Which means that, for the roles the USAF is envisioning the A-10 filling in the near future, the F-35 is BETTER!

sounds like technology will finally allow the USAF to kill the ugly mother****** that is the Warthog

but that same tech might keep it in action, more than ever: as a UCAV! 😀
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2010/07/airforce_closeair_073110/

they already have the airframes and engines, although new builds would be cool, it has proven it’s durability and low operating cost, and it would be perfect for executing low altitude attacks!

So your argument is that the cruise missile is a more cost effective alternative to a fighter craft, manned or unmanned. My pardon, I failed to read that from your previous post.

Well, a Tomahawk costs 1 to 2 million $ depending on the version. A stripped down Predator can come as cheap as $500,000, which is not much more expensive than the AMRAAMs it would fire. Depending on how advanced you want to the Tomahawks to be, enemy defences and decoys, you will be paying up to $10 million per destroyed enemy aircraft, possibly missing the valuable pilots.

The other thing is that Tomahawks are purely aggressive: they cannot cover ground troops, or not for very long, nor can they defend an area, or fight a hidden enemy. Like the F-22, they have their use, but are just not as cost-effective as the UCAV can be for the task of achieving “That degree of dominance…”

On another point, this discussion does have real-life implication. For example I am from Belgium, and my country will need a replacement for the F-16 soon. Industry and the military are pushing for the F-35, but I see more use for an F-16 End Life Update and some UAVs to tie us over until the late 2020’s, when UCAVs will be a viable alternative. Much cheaper and more effective in the long run.

Politics:

– Air Force officers do not want UAVs. They are mainly combat pilots, who do not want be universally hated for killing the Top Gun fantasy. Just like they did not want the F-16 because it would take away money from their F-15 wonder child. Or the A-10, which they have tried to kill numerous times, and might now be turned into the first operational UCAV! Or missiles on a Predator, which they thought was a stupid idea, until the CIA showed them wrong. Or when they insist that real pilots should fly their UAVs, even though the Army has proven NCOs with some extra software can do it better and cheaper.

– Aircraft builders are not so biased, which is why Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics are investing so much of their own money into developing UAVs, even though the Air Force made no formal requests. They know this is where the real future of military aviation lies.

– Politicians care for what creates jobs, is cost effective and effective, and popular with the public. UAVs create as many jobs as manned aircraft, more so because they can be built in larger numbers. UAVs are cheaper, to produce and to operate, and more effective than manned aircraft, because of superior stealth and endurance, so they get the job done better for less money. And finally UAVs put no pilots in the line of fire, which is a dream for any politician.
So in conclusion the Air Force hates the UAV, the industry doesn’t care, and the politicians love it.

Technology:

– UAVs have already proven themselves, in more ways than one would think. For example airliners are capable of taking off, flying to their destination, and landing, all by themselves, the pilots are really just there to make sure nothing goes wrong, point and case the current talk of getting rid of these expensive human supervisors. This is only natural, as flying is actually pretty easy to do for a computer, it just has to maintain course and altitude, contrary to UGVs, who have to worry about traffic, pedestrians, holes in the road…

Air-to-air combat UAV technology is also more advanced than many will acknowledge:

– Long range AA combat. This is the norm for modern, western warfare. It protects our pilots, and allows us to maximize our technological (money) advantage in radar and missile technology. It is like using artillery and sniper rifles in an open field, against an opponent that only has rifles. In this situation, human pilots bring little to the equation: they just read their radar screen, relate this info to their commanders on the ground, wait for the order to fire, and then let the missile do all the work. Already technology has simplified this process, with AWACS providing all the necessary radar information and missile guidance, reducing the pilot to someone to push the button, something a controller on the ground can do just as well.

– Short range AA combat. This is a much more complex process, where enemy aircraft actually have the chance to shoot back, where there is much less time to make a decision, and friendly and enemy craft become mingled, making it much harder to select a target. The F-35, flawed as it may be, has already fixed much of these problems. First of all its computer system keeps track of all craft within range, and can distinguish between friend and foe. This is actually pretty simple, as computers can recognize aircraft shapes, much more easily than say a face or a thumb print, as well identification markings. And once you know where everyone is, you just need to assign the missiles to their targets, and the missiles will do the rest, which is why the F-35 doesn’t even need to fly in the right direction anymore in order to engage. But the F-35 adds another important element to the equation, namely interconnectivity, or Swarm logic if you will. This allows different elements to work together, as a team, greatly increasing their capabilities. Boeing demonstrated this with the X-45A, the two aircraft working together to devise tactics and assign targets. The human operator has to do little but give the go, although of course he can also give guidance, like ground control stations and AWACS give guidance to modern manned aircraft. This cooperation between aircraft (and whatever other assets there are in the sky and on the ground) works as a force multiplier: each unit can move as part of a chess game, creating cross fires, giving each other covering fire, and can do so at a speed, complexity and responsiveness to changing circumstances that humans would find impossible to cope with. As computer progress in capacity, and they will keep doing so for a long time, this speed will only increase, to the point where no human can hope to compete. And like a chess computer, the computer will be able to adapt to new tactics, always learning, allowing it to compare multiple scenario’s and choose the strategy that best covers all of them. Supported by humans, in the ground or in the air, their abilities will multiply even further.

Some random points:

– Air-to-Air UCAVs will come. The Air Force will try to slow this process, like cancelling the J-UCAS, to protect the gold-plated JSF. The F-35 will however go the F-22 way, leaving a fighter gap that the Air Force will be forced to fill with UCAVs, a golden opportunity for Boeing or Northrop Grumman, although we know Lockheed Martin has done plenty of classified research on UAVs and might still surprise us.

– There will be little danger of UCAVs shooting down civilian airplanes, because most of the time ground controllers will have the time to approve the attack, just like modern day pilots usually request permission before engaging. If the UCAV does receive permission to make its own attack decisions, it’ll be in intense dog fights, where there are no civil aircraft anywhere near. And if some dumb civil aircraft does fly into the combat zone, the UCAV will easily recognize it as a non-military craft, unless it starts shooting missiles, a scenario that would surprise a human pilot all the same. What is more, a UCAV would be a safer aircraft than many manned versions. Pilots in fast flying jet aircraft only have seconds to make the right decision, and often have to do so after spending hours flying and under great G pressure, high on the drugs they use to keep up with their demanding job, and have to keep half their attention on flying their plane, rather than the situation around them. A UCAV can have many people guiding it, with a much better tactical overview, dividing the work load. But it can also handle many of these tasks by itself, flying its route, dodging incoming fire, keeping track of its fuel and weapons supply, location, friendly and enemy air- and ground units and their status… all at the same time, all the time.

– Communications jamming will be of little importance against UCAVs, for a number of reasons. First of all any enemy technology that can interrupt a UCAV can also interrupt a manned aircraft, and an F-35 without AWACS support or computers will be just as vulnerable, only it’ll cost more and there’s a human life at stake. Second point is that modern communications are extremely hard to jam, thanks to systems like Link-16. Thirdly the current generation of UAVs still uses a lot of video streaming to be controlled. But as UCAVs become more autonomous, they’ll only need to send radar data, flight data and images of the enemy craft, which will tell ground controllers all they need to know, at just a fraction of the current cost in data streaming. Fourth point is that communications will improve, just as enemy jamming technology will improve. One thing I’m hopeful about is light-based communications: imagine an RQ-170, flying at extreme altitude and with absolute stealth, tracking both enemy craft and friendly UCAVs. The Sentinel can communicate with the UCAVs through infrared signals, acting as a data relay (I believe those two bulges on the RQ-170’s wings are radio senders/receivers, who can send in focused beams, undetectable to anyone but the satellites they’re aimed at). This will allow the UCAVs to communicate without breaking their stealth cover, something the F-35 and F-22 cannot do.

– Numbers are an important element. Currently, the west relies on quality over quantity. The main argument here is that this is less costly in human lives, but numbers are still a vital strategy for any army, be it to provide cover for every squad of infantry or to overrun the enemy fighters as to target their AWACS and refueling support. UCAVs allow the west to once again apply this strategy, being able to quickly construct larger numbers of expendable aircraft, such as the Predator family, and as the UCAVs become more self-reliant, operate them without having to train large numbers of quality pilots, a very costly and lengthy process, as the English found out during the Battle for Britain.

– UCAVs have in some ways superior air-to-air fighting skills. There is the often cited ability to turn much more sharply, but more importantly I think is the ability to have total awareness. The F-35 already does this, feeding the pilot all this info in a very expensive helmet. A UCAV would have the same ability, but would not need to translate this information to a pilot-friendly package: where the F-35 pilot still has to turn his head to target an enemy, a UCAV will be looking in all directions all the time, it will not leave the enemy out of its sight for even a second. It will also be able to analyze what it sees much more proficiently: it will keep track of enemy weapon expenditure, estimate fuel capacity based on use of afterburners, predict enemy movement based on vector engines and flaps… it might even look into the enemy cockpit and keep track of what direction the enemy pilot is looking, and read what’s on his computer screens, be it written in English, Russian or Chinese!

– Laser weapons have of late been proven to be effective weapons. Just imagine what this means for the future, when fighter aircraft will be able to shoot down incoming missiles and other aircraft, but they themselves will be much more vulnerable to enemy laser weapons, especially the ground-based ones, which can be much more powerful and better armored. At this point stealth and weapon range will be the deciding factors for any aircraft, while putting a pilot in them will no longer be “safe”.

– Missile technology is also a field where I expect important evolutions. For example the reinvention of the 70 mm missiles as a guided weapon has huge potential for air combat vehicles, which will be able to use these to target enemy missiles, aircraft and ground units. Combined with a UCAVs total awareness and 360 degree field of vision, and by attaching a number of these missiles in a rear-facing position, it’ll be able to launch a large number of missiles simultaneously at a larger number of targets around it. Another point is optical technology: where current missiles use either radar or infrared to track their targets, I believe that the ability of future UCAVs to recognize the shape, color and even markings of specific aircraft will also guide their missiles. These would be fired towards a certain gps coordinate, updated in-flight from AWACS and other sources. Once in the area they would use a camera installed in their seeker head to find certain types of aircraft, with certain markings. They would than track these targets, immune to flares and radar jamming. They would be vulnerable to visual jamming techniques, but they would predict enemy location, allowing them to avoid these visual jamming and keep tracking the enemy. If they do lose sight of the enemy they would simply keep looking around until they re-acquire the correct target type, ignoring all friendly and civilian designs. Like the laser this will make combat in the air much more dangerous, making manned aircraft obsolete.

– Ground control is another important aspect. The essential thing is to understand that the current way of working, namely a constant stream of information going over satellite to a controller station, will not be viable in a real war, be it because of the need to maintain stealth, satellites being targeted, jamming techniques that can beat link-16 or its successor… For these reasons a lot of decisions will be taken by the UCAV by itself, namely what route to take, what weapons to use to attack, etc. A human controller can be sent limited data, such as radar data and single images of targets, but this will often be sufficient to advise on what tactics and strategies to impose. In a no-fly zone, a drone can be ordered to attack any aircraft, or any type of non-friendly aircraft, or any aircraft that attacks it, even if it is a civilian design, with or without controller input, with or without breaking stealth discipline. The point is that a UCAV can be flexible, using input from anything from a ground controller to AWACS to a special operations team on the ground that it is covering that uses lasers to communicate with the UCAV (easy enough to spot for advanced camera’s).

– UCAVs will be cheaper. There will be certain production advantages, the most obvious being the lack of life support for the pilots, the ejector seat, the canopy, the option to design a more streamlined aircraft, etc. But the most important savings will come from operational uses. No millions of dollars for training the pilots, no increased wear and tear on the airframes from practice flights, no fuel costs for practice flights, a longer loiter time means less time lost moving to and from the area of operations, etc.

– Possible the most interesting UCAV is the air interceptor. Its task would be to defend the air space borders of a nation, meaning it would scramble to intercept all kind of potential intruders, from airliners who lost their communications to curious Russian recon planes. Experience teaches us that these aircraft spent extremely little time in combat, meaning it would not need fancy stealth (point and case the F-22s who currently perform this role and actually try to decrease their stealth, as not to give too much away to Russian recon craft), maneuverability or many weapons. Their task would be to intercept the aircraft, communicate with it (I’m thinking a neon-sign kind of visual device, allowing ground crews to send visual messages in any language, like Russian, such as “slow down” or “follow us”), escort it to an airbase or out of the airspace, and in real emergencies open fire. Imagine a Predator with delta wings and a jet engine, or maybe a QF-16. Cheap and effective, they can be fielded in large numbers, or as a vanguard for more advanced aircraft, which can hang back in sniper positions, ready to strike.

– Another potential AA UCAV is the Predator with AMRAAM configuration. Basically these are little more than missile delivery systems. They patrol a certain area, waiting for an enemy craft to pop up, and then launch their long range missiles with AWACS/ground radar guidance (AWACS are known to guide AMRAAMs, and recently the Dutch fired an AMRAAM from the ground, as a SAM, so it can certainly be done). Target confirmation can be provided by HALE UAVs like the RQ-170, satellites, ground units, advanced radar… If the enemy does manage to hit the UCAV, than you lost at most a few 100 grand worth of equipment, rather than an F-22 worth 300+ million and a priceless human life. But why would the West need a UCAV like this against say China or Russia? Well, because, as RAND has repeatedly calculated, any such battle would include huge numbers of enemy fighter aircraft, which would simply overrun Western forces. Even worse, they could be UCAVs too, we know the Chinese for one have them, and the Russians are playing catch up, or larger numbers of stealthy T-50s. In this case the F-22 and F-35 will be outnumbered, while 4.5th generation aircraft will suffer heavy losses. Thus a Predator with AMRAAMs would provide a cheap and effective, real-war (the kind where the enemy actually shoots back) air supremacy system, the nightmare of any fighter jock.

– A STOVL UCAV is another important future development. The easiest option would be to use the proven Harrier engine concept, in a potentially stealthy new airframe, or a jet version of the failed Pogo tail sitter. This craft could be launched from small carriers, helicopter landing pads or from improvised airfields close behind a battle line. Here the weight saved from removing the pilot will make a serious difference, while computers have proven to be very effective at landing vertically, even on moving ships (Fire Scout UAV), contrary to the difficulties this poses for humans (Harrier).