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 shotsat 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
Yes, all these incredibly cheap UCAV’s what can do anything what current fighters can. Let’s come back to this when first one flies with radar and capability to kill current generation manned fighters… while costing less than 50 million. I still haven’t seen this amazing AI what can do dog fighting and so many other things… no doubt it’s also very cheap & simple to code.
Take a look how much they are wrestling with codes on F-35 and you seriously think it’s easier for any real UCAV what needs to do combat maneuvers on it’s own, etc?
Pakistani news claim that Sri Lanka ordered 12 JF-17 fighters. I guess we get more official announcement soon enough.
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