Note:
China is already using proxy to keep the west busy. North Korea, for example, and Talibans themselves. It is higly probable (to say the leasyt) that China sells weaponry to the talibans across the border, to the same extent as Iran does resupply them, if not on even wider scale. Of course, no one will ever admit it publicly, but this is another matter.

off topic, but China aiding the Taliban seems logical, considering China’s interests, geographic location and strong connection with both Iran and Pakistan

but I’ve rarely seen this suggested in the media, contrary to say Iran. it certainly would be hard to prove, the way the CIA used Israeli mad weapons to arm the Taliban against the USSR. it would certainly be ironic if the US empire were to be defeated by the same country as the USSR

Note:
As for drones:
– Stealth might not be needed now, but if the talibans were to get their hands again on a new stock of Stinger or Strela manpads, you’d see Reapers going down quite quickly, too damn often.
And try to use current drones against an enemy with an air-defence system even as relatively simple as Rapier would be a disaster.
Arguably, the need to make the platform more survivable and more silent and less to spot will make them both better scouts and more survivable and durable investments. The “Buy cheaper, buy more” approach is more than questionable, besides, because you can expect the ministry and the treasury to step in and say “SO MANY????”, and the number would actually be scaled down again and again to require less personnel, less mainteinance, less ground support, less basing, less everything.

– UAVs, and Reaper, are not very reliable yet. A lot of UAVs are lost every year for engine failures and other troubles. (the USAF lost more UAVs for engine failure than for any other cause, and even the RAF has already lost at least one MQ-9 to engine failure over Afghanistan.
If there’s a smart thing on Mantis, is having TWO engines.

As to the use of a catapult system on a small ship, Converteam and UK mod already trialed a small cat for the launch of drones of up to 450 kg (Watchkeeper, in other words). Problem is, more than launching it, recovering it. It should be a drone capable to land on the water and the ship would then recover it with a crane like old hydroplanes.
If this was feasible, the Type 26 might have a catapult facing backwards, from the door of the UAV hangar to the end of the flight deck, that being (likely) Chinook sized would mean a pretty long cat with the capacity to launch quite performant drones.
It is the recovery that needs to be tackled…

That, and costs.

– on Taliban using SAMs: if China and Iran do give them weapons, than I’m extremely surprised that they’ve not used these already. but if they would, it’s not so much the UAVs I’m worried about, as the helicopters: more expensive, harder to replace, full of soldiers or valuable equipment, and much easier to detect than a UAV

but this does stress my point that the west should put more effort into devising an anti-SAM weapon, say a small calibre missile like the 70mm. having the advantage of height and low cost detection systems, it should be easy enough for any aircraft to know a SAM, or an AAM. and the Navy certainly has proven the concept with their RAM system

either way, I believe there is still plenty of room for cheap, non-stealthy UAV systems. and if they do design a succesful anti-missile system, their effectiveness would only increase

and on quantity: if fewer systems are needed and thus bought, that would be kind of a good thing, leaving more money for say helicopters and ships. at any rate it’s better than having aircraft carriers and no aircraft to fly off them

Note:
– UAVs, and Reaper, are not very reliable yet. A lot of UAVs are lost every year for engine failures and other troubles. (the USAF lost more UAVs for engine failure than for any other cause, and even the RAF has already lost at least one MQ-9 to engine failure over Afghanistan.
If there’s a smart thing on Mantis, is having TWO engines.

As to the use of a catapult system on a small ship, Converteam and UK mod already trialed a small cat for the launch of drones of up to 450 kg (Watchkeeper, in other words). Problem is, more than launching it, recovering it. It should be a drone capable to land on the water and the ship would then recover it with a crane like old hydroplanes.
If this was feasible, the Type 26 might have a catapult facing backwards, from the door of the UAV hangar to the end of the flight deck, that being (likely) Chinook sized would mean a pretty long cat with the capacity to launch quite performant drones.
It is the recovery that needs to be tackled…

That, and costs.

– on low UAV reliability, this has as much to do with producer and user experience as with the aircraft itself. for example the USAF insisting to fly their Predators and Reapers manually all the time, which results in more accidents than if a computer does a lot of the flying. or the specific situation in Afghanistan requiring deicing equipment, these are things that are hard to predict. if the US military had put more effort into UAVs sooner, they might have known this earlier, thus losing less aircraft

and this is also why I think a push/pull engine on a tailsitter UAV would make for succesful design: less risk of total engine failure (take that F-35), while eliminating the torque problem

– on the catapult, I figure the best would be for a ship to have a landing pad + hangar + catapult. that way aircraft can land, go into the hangar, and than be launched in the other direction, for a one-way system. but inlikely because it would require new ships (although I’m also a big fan of the idea of converting tankers)

on the design:
– a lot of times stealth and high performance are not needed, as opponents are low-tech insurgents. as technology becomes cheaper and better, insurgent tactics become more dominating. peer opponents have long used proxies to fight their wars for them: the US/USSR did it, Iran does it, China will do it too one day. especially in today’s climate of interational economic interdependence a state like China cannot afford out-right war with the US, its most important trade partner
– stealth is also expensive, which increases the value of the aircraft, increasing the need for quality, increasing the price further, and so forth. it is a choice between quality and quantity, and quantity is a advantage UAVs can give the losses-averse west
– for these reasons I would suggest going for a cheap, prop driven design, rather than an expensive turbo fan stealth design. having an F-35 is nice, but very often a Predator can do the job just as well, but at a fraction of the price. and rather than looking at stealth the military should invest more into anti-missile defence systems, like using 70 mm guided missiles
– for the actual design, I would suggest a tailsitter model, similar to the 50s Pogo or the modern day V-Bat UAV. Potentially you could just take a V-22 engine and put some wings on it! a two-engined pusher+puller design would also be interesting, negating the torque problem and linking the propellers would mean that one engine can keep the aircraft airborne and even land it vertically
– as for a high performance stealth UCAV, I would suggest a unmanned stealth version of the Harrier, which would look a lot like the X-32
– another option is something akin to a missile: a long, thin body with long swing wings and a prop engine. this would give a light design that can easily be launched by catapult or rocket, and will be very useful for long endurance missions

on the small ship launch concept:
– this is an excellent idea, as every small ship now can have its own air defence/ground and sea attack/patrol/recon aircraft, a huge advantage
– a launch catapult system would seriously improve the performance of any design
– making weapons smaller will also greatly help this concept: SDBs, 70 mm guided missiles, and I hope one day a grenade launcher system, all of which would work great against ships, infantry/insurgents, as well as buildings and (heavy) vehicles

to continue the discussion:

Originally Posted by SpudmanWP
“Sorry, I should have said “UCAVs are decades away from replacing ALL manned missions

There are four things keeping UCAVs from doing this.
1. A well developed AI
2. Bandwidth
…”

No is not.

Bandwidth will help yu to manage more UAVs at once, but all your UAVs will suffer from info delaying , no matter how much bandwidth you stuff in your satellites…

in this case we are assuming satellite connections will be used. for example having an F-35, an AWACS, a ground station or a ship within short range will both solve the problem of bandwith (we know the F-35 for one is designed to offer high, unjammable bandwith) and lag

but I stick to my point that even today’s computers are capable of outmanouvering manned aircraft, if only because they can turn much sharper and have better stealth, a 360 degree unwavering vision (like the F-35) and constant awareness of their own and enemy location, something no human pilot can hope to compete with

combined with instant human guidance, this will combine human intellect with robotic manouverability, speed and stealth, at a low cost

UCAVs will never replace Air superiority aircraft.
And why should the Air Force Pilot be cocooned when the people in the Army and Navy are not, risk is part and parcel of a career in armed forces and people are aware of the risks.

yes, and by the year 3000 dogs will rule the world

army UAV programs: MQ-8B, Grey Eagle, Shadow, Raven, a little thing called a UGV
navy UAV programs: MQ-8B, UUV, USV, UCAS-D, Global Hawk
SOCOM: YQ-18 and whatever else they might have
USAF: Predator, Reaper, RQ-170, Global Hawk

by my count, the USAF actually has less effort going into unmanned programs. but than they generally suffer less losses

I don’t mean to be rude, but if you looked at the related topics on UAVs then you’d see that most people here already know the basics of the pro’s/con’s of a fighter UCAV, so there’s little point repeating them for us, especially common sense ones. You’ve also missed out a few of the cons.

I stated that UAVs are life savers, you asked me why, I answered. feel free to start a new topic; at least you’ll agree that UAVs save both money and lives?

and on those pro’s/con’s, repetition is the basis of any fact, say something often enough and it becomes the truth. unless someone disagrees, that would be me 😉 don’t tell me you believe everything they say on tv?

As for a pilots life, all of the forces lives are equal, and so rather than wasting untold zillions trying to make a fighter UCAV before the time is ready for them, we should invest the money into saving soldiers lives. Strike aircraft pilots lives are under much greater threat than fighter pilots, so any investment into remote/autonomous UAS is made it should be soley for strike aircraft.

lol, you do realize they’re “wasting untold zillions” on stuff like the F-35 and the LCS? 🙂 and on the FCS if it hadn’t been killed, because tanks and artillery are going to defeat the Taliban 😉
like you say, the best way to fight insurgents is information. and the best way to get information is with UAVs, the same UAVs that the USAF and the USN thought were a waste of money up to 2001, so now soldiers are dying because there are not enough UAVs to give all squads cover, and manned aircraft are way to expensive in this role

to borrow quadbike’s powers of future telling: some day US pilots will die in A2A combat, and people will wonder why they never developed A2A UCAVs?

There are four things keeping UCAVs from doing this.

1. A well developed AI
2. Bandwidth
3. Bandwidth
4. Bandwidth

In case you missed it, bandwidth is also important.

Seriously though, a A2A UCAV would need total 360 SA in order to replace a pilot’s Mk1 Eyeball. That means that a large radar and an EODAS like series of sensors. Bandwidth comes into play because all that data has to be sent in real-time back to the controller. Now multiply that by all the UCAVs worldwide and you start to see the problem of limited bandwidth.
Now throw in the bad guy having comm jammers and the importance of an AI comes into play.

why make it so complicated?
all you need to do is tell the UCAV the enemy position, and order it to fire. AMRAAM does the rest. at worst the enemy gets close enough for a dogfight, but than you fly away, shooting AMRAAMs as you do (like the F-35 would) or have another UCAV shoot AMRAAMs from a distance. so all you really need is:

1. enemy location
2. AMRAAMs
3. AMRAAMs
4. AMRAAMs

this wouldn’t work if the enemy target is stealth, like say the T-50. but in that case the $200+ million F-35 is outclassed too, and a $30 million UCAV would be a much cheaper solution, without the loss of life

UCAVs are decades away from replacing manned missions, especially in the A2A arena that the F-22 lives in.

actually, Predators and Reapers started replacing manned aircraft back in 2003. the percentage of unmanned aircraft in the Air Force, Navy and Army is to rise exponentially over the comming years, by definition replacing manned aircraft. and the way the F-35 is messing up, they’ll need them too

and it’s hard to say that UCAV A2A can’t work work, since it has never been tested. just like the English refused to test the Blitzkrieg concept when one of their own came up with it

The article describes the mission as being a “routine training mission”.
How exactly do you propose to have a UAV perform a F-22 “routing training mission”?
Next question. What leads you to believe that the USAF doesn’t take UAV “seriously”?

a) I was actually referring to the air patrol mission of defending Alaska. but to answer your question, since most training for UAV pilots is done with simulators and the computer do most of the actual flying, there are fewer training flights, and thus fewer accidents

b) you are seriously asking why people who are being paid to fly the coolest airplanes in the world might be averse to the idea of being replaced by robots? I think the USAF takes UAVs extremely seriously, but more as a threat than as an opportunity

Yes because after we cannot have people getting killed in war. That’s just crazy.:rolleyes:

minimizing the number of deaths and PoWs is kind of the whole point of modern western military doctrine, yes. was that unclear to you? or are you saying you’d rather see more people die than less?

I dont get your first statement as it does not marry with my statement that although UAV’s have killed a lot of people we can not be sure if they are civilians are otherwise.

a UAV has much more time to verify the target and attack instantly. manned aircraft don’t have the time or stealth to spy on a target, or they can only attack for a small period of time, leading to errors and targets getting away

I can understand UAV’s being used for surveilence and think it makes perfect sense but dont understand why you would want it to fire weapons at some abstract dot on your computer screen. What is that is the mother figure in a clan or comunity? You have not just alienated another 20-30 people and turned them against you…

all modern attack craft shoot at “dots on the computer screen”

but again, manned aircraft are extremely expensive in this role (pilots, fuel, maintenance = 6000 $/hour for the cheapest, and high buy prices) and are worse at it (limited endurance, easy to detect and thus avoid). drones are much cheaper (400 $/hour for the cheapest) and are better (stealthy, long endurance, high grade sensors included in low buy prices)

in conclusion, UAVs are the best and cheapest way of finding and attacking insurgents

djcross makes some excellent points:

– persistency: fighting insurgent, finding them amongst civilians requires 24/7 coverage, looking away for even a moment will allow the enemy to move, attack or terrorize. a constant attendance takes away the ability of the enemy to do anything really. the whole point of insurgent tactics is that their enemy does not know who or where they are, or where they will attack

– psychology: experience in Afghanistan shows that insurgents fear UAVs because they cannot detect them, and they could be there watching, ready to strike at any time, kind of like Big Brother with a sniper rifle. at the very least this takes away insurgent options, forces him to adopt less effective tactics, like only moving at night

UAVs are best for this, as they are much harder to detect by sight or sound, and can stay in place much longer, making them more efficient at this job

manned attack aircraft and helicopters are capable, but you can see them comming (reference the movie Black Hawk Down, where goat herding kids phoned in the comming Americans as soon as they got off the ground), and insurgents will start running before the first attack (asuming they know where to attack). UAVs will know exactly where their targets are, and insurgents will not except an attack, so they won’t have time to disperse or hide