What's the point of manned fighters? Why not just have variants of the RQ-180 do every role? Sure you might want the B-21 to drop nukes by a human, but that's just one small corner case.
>>64313052That's the whole reason why we're going for CCAs. A manned fighter just has much better situational awareness and survivability.
>>64313060>A manned fighter just has much better situational awareness and survivability.That's false. Manned Jets will always be easier to detect than something like the RQ-180 meaning less survivability. Situational awareness is better from a team of people on the ground utilizing a sophisticated sensor package than a single person wearing a breathing apparatus worried about his own life. The manned jet controlling the CCAs is unnecessary and introduces new vulnerabilities and failure points.
>>64313052So you are saying that a variant of the RQ-180 would do transport and SAR roles.
>>64313078I should have said combat roles. I thought that was clear when I said what is the point of MANNED FIGHTERS. Sure there are some support roles involving moving humans around where the specs of the aircraft are not critical in winning an engagement such as the ancillary roles you mentioned.
>>64313052Nobody sane trusts a drone to have the same performance as a human piloted craft, and this will likely not change for decades because current AI is still a joke when it comes to complex decision making and situational awareness (and remote links are interruptible so the AI needs to be able to do this). If AI ever gets to the point where it can rival a trained human in a messy real life scenario, only then will we see AI controlled drones begin to replace manned equivalents entirely. For now, drones are limited to roles where their upsides (cheaper than a trained human, expendable, light) are more important than their downsides (inflexible, stupid compared to a human).
>>64313085So CSAR RQ-180s.
>>64313105Who's saying they need to be controlled by AI? It can be a ground team, or an algorithm.>>64313107You can't read.
>>64313128Yes, I can. What does the C in CSAR stand for?
>>64313144Computer Sar
>>64313144Still a secondary support role. Since you can't engage with the core of my argument you must resort to semantics. This shows how correct I am that this is your only argument.
>>64313128As I said, remote links are interruptable and thus unreliable. This might be acceptable for a $500 dollar RC plane with a bomb strapped to it, but it isn't on an 80 million dollar jet aircraft that is going to turn into a fireball if it doesn't do all the right things at the right time. Drones in use now lose connection all the time, and the best they can do to handle this is either fly back to their airfield or just loiter, neither of which is acceptable for a combat aircraft that is needed on station and that might be in the middle of an engagement (which it just lost because it become lobotomized at the worst moment).As for an algorithm, that just means that this combat drone is going to be dumb as a bag of rocks, and easily confused by messy real life scenarios. Algorithmic solutions have never been reliable for anything more than following a simple path, and trusting them in combat is the height of folly.
>>64313160No. I just do not want to state my main argument which is just the way the flying wing itself is designed.
>What's the point of manned fighters?It's the same reason doctors haven't been replaced by computers and algorithms, because there needs to be at least one face to take direct responsibility and further because the human factor is just not something we can confidently remove from this particular equation.
>>64313173Missiles including ICBMs and CCAs are already controlled by algorithms, AI and remote links, so I fail to see your point.
>What is the point of manned fighters?If the connection gets cut you aren’t handing over a bajillion dollar plane with all updated specs to the enemy
>>64313216>the human factor is just not something we can confidently remove from this particular equationUntil you are forced to remove the human when your enemy outcompetes you in combat.
>>64313228Unmanned are not billion dollar machines like manned aircraft are. Missiles are already controlled by non human algorithms anyways and are susceptible to the same connection issues you're mentioning however we rely on them still for air superiority.
>>64313085Jamming and situation changes. You can't count on AI to make a judgement call in a confusion situation.
>>64313128>It can be a ground team, Runs into jammer and decapitation issues. Long range comms are easier to jam and the enemy could hit the ground team. Protecting the ground team is also a losing proposition because you need to split your fighting strength. >or an algorithm.So AI but worse?
>>64313408>>64313427Again, these limitation already exist in the missiles themselves which fighter jets deploy, yet we still use them. Also the ground team will be on another continent and will be in as much danger as the president himself.
>>64313052MrMusk supports drones that will replace good paying workers with robots. So we need more manned fighters to fight back
>>64313453>Again, these limitation already exist in the missiles themselves which fighter jets deployIt's a matter of complexity. A missile has only one mission, intercept with target. The missile rarely has to recognize the target or decide if it should engage or not. Time spent acting independently is short. Modern AI often fails to recognize a marine in a cardboard box, how do you expect it to recognize a decoy or feint? > Also the ground team will be on another continent and will be in as much danger as the president himself.Killing the US president DOES NOT stop the US Army. Fleets and armies will still fight even if the Pentagon is a radioactive crater and will do so with even more aggression and initiative. After all, who will hold officers to account? On the flipside, what's stopping an enemy from flying a FPV drone right into the Drone Control Center? Wouldn't even need to take out the whole building, the satellite antennae would be enough to paralyze whole swaths of drones or create such a bandwidth bottleneck as to cripple entire divisions.
>>64313453a drone requires a lot more signal bandwidth and strength to fly than an AIM-120 requires to have a datalink active, with far longer range and up for the entire time. this opens it up to jamming, ignoring other issues like signal interruption or latency. datalinks are extremely hard to see over other radio signals in the background
>>64314578>>64314731The RQ-180 and many other drone aircraft have been in use for a long long time already so you guys should inform the USAF of your findings lol. Also the pussy mods saged this thread because they don't like getting blown the fuck out, and just like to play glory soldier.
>>64314810i'm pretty sure the USAF is very aware of the risks of losing drones since they lost an RQ-170 over iran and aren't phasing out manned combat aircraft
What's the point of human posters? Why not just have variants of AI/indians write every thread?
>>64313052A single found vuln in the comms, some targeted jamming, or problems with an "AI" turns an unmanned fighter into a severe liability.I suggest a military so inclined as to feasibly consider true unmanned, to figure out if weather resistant/cloud penetrating tight beam satcom is a viable control point, and further figure out the coverage/cost feasibility of such if the prior condition is possible.It's never safe to unman a weapon platform. Take the pilot out, go for it. Have a pilot always able to control though.But that's just my 2 cents
>>64314810By the same virtue, you should inform the USN, US Army, and USAF that the F-35 is pointless. More importantly, we've already had a case where an RQ-170 was hacked by Iran. Since then the US has been very careful about using drones near technically capable foes. We're seeing a lot more Manned/Unmanned teaming like the Loyal Wingman drones. This solves most of the issues with remote controlled drones. Because the drones are so close to the controller it's extremely hard to jam the datalinks and because each controller only manages a half dozen drones at once the system is a lot less vulnerable to bandwidth issues and decapitation strikes. I wouldn't be surprised if the next gen fighter has a backseat drone wrangler.
>>64313052This is probably the last generation of fighters and bombers that are primarily human piloted. There will probably always be a person in the cockpit for the foreseeable future because there are circumstances where human pilots will be useful and important as judges inside the jet rather than on the ground. But it will have a lower skill ceiling than modern fighter pilots.
>>64313408Jamming is genuinely a non-issue. Just like EMPs, its a meme. If an F22 or F35 is 'jammed' the pilot is going to turn around and go back home, not power through, regardless.
>>64315463>If an F22 or F35 is 'jammed' the pilot is going to turn around and go back home, not power through, regardless.Actually, a manned aircraft is liable to just ignore comms jamming. It'll mess with command line guided missiles at longer ranges but things like course updates and voice don't need the same bitrate video and direct control do. Way easier to fit in a burst transmission and even if you lose contact with the missile it'll still continue on it's current course and speed until it picks up the target on it's own. And unlike Ukraine you can't use fiber lines to bypass jamming.
>>64313052yeah, and while we're at it let's replace every small arm with a sniper rifle, get rid of every boat that isn't an aircraft carrier, and the canteen should only ever serve steak.
>>64313052you can put a few jammers near GEO comms satellites to disable drone operations in the entire theater
>>64316003Only if they're using satellite relays. Local controllers would be fine.
