more from LEG, commenting on the FCAS (nEurone/Taranis)

Design a jet which has to be escorted because it’s not a fighter and you will have to design a fighter which can.
The reality is that small smart bombs are getting to the point where the payload margin difference with light AAMs is very little. Indeed, coming improvements in hunting weapons, lasers, and APS may well make ballistic or especially glide weapons ineffective.
All of which means that if you design around a weapons enclosure of say 2,000lbs overall and 6-10 weapons with rocket boost, you may be able to say:
“Okay, cruise takes everything which doesn’t move and anything which does, deserves a Helfire or better anyway…” Because the long TOFs of ballistic ordnance, when dropped at range, also remove their utility to the primary SEAD role which hunting platforms and UCAVs in particular will need to consider.
With this in mind, there is NO REASON not to look at a persistent supercruise option as platform because removal of the pilot front and the tails behind allows you to sculpt the front extension of a flying wing into a differentially ruled shock spike equivalent for a true supercruise platform.
Getting to the target area fast means that, even if there is a manned escort, you will not have to run 4-6 hours with him/her in transit. And more of your time will be spent, throttled well back, using minimum corefeed on a multicycle engine.
Persistence on the pointy end defines the purpose of UCAVs.
Because of this, I would tend to disagree that there are no eligible cores to work with since you can use ADVENT tech to bring an F124 or an F412 into the necessary power-at-altitude realms to get real 14-16,000lbf of IRT performance (without the A/B). If each end of a modern fighter is worth 5,000lbs that means your 17-20,000lb empty weight fighter can now be down around 10,000lbs and with a fuel load of 8-10,000lbs still manage a .7 T/Wr at takeoff.
No pilot and no radar means a MUCH shallower leading edge profile wihich will dramatically lower your frontal drag signature. By at least half. If you are aeros competitive with an F-104 (34,000lbs takeoff, 17,900lbf thrust) with a much higher T/Wr, you can use a Rutowski profile to burn up to the Mach point that gets you to a single tanking, just outside the fence and then go into hang mode for 10-12hrs before coming out and doing it again to come home.
People forget that a lot of fuel burn is about time. Slow and low (TSFC) doesn’t always match well to fast and high where your cruise point doubles from .75 to 1.4 Mach or so. You literally cover ground faster than you burn gas and you can do it at altitudes where the drag is even less.
In the threat area, the ability to move quickly from threats with an onboard laser to swat inbound missiles equates to long overtakes and swarm-formation ability to handle even saturation attacks as well. Obviously, if you have flights of 2-4 jets with 250KW lasers apiece, you can stack on the bright zot and get S2A/A2A kills a long ways out. Even more importantly however; no manned jet will dare bring a cockpit canopy without 20km of those weapons.
Which means your RFLO, which likely better than any tailed/radar’d/canopied airframe; doesn’t have to be /that/ good. Because most of the threats will be using network optics to track you anyway. Some of them hyperspectral.
The time for a good, subsonic, bomb truck in the manner of a robotic A-7 was the 1990s and 2000s. By 2030, both the patrol area coverage, necessary (A2AD = ROTHR + BASM carrier killer) base standoffs and the threats themselves will all demand some degree of get there quick and leave even quicker ability to fluidly engage and separate at will while tailoring fuel burns to maximize CCD on long sensor tracks a corporate knowledge base in hybrid warfare where few dare to wear uniforms.
I think the real reason that these companies are toe-dipping so cautiously is that they know that the UCAV is despised by the piloted airframe community as a direct threat to union job assurance.
Yet even that will have to take a back seat to economics, when you realize that pilot currency is very perishable and just an F-16 combat mission easily consumers 30,000lbs of gas, if it’s over 500nm radius.
There is no reality check greater than burning 6 years of automobile fuel, per sortie, per airframe and so cuts in both training gas and operational coverage will have to become major drivers.
In 2003 OIF, the SCARS were running around like the proverbial one legged men trying to find kill-box targets worthy of 20-40,000 dollars worth of munitions that were flowing through a tanker pipe, roughly every 20 minutes. To keep the ground forces covered ‘just in case’ required this constant swing of jets but a lot of expensive ordnance was dropped on questionable targets, just because the manned platforms, all dragged up with tanks and bombs, simply don’t have more than about 45 minutes to an hour off the tanker.
UCAVs can change all of this but if they do, if they are /left alone/ because manned systems can’t hold the pace, they will HAVE TO defend themselves. That doesn’t mean HITL will not still rule but ti does mean that new definitions of fight or flight will have to be considered.

You are spot on and FOI + SAAB agrees that the cheapest way to beat stealth is by drones.
What is holding back projects like this is not the arms manuacturers but politics and funding.

interesting stuff, thanks for sharing
I don’t think swing wing is a good idea, not with today’s technology (NASA is working on morphing wings I believe)
but I also don’t think speed is a must have, I’m guessing it requires a different engine and outlet, which will complicate the aircraft. and while it’s nice to have that extra speed when launching missiles, I think you can do without when you have cheap stealth

on the politics of things, yeah, I also noticed that the USAF talked quite a bit about air combat UAVs until around the time they shut down J-UCAS, ever since no one seems to even acknowledge that such a thing is possible
the industry seems to be hinting at it at best

back to the F-35, here’s a pilot talking about the new helmet
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/f-35-pilot-seems-unimpressed-with-jets-x-ray-like-visio-1717500325
I’m quite disapointed, the DAS system for one sounds rather poor, at least for spotting a target
also it seems you can’t just project a rear-view of the F-35 while looking forward, like a digital rear view mirror. that sucks
and finally he compares cockpit visibility of the F-35 with the F-16 and F-22, saying that they are designed for air superiority, while the F-35 is not

Geez, if these UCAVs are the ultimate answer then why is Russia investing in the T-50 and China in the J-20? Sorry, but “cheap” UCAVs aren’t the aerial analogues of IEDs, especially in a non-permissive environment.

why did the Allies refuse the concept of Blitzkrieg?
why did the US Army send M-16s without testing if they’d actually work in the field?
why did the USAF bet the hosue on the F-111?

you seem to be assuming that generals aren’t humans who make mistakes, and that they don’t choose weapon systems based on what consultant role they will get when they retire
UAVs have huge potential in air combat. the fact that this hasn’t even been tested says it all

Realistically, only China will have the resources to build a VLO plane at the level of the F-35; the others (including Russia) will not. And China may have the resources but so far seems not to have the capabilities. And if there is no VLO platform on “the other side” the F-35 reigns supreme. A 4.5 gen fighter will probably never get close to the F-35, making the dogfighting capabilities irrelevant.

who needs F-35 clones when you can make UCAVs?

they don’t even need to be very stealthy, if you can keep the price low enough ($15-$25 million). in a conflict the air will be full of radar jamming, so any radar effectiveness will be reduced
then you basically have an intelligent, stealthy long range flying SAM battery
spread them out over an area, and program to use passive sensors to detect enemy aircraft or ground/sea targets of opportunity
communicate via satellite or chained radio signals, almost impossible to detect, jam or intercept
equip them with medium range missiles for attack and short ranged missiles that can shoot down enemy missiles, giving them the reach to hit an F-35 or even an F-22, and making them an extremely hard target for long range AMRAAM shots

at that point the F-35 will have to chase these UCAVs, and they’ll need to fire multiple AMRAAMs to shoot just one down
by doing so they expose themselves to counter-attacks by other UCAVs or hunter-killer J-20s/T-50s that’ll use the UCAVs as bait. at a 5 UCAVs vs 1 F-35 cost rate, not counting the pilot
this also works with non-stealthy UAVs, basically long range MALDS, these can be made very cheap
against an F-22 it would be harder to pull off because it operates faster and at a higher altitude