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Do you really think that drones would be able to take down a F-35?

by branchan 12y ago

ceejayoz 12y ago
Anti-aircraft missiles are essentially drones.
- greedo 12y ago
  No, a drone can take off and land. Show me a SAM that can fly back to its launcher and be used at a later date.
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    That's the "essentially" part. The key bit here is "cheap counter to the F-35 you can mass-produce in the hundreds or thousands for every F-35 you'll face". Nothing says you can't have a few dozen/hundred drones with SAMs, either.
    - greedo 12y ago
      But you can't handwave away the difference without understanding how it would affect the cost of your "cheap counter to the F-35." Do you know how much an AIM-120 costs? How much it weighs? How much reinforcement the wing structure of a drone would require to carry, launch and land with this weaponry?
      - mikeyouse 12y ago
        > AIM-120 cost $300k - $400k > How much it weighs? 152 kg > How much reinforcement the wing structure of a drone would require to carry, launch and land with this weaponry? According to General Atomics; "With a 1,500 lb (680 kg) payload, its wings are 'more than sufficient' to mount larger air-to-air or air-to-surface missiles."
        greedo 12y ago
        The last quote is for the Reaper, a new version of the Predator that costs 4x as much. $16m is much cheaper than a fighter jet, but when you start deploying them in swarms of 20:1 ratios, the numbers don't work.
        ceejayoz 12y ago
        You're flailing around moving the goalposts at this point. The Predator/Reaper drones are more generalist platforms than you'd need for a disposable drone built around an air to air missile.
        branchan 12y ago
        You cannot just blindly put missiles on a drone without any radars or sensors. The current Predator platform should be how much it would cost...minimum.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    I bet we could get a cruise missile to "land" on a runway. The only catch is that it usually does this concurrently with a planned rapid disassembly.
  - baddox 12y ago
    In general, you don't want a missile to land. You want it to blow up really close to the bad guy.
  - serf 12y ago
    Well, no. Originally drones could not land. That's a modern feature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_drone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_drone
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
TeMPOraL 12y ago
It's the missiles, not planes, that kill aircrafts, and drones are much cheaper ordnance carriers.
- branchan 12y ago
  I don't think you know how drones and missiles work.
  - beachwood23 12y ago
    Ok, can you tell us then?
    - branchan 12y ago
      It is not sufficient to just be able to carry missiles in the air. Missiles only work in conjunction with the right sensor and radar systems to designate and guide it to the target. So yes, you do need both the plane (with onboard sensor/radar) and missiles in order to hope for a kill.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Can't a drone carry those sensors and radar and still be an order of magnitude cheaper than a fighter jet?
        branchan 12y ago
        Sensors and radars take more space, power and weight. So the drone will need to be bigger and more expensive and before you know, you will probably end up with something that looks and costs just like a normal jet fighter. The F-35 is $200M. The Global Hawk drone is about $50M already and that's without any weapons systems.
        FireBeyond 12y ago
        50M? As of last year, 131M
AnimalMuppet 12y ago
A hundred drones? Maybe. A hundred drones could at least take out all the airport runways, leaving it nowhere to land...
fizx 12y ago
Predator drones have enough payload to carry several AIM-120s (where to mount more than one is an open question), which is a ~40mi range fire-and-forget air-to-air missile. Whether the F-35's stealth/avoidance is good enough, I don't know. But if you had say a dozen drones patroling an area, I don't know if I'd want to take an F-35 nearby. So no, I don't think drone tech is good enough to down F-35s, but I think with sufficient zerg tactics, it could deny airspace.
- nickff 12y ago
  The Predator does not have a radar which would allow it to launch the AMRAAM at long range. The AIM-120 has a radar for terminal guidance, but it relies on the aircraft to pass target information for early flight.
  - msandford 12y ago
    Sure, but that's not the issue. That problem can be solved in a hackish fashion for a LOT less than $200mm and perhaps even in an elegant fashion for less. If every Predator gets a 100W wideband transmitter and SOME of them get instead of weapons the equipment necessary to process the reflections and do the calcs then the others can get that target information and blammo. If there are 100 Predators for every F35 in the combat zone and they ALL turn on their transmitters simultaneously at some kind of interval you're never going to know which one is carrying weapons and which one is command and control. So you can't do prioritized targeting and thus you're shooting blind. Yeah you can shoot down some of them but once you're out of missiles that's it. Do we have to worry about 3rd world countries being able to muster this kind of response? No. But there are plenty of industrialized countries that could, and they could bleed us dry one $200mm plane at a time.
    - greedo 12y ago
      Again, it's a cost issue. If you think you can build a super Predator with some type of targeting radar, and a swarm type of AI for under $10M, you're not being realistic. Current build Predators are already over $4M a copy, and even with this fantasy equipment you've described, wouldn't stand a chance against a decent human in an F-15. It's important to understand the limits of radar too; it's not like in a video game where you get this god view of the airspace around you. You are always making tradeoffs in flight about where your radar is focused, it's range, and how many targets it can track while scanning. That's why the US and it's allies rely so heavily on an AWACs system. UCAS aircraft that can drop bombs in a contested airspace are going to cost north of $50M per copy when all is said and done, and UCAS that can do A2A combat will be double that. Once you start putting high performance jet engines in drones, the costs start to rise. Same with avionics. Today's drones are very very simple aircraft compared to high performance fighters.

Do you really think that drones would be able to take down a F-35?

ceejayoz 12y ago

Anti-aircraft missiles are essentially drones.

greedo 12y ago
No, a drone can take off and land. Show me a SAM that can fly back to its launcher and be used at a later date.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  That's the "essentially" part. The key bit here is "cheap counter to the F-35 you can mass-produce in the hundreds or thousands for every F-35 you'll face". Nothing says you can't have a few dozen/hundred drones with SAMs, either.
  - greedo 12y ago
    But you can't handwave away the difference without understanding how it would affect the cost of your "cheap counter to the F-35." Do you know how much an AIM-120 costs? How much it weighs? How much reinforcement the wing structure of a drone would require to carry, launch and land with this weaponry?
    - mikeyouse 12y ago
      > AIM-120 cost $300k - $400k > How much it weighs? 152 kg > How much reinforcement the wing structure of a drone would require to carry, launch and land with this weaponry? According to General Atomics; "With a 1,500 lb (680 kg) payload, its wings are 'more than sufficient' to mount larger air-to-air or air-to-surface missiles."
      - greedo 12y ago
        The last quote is for the Reaper, a new version of the Predator that costs 4x as much. $16m is much cheaper than a fighter jet, but when you start deploying them in swarms of 20:1 ratios, the numbers don't work.
        ceejayoz 12y ago
        You're flailing around moving the goalposts at this point. The Predator/Reaper drones are more generalist platforms than you'd need for a disposable drone built around an air to air missile.
        branchan 12y ago
        You cannot just blindly put missiles on a drone without any radars or sensors. The current Predator platform should be how much it would cost...minimum.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  I bet we could get a cruise missile to "land" on a runway. The only catch is that it usually does this concurrently with a planned rapid disassembly.
- baddox 12y ago
  In general, you don't want a missile to land. You want it to blow up really close to the bad guy.
- serf 12y ago
  Well, no. Originally drones could not land. That's a modern feature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_drone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_drone
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

TeMPOraL 12y ago

It's the missiles, not planes, that kill aircrafts, and drones are much cheaper ordnance carriers.

branchan 12y ago
I don't think you know how drones and missiles work.
- beachwood23 12y ago
  Ok, can you tell us then?
  - branchan 12y ago
    It is not sufficient to just be able to carry missiles in the air. Missiles only work in conjunction with the right sensor and radar systems to designate and guide it to the target. So yes, you do need both the plane (with onboard sensor/radar) and missiles in order to hope for a kill.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Can't a drone carry those sensors and radar and still be an order of magnitude cheaper than a fighter jet?
      - branchan 12y ago
        Sensors and radars take more space, power and weight. So the drone will need to be bigger and more expensive and before you know, you will probably end up with something that looks and costs just like a normal jet fighter. The F-35 is $200M. The Global Hawk drone is about $50M already and that's without any weapons systems.
        FireBeyond 12y ago
        50M? As of last year, 131M

AnimalMuppet 12y ago

A hundred drones? Maybe. A hundred drones could at least take out all the airport runways, leaving it nowhere to land...

fizx 12y ago

Predator drones have enough payload to carry several AIM-120s (where to mount more than one is an open question), which is a ~40mi range fire-and-forget air-to-air missile. Whether the F-35's stealth/avoidance is good enough, I don't know. But if you had say a dozen drones patroling an area, I don't know if I'd want to take an F-35 nearby. So no, I don't think drone tech is good enough to down F-35s, but I think with sufficient zerg tactics, it could deny airspace.

nickff 12y ago
The Predator does not have a radar which would allow it to launch the AMRAAM at long range. The AIM-120 has a radar for terminal guidance, but it relies on the aircraft to pass target information for early flight.
- msandford 12y ago
  Sure, but that's not the issue. That problem can be solved in a hackish fashion for a LOT less than $200mm and perhaps even in an elegant fashion for less. If every Predator gets a 100W wideband transmitter and SOME of them get instead of weapons the equipment necessary to process the reflections and do the calcs then the others can get that target information and blammo. If there are 100 Predators for every F35 in the combat zone and they ALL turn on their transmitters simultaneously at some kind of interval you're never going to know which one is carrying weapons and which one is command and control. So you can't do prioritized targeting and thus you're shooting blind. Yeah you can shoot down some of them but once you're out of missiles that's it. Do we have to worry about 3rd world countries being able to muster this kind of response? No. But there are plenty of industrialized countries that could, and they could bleed us dry one $200mm plane at a time.
  - greedo 12y ago
    Again, it's a cost issue. If you think you can build a super Predator with some type of targeting radar, and a swarm type of AI for under $10M, you're not being realistic. Current build Predators are already over $4M a copy, and even with this fantasy equipment you've described, wouldn't stand a chance against a decent human in an F-15. It's important to understand the limits of radar too; it's not like in a video game where you get this god view of the airspace around you. You are always making tradeoffs in flight about where your radar is focused, it's range, and how many targets it can track while scanning. That's why the US and it's allies rely so heavily on an AWACs system. UCAS aircraft that can drop bombs in a contested airspace are going to cost north of $50M per copy when all is said and done, and UCAS that can do A2A combat will be double that. Once you start putting high performance jet engines in drones, the costs start to rise. Same with avionics. Today's drones are very very simple aircraft compared to high performance fighters.