Are manned fighter jets an obsolete technology?

[Puppycow]

High costs, malfunctions plague F-22 Raptor fighter jets

The fleet of 158 F-22 planes — costing $412 million each — has never entered combat and has been grounded since May 3 because of a government safety investigation. The probe follows more than a dozen incidents in which oxygen was cut off to pilots, a problem suspected of contributing to at least one fatal accident.

Compared to that, a predator drone costs about 1/100th the price and doesn't need any system to supply oxygen to the pilot, or an ejection seat, or any of that jazz. If it crashes, no one dies.

I don't think that fighter planes are completely obsolete, but like battleships before WW 2, they are not as important as they used to be, and much less cost-effective. They have reached a point of rapidly diminishing returns on investment.

The next logical step for drones would be those with an air superiority mission, which can go up against manned fighters. Perhaps existing fighters could be modified to be flown remotely as a first step in this direction. A number of existing life-support systems such as the oxygen and ejection seats could be removed to make room for any new equipment that might be needed.

 

[Bikewer]

Right now, the flight "envelope" for advanced fighter aircraft essentially exceeds human capability; the aircraft can manuever at G-forces which even the best equipment can't cope with.
I can certainly see where ground-controlled high-performance aircraft might well supplant manned fighters (and other battlefield aircraft) in the future.
As our ability to image the entire battlefield with advanced sattelite and reconnaisance aircraft grows, and as the ability for the ground-controlling pilot to access such information increases...
I don't think we're there yet, but there's an awful lot of research being done in this area.

At some point, autonomous "brilliant' weapons may be fielded.

 

[Lowpro]

To be fair a predator drone is nothing compared to a F-22 in terms of utility but then we haven't been doing much dogfighting. That remains to be seen for the future (Korea or China) but for now the Predator Drone is supreme for the Middle East.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Except for the fact that they can be disabled by a few $50 microwave ovens.

 

[Ziggurat]

Compared to that, a predator drone costs about 1/100th the price and doesn't need any system to supply oxygen to the pilot, or an ejection seat, or any of that jazz. If it crashes, no one dies.

We have no unmanned vehicles which can perform air-to-air combat. That role seems obsolete precisely because we're so dominant, so our enemies almost never engage us in air-to-air combat. But if we were to give up that massive superiority, or even if we were to find ourselves in a war with a major power (like China), air-to-air combat would be important again. So manned fighters are not obsolete, and there's no danger of them becoming obsolete until we have unmanned fighter planes. And as I mentioned before, we have no such planes.

The next logical step for drones would be those with an air superiority mission

That will come, eventually. But it's not here yet. And I'm not sure it will remove manned fighters anyways. It's conflicts with major powers where air superiority matters, and if we find ourselves in such a conflict, we need to worry about electronic countermeasures. Can an unmanned air superiority drone engage in combat without remote control? Because such a capability might be necessary if the enemy can interrupt communications signals. I think we're a long ways away from having that capability. A manned aircraft certainly can still fight without communications. So my guess is that we'll have a mix of manned and unmanned air superiority planes for some time.

Perhaps existing fighters could be modified to be flown remotely as a first step in this direction. A number of existing life-support systems such as the oxygen and ejection seats could be removed to make room for any new equipment that might be needed.

You could do that, but given the option to engineer the plane from the ground up without the need for any of that, it's a poor second choice. I'm not even sure it's that big a money saver. The electronics have to be engineered either way, the engines and stealth coating (major parts of the F-22) could be reused in a completely new airframe - making a specialized airframe to begin with might be worth the extra cost, which might be a minority of the total cost.

 

[quarky]

One of the problems with drones is how easily (and inevitably) various so-called enemies will also exploit them.

Even a simple rc plane could be serious trouble in the hands of a relatively poor enemy.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

Layman question.
I see this was brought up above too... given that these aircraft are remotely operated, aren't they succeptible to electronic warfare? Shouldn't it be relatively simple to cut off the radio contact with the plane? Or even hack the plane to wrestle control of it from its owners back home? Or is this harder than it sounds?

 

[excaza]

Layman question.
I see this was brought up above too... given that these aircraft are remotely operated, aren't they succeptible to electronic warfare? Shouldn't it be relatively simple to cut off the radio contact with the plane? Or even hack the plane to wrestle control of it from its owners back home? Or is this harder than it sounds?

Is it a simple problem? No. At least, hopefully not (yes, it's just the video feed, but still embarrassing).

Is it impossible? Certainly not. It's obviously an important issue, as the craft now has to have enough programming to handle itself in the event that it loses communication with the specified ground station, which you don't need if you've got a pilot sitting in the thing.

Personally, I agree with Ziggurat's assessment that the near future will use a mix of manned and unmanned air superiority aircraft.

 

[Ziggurat]

Layman question.
I see this was brought up above too... given that these aircraft are remotely operated, aren't they succeptible to electronic warfare? Shouldn't it be relatively simple to cut off the radio contact with the plane? Or even hack the plane to wrestle control of it from its owners back home? Or is this harder than it sounds?

In order to hack into the plane, you would need to defeat some heavy-duty military encryption. Perhaps not impossible, but very difficult. Unless you've had spies that planted a backdoor into the system, you probably won't have a chance..

Jamming the signal is easier, but still quite non-trivial. Military communications usually use frequency hopping, which means that you can't simply broadcast on the same frequency and drown out the signal, because the relevant frequency keeps changing. And transmitting across the whole spectrum at sufficient power to drown out the signal is very difficult (it requires orders of magnitude more transmission power than for single spectrum). It can be done, but it takes considerable sophistication.

 

[TjW]

High costs, malfunctions plague F-22 Raptor fighter jets



Compared to that, a predator drone costs about 1/100th the price and doesn't need any system to supply oxygen to the pilot, or an ejection seat, or any of that jazz. If it crashes, no one dies.

Unless, of course, it crashes into a civilian aircraft.

 

[Hellbound]

Layman question.
I see this was brought up above too... given that these aircraft are remotely operated, aren't they succeptible to electronic warfare? Shouldn't it be relatively simple to cut off the radio contact with the plane? Or even hack the plane to wrestle control of it from its owners back home? Or is this harder than it sounds?

Jamming would be easier than hacking, and a lot would depend ont he specifics. But let's assume a system with a well-designed remote interface, using radio (or whatever) as a link. It has an encrypted command channel, protected by single-use 256-bit identification/encryption key pairs loaded into the vehicle and the command station before each mission.

Now, the enemy will know nothing until they identify that the drone is coming. With good stealth systems and a proper route, that means at best only minutes before the bombs start falling. With long range missile systems, the drone itself may never even enter engagement range. But let's assume the nemy has spies watching the airfield, and gets notified as soon as the drone lifts off and they verify it's direction of travel.

Now, we're talking about (generally) a few hours of time for a mission, say two hours out and two hours back. The two hours back you aren't really worried about by that time the drone has completed it's mission. BUt still, we'll include it.

So, the person hacking has, at best, about 4 hours to identify the frequency of the command (and that assumes it isn't on a hundreds of changes per second frequency hop, which almost all military commo is), match frequency, and jam that frequency (which usually takes more power at the reception point than the station sending orders). Not to mention that it's fairly easy to program a "cruise missile" type GPS course if control is lost (i.e., return to base or go to a specific nav point and circle). If you want control, then within this window you also have to break the encryption, immitate the control station key (or convince the drone you have), identify the command protocol structure, determien the output formatting and protocol, and issue your commands.

Basically, unless there's a huge flaw in the design, or unless someone has access to the inside details, I don't think it's likely. Even breaking a strong encryption is going to take a lot longer than that, and if the designers are halfway intelligent and use single-use encryption key pairs generated at mission time, the encryption is going to have to be broken every time.

 

[CNY_Dave]

In order to hack into the plane, you would need to defeat some heavy-duty military encryption. Perhaps not impossible, but very difficult. Unless you've had spies that planted a backdoor into the system, you probably won't have a chance..

Jamming the signal is easier, but still quite non-trivial. Military communications usually use frequency hopping, which means that you can't simply broadcast on the same frequency and drown out the signal, because the relevant frequency keeps changing. And transmitting across the whole spectrum at sufficient power to drown out the signal is very difficult (it requires orders of magnitude more transmission power than for single spectrum). It can be done, but it takes considerable sophistication.

The dirty little secret in the industry is that the C2 systems are nowhere near this level of sophistication.

They are aiming to get there, but a lot of the heavy work in achieving it remains to be done.

Most of the over-the-horizon links use vanilla satellite transponders leased from commercial operations. Of course the fact the dish on the plane is pointed up into the air aids 'security'.

Dave

 

[Trakar]

There will be a lot of roles for remotes and manned systems with decreasing overlap, for the foreseeable future. Autonomous systems will begin to have a role (expanding into the future) in the near-mid term future.

 

[RussDill]

In order to hack into the plane, you would need to defeat some heavy-duty military encryption. Perhaps not impossible, but very difficult. Unless you've had spies that planted a backdoor into the system, you probably won't have a chance..

Jamming the signal is easier, but still quite non-trivial. Military communications usually use frequency hopping, which means that you can't simply broadcast on the same frequency and drown out the signal, because the relevant frequency keeps changing. And transmitting across the whole spectrum at sufficient power to drown out the signal is very difficult (it requires orders of magnitude more transmission power than for single spectrum). It can be done, but it takes considerable sophistication.

Which makes a nice landing light for a JDAM

 

[TX50]

The next logical step for drones would be those with an air superiority mission, which can go up against manned fighters.

The technical capability to build an autonomous robot fighter aircraft has existed since at least the early 1990s. On 20th Feb 1991 an F15B demonstrated an integrated fire and flight control system that could autonomously engage and counter air-to-air threats. The project was terminated soon after due to ¨budget constraints¨.

 

[Bill Thompson]

yes.
so are manned tanks
and manned soldiers.

 

[roger]

So, the thesis is that an F22 is so incredibly complex that it is grounded and too expensive, so we'll just add in the complexity of unmanned and that'll make it simpler and cheaper?

Uh, no.

I work in this (more on the ground systems side). It's very complicated, and we have a long way to go. Which is not to say there has been some very real successes with unmanned drones for specific missions.

We engineers that are working on this are not idiots. It would be a company transformer to come up with something cheap and reliable that could replace a modern jet fighter with a drone. No one has done that. Current drones work very will in specific missions, and over time drones will be created that can perform different missions, and that are more capable and thus handle a wider variety of missions. But we aren't there yet. The military is not being stupid when they endlessly use fighter jets in combat, as they are now currently doing.

 

[geni]

We have no unmanned vehicles which can perform air-to-air combat.

False. The MQ-1 Predator can and has fired AIM-92 Stinger missiles against enemy combat aircraft. It failed to shot down the aircraft in question but technology has moved forward since that time.

 

[geni]

So, the person hacking has, at best, about 4 hours to identify the frequency of the command (and that assumes it isn't on a hundreds of changes per second frequency hop, which almost all military commo is), match frequency, and jam that frequency (which usually takes more power at the reception point than the station sending orders).

Or you locate the signal source and use some equiverlent of rader targeting munitions.

Not to mention that it's fairly easy to program a "cruise missile" type GPS course if control is lost (i.e., return to base or go to a specific nav point and circle).

And thats where it gets even more interesting.

 

[geni]

So, the thesis is that an F22 is so incredibly complex that it is grounded and too expensive, so we'll just add in the complexity of unmanned and that'll make it simpler and cheaper?

Uh, no.

No you build something simpler and cheaper and rely on shear weight of numbers.

I work in this (more on the ground systems side). It's very complicated, and we have a long way to go. Which is not to say there has been some very real successes with unmanned drones for specific missions.

We engineers that are working on this are not idiots. It would be a company transformer to come up with something cheap and reliable that could replace a modern jet fighter with a drone. No one has done that.

That assumes you would actualy want to. The modern jet fighter model assumes that it is possible to achieve air superiority. If people can throw up enough cheap short take off drones that model becomes questionable.

Current drones work very will in specific missions, and over time drones will be created that can perform different missions, and that are more capable and thus handle a wider variety of missions. But we aren't there yet. The military is not being stupid when they endlessly use fighter jets in combat, as they are now currently doing.

The US however can just about afford fighter jets and already has them in the inventory. Its going to be the countries that can't really afford them that have a motive to push the limits on drones.