Are manned fighter jets an obsolete technology?

theprestige said:
Thanks to the Internet, anybody with a cell phone and an interest in the subject can participate in an informed discussion about whether or not manned fighter jets are obsolete. That encompasses a lot more people around the world than you might think. Lots of developing countries are skipping the PC phase, and going straight from "no computer" to "smart phone".

The Internet also allows them to contribute to an informed debate about the propriety of discussing the current and future state of the art in military technology. But they should probably start a separate thread for that...
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I hear you too. Another great post. Yes, a separate thread is correct, though I can't bare the r&p forum.
 
Personally, I think the next biggest leap isn't going to be A.I., but rather direct neural computer data connections to the human brain. We're already making great strides there. It may be that in the next ten or twenty years, warfighters of that time simply "log on" to a remote piece of machinery to do their work. And with even more luck, by then war won't be necessary at all.

... though I unfortunately know better than that. The more technology changes, the more people stay the same.
 
Mister Earl said:
Personally, I think the next biggest leap isn't going to be A.I., but rather direct neural computer data connections to the human brain. We're already making great strides there. It may be that in the next ten or twenty years, warfighters of that time simply "log on" to a remote piece of machinery to do their work. And with even more luck, by then war won't be necessary at all.

... though I unfortunately know better than that. The more technology changes, the more people stay the same.
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We pretend to be inventing weapons that will make war obsolete.
Yet, we know it never will be.
Hopefully, you can feel my frustration in this. And I will let it go at that.
 
quarky said:
I would like to think that hi-tek could go one better than smart-bombing, as per the relative damage done.
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If you know how, great, please tell us. Because I don't.

Good thing I'm not the boss of this forum. I'd allow all sorts of sex and drugs, but not what constitutes advocating violence.
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Who is advocating violence? Nobody on this thread that I've seen. Is taking a martial arts class committing violence? No. Is advocating taking a martial arts class advocating violence? No. Why then is advocating developing advanced weaponry, which has obvious usefulness in defense, equivalent to advocating violence? It's not. I don't think anyone here WANTS war. But sometimes war comes whether you want it to or not, and if it comes, I'd like to be on the winning side, thank you.

We can show off our guns here.
And we are mostly elite.
That's a bit of a problem, as per the international spirit of jref.
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Are you suggesting that if America did not have any technological advantage over our enemies, that the world would somehow be safer and more peaceful? Because I don't find such a position at all credible. And if that's not what you're suggesting, well, what is? What, exactly, is the problem? Please explain, because I'm still not seeing it.

The only thing I can understand so far is your squeemishness about talking about weapons, but that's not logical and it's not relevant to me. I don't particularly want to talk about the details of colonrectal cancer (not a logical response but I'd still have it), but I wouldn't have any objection to such a thread. The fact that the discussion might make me uncomfortable doesn't make the subject off limits. If I don't want to read about advances in treatment, then I just won't read about it, but there's no reason for me to get upset that anyone else is talking about it.
 
I'm suggesting that America invents its enemies to exploit...even if that exploitation is merely to sell weapons. I don't want to drift further off topic, and further discussion on the matter should likely be elsewhere.

yet, to me, its like a science discussion about the nuts and bolts and efficiency of the size of the hole one drills in their gas tank. We all agree that a smaller hole drilled in the gas tank is better than a huge hole.
Going the next step; not drilling the hole; is beyond the realm of science.

Though it ain't homeopathy.
 
quarky said:
I'm suggesting that America invents its enemies to exploit...even if that exploitation is merely to sell weapons. I don't want to drift further off topic, and further discussion on the matter should likely be elsewhere.

yet, to me, its like a science discussion about the nuts and bolts and efficiency of the size of the hole one drills in their gas tank. We all agree that a smaller hole drilled in the gas tank is better than a huge hole.
Going the next step; not drilling the hole; is beyond the realm of science.

Though it ain't homeopathy.
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quarky said:
I don't go there.
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Sorry.
Your post definitely is of that type and would belong there...
 
geni said:
No you build something simpler and cheaper and rely on shear weight of numbers.



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.



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.
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Exactly the case I would make, so I'll leave you to it :).
 
To act as if whether fighters "are obsolete" were even a question is silly. "Are" is the present tense. When you're talking about something maybe possibly happening some decades in the future, the tense to use is the future tense; the question is whether/when/how they "will be/become" obsolete.

(Guys who are really into computers also seem to have the same kind of problem with tenses, when the word "obsolete" gets too close to the verb...)

Ziggurat said:
Actually, at dogfight ranges, stealth planes can't rely on stealth. Radar signal will scale something like 1/r4 (from a 1/r2 intensity falloff from emitter to the target times another 1/r2 falloff from the target back to the detector).
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A nifty way to illustrate that is the fact that radar signatures are measured not in a unit of electromagnetic energy received, which would require conversions to deal with distance, but in square meters, which need no such conversions for distance because it's already intuitive to us all how things of a given size can "look smaller" (occupy less of our field of view) when they're farther away.
  • Fighters & bombers without any attempt at stealth: Various, from about 30 to over 100 m²
  • With radar reduction efforts as an addendum on a non-stealthy basic design (Lancer, Super Hornet, Typhoon, recent versions of Rafale): 1-5 m²
  • Nighthawk: 0.25 m²
  • Spirit: 0.1 m²
  • Lightning II: 0.015 m²
  • Raptor: 0.001 m²

Ziggurat said:
But that stealth won't last once you get into dogfighting range.
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Now I have to repeat a quote I just posted in another thread recently which illustrates the range-shortening effect of stealth fairly viscerally, from a pilot flying in simulated combat against Raptors:
RAAF Squadron Leader Stephen Chappell said:
The thing denies your ability to put a weapons system on it, even when I can see it through the canopy... It's the most frustrated I've ever been.
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So whatever distance he would have had to get within in order to use radar on it (which obviously can be done because no plane's signature can be zero), it's less than visual range! Two sides of a conflict having similar levels of stealth could bring back the short-range dogfight.

Ziggurat said:
And optics isn't a problem either, even at night. Stealth planes still emit heat.
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I'm not arguing with either of these sentences, but want to point out that infra-red and electro-optical sensors are two different sensors.

Ziggurat said:
The B-2 is designed to shield much of its heat signal from the ground, but it's still visible from above, and the F-22 doesn't even use the B-2's heat shielding since it would interfere with engine performance.
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B-2, F-117, and A-10 all use that trick of putting something behind & below the engine outlet to obscure the "view" of the exhaust gas from below while letting it mix with cooler air from above.The two stealth fighters don't seem to use this trick, but there are others too.

One is to put part of the fuel system adjacent to the middle and back of the engine, so some heat is transferred into the fuel instead of blowing out the back. The same heat is generated either way, but it's not all located at such a bright concentrated point right behind the exhaust nozzle; it gets spread out away from that point, so the brightness of the brightest point is reduced, making it stand out less from the background. This can be enhanced by actively circulating the fuel throughout the whole fuel tank system instead of relying on spontaneous heat transfer such as by convection. Also, I think warmer fuel is easier to ignite and thus allows flight at higher altitudes. Another infra-red obscuring trick is to surround the exhaust stream with flat surfaces instead of the old standard round nozzle. That not only is also better for radar stealth but also gives more surface area to more quickly absorb heat, drawing it away out of the exhaust gas. And the way it's implemented in Raptors, with the wide flat thrust-vectoring panels sandwiching the nozzle above and below, also flattens out the shape of the trail of gas being left behind the plane, which lets it mix with surrounding cooler air more quickly. Also, even while the exhaust gas is still inside but after ignition (so somewhere around the turbines and/or afterburners), cool outside air or even other special liquid/gaseous additives can be injected to mix with it before it gets out through the nozzle. And the nozzle and other surfaces near it (tail fins and stinger) can be coated with a heat-ablative material, which actually burns off as a vapor when exposed to heat but absorbs energy in the process, converting heat to energy of vaporization, so the temperature is actually reduced compared to a non-ablative substance that merely absorbs heat by heating up itself. (Ablative coatings need to be re-applied between missions.)
 
Delvo said:
A nifty way to illustrate that is the fact that radar signatures are measured not in a unit of electromagnetic energy received, which would require conversions to deal with distance, but in square meters, which need no such conversions for distance because it's already intuitive to us all how things of a given size can "look smaller" (occupy less of our field of view) when they're farther away.
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You're correct about the units, but I think this doesn't actually give a good intuitive picture, at least not without some further explanation. For visible light, the cross section is basically exactly what we think it is: the physical size of the object, as an area. But when we think about the distance dependence, and about objects getting smaller as they recede, we generally think in terms of full daylight illumination. And for that, the illumination falling on the surface is constant with distance, so all you have is the 1/r2 object/detector falloff. In the case of radar with the source at the detector, then the problem is more like illuminating an object in the dark with a candle. The object not only gets smaller as it recedes, but it gets fainter as well.

I'm not arguing with either of these sentences, but want to point out that infra-red and electro-optical sensors are two different sensors.
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The detectors are different, but the principles are the same. You're still using lens optics, area detectors, and passive detection to do your sensing. And both are fundamentally different than radar, which frequently requires an emitter (you can only get away without it when using someone else's emitter) and which can't use lens optics for detection. So I'm comfortable lumping infra-red and visible optics under the same category, even though you would need a separate sensor for each, because of their similarities.
 
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this has all ready happened

no modern fighter dogfights [gunfights]
it is all from self controlled air to air devices ie sidewinder
most in fire and forget mode
register the target remotely and fire way before the pilot sees anything with eyeballs

next step is manned aircraft launch a drone to close the distance to target
drone then fires sidewinder when close while manned craft stays out of range
behind a wall of drones
or just fly with/behind the drone screen

and no I can't see drones dogfighting [guns]
but that would be a fun sport !!!
 
Are manned fighter jets an obsolete technology?

No.

As noted by other posters, modern fighter technology exceeds the limitations of the human body in certain instances, but I can't see robo fighters replacing the Mk I calibrated eyeball and human hands-on control.

Drones have their uses, and for surveilance and sigint they are unmatched, but the use of same as weapons platforms has limitations - for instance cas - close air support - is best carried out by low and slow fixed or rotary wing aircraft.
 
Last bitch:

The word "defense".
Defense is less offensive than offense.
These weapons we discuss...

Is this really about defense?
When is the last time the U.S. used a weapon for defense?
 
quarky said:
When is the last time the U.S. used a weapon for defense?
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Defense of what?

We use weapons in defense of our soldiers, in defense of civilians, and in defense of allies all the time. Are these things not worth defending?
 
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