this just continue the ‘western way’ of spending a crap load of money on each military item, instead of getting good at making A LOT of something really cheaply? Ukraine and Iran are both showing it quickly becomes a war of attrition and fancy weapons get very expensive very fast, or run out very fast.
- MrBuddyCasino 7mo agoSure seems so. They should just clone the latest Russian improved Geran and call it a day, but oc they won’t.
- tim333 7mo agoThe thing in the article, a modified Vlakyrie is very different to a Geran suicide drone. It's more an uncrewed mini F-35 https://www.twz.com/air/xq-58-valkyrie-heading-to-european-market-with-kratos-airbus-team-up https://www.twz.com/air/xq-58-valkyrie-heading-to-european-m...
- konart 7mo agoYeah, more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_S-70_Okhotnik-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_S-70_Okhotnik-B
- tonfa 7mo ago> instead of getting good at making A LOT of something really cheaply? also you'd want to maximize dual usage (civil/military) of components so that your production capacity can be easily switched back and forth more on demand. (Otherwise you just end up a stockpile of obsolete drones/weapons)
- bgnn 7mo agoInstead of this we have anti dual-use policies, especially in semiconductor. Any chip a fab produces need hefty paper work to prove it cannot be used for military. This is due to the military-industrial complex lobby. They don't want cheap competition.
- CrzyLngPwd 7mo agoSimilar to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_S-70_Okhotnik-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_S-70_Okhotnik-B
- JSR_FDED 7mo agoUkraine and Iran are showing us that scrappy low-cost and improvised drones are the future. The asymmetry with slow procurement, long-term and very expensive delivery is so stark that I feel Europe (Ukraine excluded) and the US have no good answer here.
- simonh 7mo agoCheap systems are certainly a game changer, but I don't think they completely deprecate high performance, high end systems like this. Cheap drones by definition lack powerful long range sensor suites and associated power systems, because such a package would mean they'd no longer be cheap. They have limited range, are slower, and are less able to react dynamically to a changing combat situation. I can see a system like this acting as the sensor and control node for a flight of cheaper drones. We've had cruise missiles for many decades now, and they're drastically more capable than cheap drones, but they didn't deprecate manned fighters. Something like this might.
- radialstub 7mo agoThese small proxy wars are irrelevant. Scrappy drones are only used because that is all these small countries can produce. For superpowers, the goal isn't to stockpile mediocre equipment; it is to develop intellectual capabilities. During wartime, manufacturing can then be rapidly ramped up. You cannot invent and develop advanced tech overnight, but you can rapidly scale production. Also fighter jets are capable of doing so much more than fpv drones, its actually funny that people think drones are the future.
- JSR_FDED 7mo agoI’m not saying scrappy drones are the key to victory in all circumstances. But look at Iran - their air defenses and navy are destroyed. Yet they can inflict massive damage on their neighbors with drones within 10 minutes flight distance, making them hard to stop. By doing so they’re keeping the price of oil high and are able to put economic pressure on the US completely disproportionate to their military capabilities. So even though drones are not the full solution, without an answer to them you can’t win either.
- metalman 7mo agoby "combat aircraft" they of course mean weapons platforms suitable for "pasivising" brown skinned agricultural communities and pastoralists, who are beligerantly living on top of extractable resources.
- stotemoat 7mo agoVery very evil,if we remove the human cost of war our politicians will have no qualms about going to war. Ah well it's just another day in techno hell.
- redgridtactical 7mo ago[flagged]