Robot Jet Fighter Takes First Flight

lysdexia writes "The X-47B is a Tailless Flying Robotic Overlord, which requires neither puny human pilot nor extraneous remote control. First flight was 29 minutes, climbing to a height of 5000 ft. Next step: landing on aircraft carrier."

Comments

Not a Jet Fighter

[Wyatt Earp]

Nor is it as other websites have called it, a bomber.

X-47 is pure experimental but does have a weapons bay that could theoretically hold two 1000 pound JDAMs. Were a production plane made out of this it would be an MQ - multi-role (M) unmanned aircraft system (Q) or AQ - attack (A) unmanned aircraft system (Q).

It doesn't carry nor is it currently designed to carry an M-61 gatling gun, which every current F designated US aircraft has, nor does it have any missile capable hard points.

And yea, the F-117A is misdesginated too.

Re:Not a Jet Fighter

[TooMuchToDo]

Very true. But once the avionics and autonomous flight systems are tuned, building and flying fighter and bomber UAVs is going to be cake. Kids going through the pilot pipeline now are probably some of the last armed forces pilots who will do so.

Now, before you huff and say, "No way will software and electronic kit replace people wholesale in military aircraft!", I'd think about it a bit. I was able to watch a UAV dock, refuel, and detach from a KC-130 tanker ~7 months ago, with no human intervention. Refueling? Check. Carrier takeoffs/landings? Almost here. You can have some pretty amazing flight characteristics when you don't have to support the human body in flight.

Re:Not a Jet Fighter

[hyades1]

If I recall correctly, the F-4 originally mounted no guns. When it was offered to the Israelis, they had to demand that they be incorporated into the planes slated for them. In action in Viet Nam, American pilots also learned how stupid this concept was, and remedial action was taken.

Re:Not a Jet Fighter

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding weapons isn't a problem. Weight considerations aside, this thing can (and will ) be a weapon.

I don't like the idea of unmanned drones or automatic anything. I'm a big fan of the military technology and using weapons to bring about peace.

What I don't like is when we remove ourselves from living close to the bone. War is ugly, awful and at times necessary. When we see the cost of war and the bloodshed men will find ways to avoid it. Any enemy who has seen the wasteland of fallen soldiers knows that they will either submit or become another body.

Re:Not a Jet Fighter

[Penguinshit]

The F4 was originally a bomber-intercept aircraft. Dogfighting was thought to be a relic of the past in the new guided missile age.

Re:Not a Jet Fighter

[badboy_tw2002]

Don't worry, there will still be a wasteland of fallen soldiers, just mixed in with more regular people.

Re:Not a Jet Fighter

[Wyatt Earp]

F-4 was originally going to be four 20mm cannons, then Sparrow came along and they deleted the single internal cannon.

Vietnam showed that Sparrow wasn't that effective at long range and Sidewinder had too limited of engagement envelope so by the F-4D in 1967 they carried an external gun pod, and the F-4E had an internal M-61 cannon in '68/69.

The models Israel got were the F-4E which already had the cannons.

Re:Not a Jet Fighter

[cshotton]

As it turns out, the real problem on these platforms is power generation. With synthetic aperture radars, flight control systems, on-board mission management systems, laser designators, EO sensors, and LOS and BLOS/satellite comms gear on board, the problem of supplying electricity for all the systems becomes critical.

I worked on the original J-UCAS program which transitioned from DARPA to the Navy, and designing the autonomous flight and mission management systems was the easier part of the problem. Creating the comm infrastructure (software defined radios), the operational procedures, the peer-to-peer cooperation, and mundane stuff like dealing with air traffic control turn out to be much harder in practice.

Definitely one of the coolest projects I have ever worked on and I'm glad to see one of the J-UCAS derived UAVs finally getting into the air.

Errors

[LWATCDR]

1. Carrier trials are not until 2013 so they are not "next".
2. This isn't a fighter it is an attack aircraft or a bomber. Actually a light bomber but then the F-117 Stealth Fighter was not a fighter but also a bomber and or attack aircraft.

Re:I for one

[Doctor Faustus]

I would, if only I could find them.

A Taste of Armageddon

[Spikeles]

From there, robotic jet fighters could prove to be valuable assets in a modern military that is increasingly automating its approach to war.

Dont say we didn't warn you.

Re:A Taste of Armageddon

[jfengel]

Oh, man. People remember the epically bad episodes, like The Savage Curtain or Spock's Brain or The Omega Glory. But we always just gloss over the plain old dumb ones, like "The Lights of Zetar" or "The Alternative Factor" or "A Taste of Armageddon".

TOS... I do love it, but oh, some days it's tough love.

Thank you for dredging that out of the dark recesses of my brain.

Re:Wrong

[shutdown -p now]

Guns in a modern fighter is a complete waste of money.

This has been said several times since WW2, and every time they tried to follow up on the idea, they ended up putting the gun back in. AA missiles are not the be-all and end-all.

Missiles...

[sirsnork]

Heres a question for anyone in the know.

Given there no longer needs to be a meatsack in the chair, whats stopping UAV's from being able to literally dodge incoming fire (RPG's, missles etc)?

As long as they could be detected they could theoritically be dodged and destroyed given the ability of being able to do very high G's in a turn.

Re:Missiles...

[lelitsch]

Physics!

First off all, nobody is going to shoot down a UAV with an RPG, unless it is hovering at very low altitude. If you got this idea from Black Hawk down, the helicopters got shot down while they were basically hovering at roof level. A small plane going a few hundred mph is impossible to hit.

The physics part comes in, because a small missile with lower mass, much higher thrust to weight ratio and much smaller control surfaces can pull much higher g's than anything with large wings. A F-16 can pull around 9G before things start coming off, this might be able to do 15, a light AA or SA missile can pull 20-50.

So yeah, it might out-turn more than a manned plane, but not a missile.

Re:Missiles...

[TubeSteak]

A F-16 can pull around 9G before things start coming off ....

Ummm... no.
IIRC, the G-rating of an airframe is usually 2/3s the designed structural fatigue limit.
To be clear, the fatigue limit just means "repeatedly doing this will cause something to fail eventually"
This isn't the same as "doing this will cause things to fall off right now"

Of course, there's all kinds of qualifiers about fuel and ordnance loadout,
but for the sake of brevity I'm presuming the plane has minimal fuel and nothing mounted.
Otherwise, you can tear parts off a fully loaded plane just by doing a 6G turn.

What's the "unique challenge"?

[TubeSteak]

The aircraftâ(TM)s sleek tailless design will make it harder to spot on radar, but proves a unique challenge for an unmanned aerial system (UAS).

Last I checked, all the kinks had been worked out of the blended wing design by the time the the B-2 bomber was built.
It was pretty much a matter of throwing enough computing power at a fly-by-wire system to make the craft stable.
And we managed to accomplish this with 80s technology.

I may be speaking out of ignorance, but I can't really see what "unique challenge" is created by a tailless design and can't be solved with 21st century computing power.

Re:What's the "unique challenge"?

[DesScorp]

The unique challenge isn't the stealth part.It's building a truly robotic carrier aircraft. The difference between this and other UAV's isn't just that it can take off and land from carriers. This plane will eventually be fully robotic, with pre-programmed missions instead of a remote control pilot sitting in a trailer with a joystick and a monitor. This is meant to be a launch-and-forget warplane.

Programmers--Ultimately responsible.

[Anachragnome]

Programmers--Ultimately responsible.

As with any programming, there is the distinct likelihood of bugs--hell, more of an expectation.

I guess that makes every person on the ground beta testers? Still going to rely on the release-and-patch model?

Re:Cowardice rises to the next level.

[profplump]

Nations have been taking foreign loans to go to war since before man invented the gun. And the USA wouldn't exist if the rebels here didn't get massive military and financial assistance from France, Netherlands, etc. during the revolutionary war.

If automation in warfare leads to cowardice shouldn't you also be railing against the machine gun? Real, brave warriors should have to load their musket one bullet at a time. Or maybe guns themselves are a sign of cowardice -- real men wouldn't attack from a distance. Or maybe any sort of weapon induces cowardice -- no true Scotsman would ever consider going to war with anything other than his wits and his fists.

Seriously, get some perspective before you start spewing inflammatory words like "cowardice" in public.

Let's take these one by one

[DesScorp]

The F/A-18E/F is a very capable fighter/bomber.

The biggest virtue of the Super Hornet is that it's cheap and has a larger payload and more range than the older versions of the Hornet. As a fighter, it's a dog. It's slower, has less zip, less acceleration, and less maneuverability than older Hornets. The F/A-18C pilots that flew against them during trials actually said they felt sorry for them. In the fleet, Tomcat vets call them "Not So Super Hornets". Again, the biggest virtue is the price tag... $50 million apiece, which is a bargain for modern fighters. The CBO says the F-35 could reach $184 million apiece, flyaway. So I predict that we'll be using Super Hornets for a long, long time, and will simply attempt to make up for the plane's deficiencies via training and tactics. It's a great,economical strike aircraft. But the Super is nowhere near where the Navy would like it to be as a fighter.

The F-35 is not a big enough leap in capability to warrant the price tag and not as stealthy as originally advertised.

All true. The F-35 may end up being the biggest military procurement boondoggle of all time. It does nothing well, and at a price astronomically higher than it's competitors.

UCAVs are the future.

Yes,but the problem is that the future is probably far,far away. We're in the infancy of UAV's, practically in the same place as the Sopwith Camel in terms of fighter development. Thus, you're going to see manned fighters in wide production for at least another 50 years.

Re:Wrong

[radtea]

If you look at the AA role, you might have a point, but what are the chances of us seeing Air to Air engagements this day in age?

If you aren't prepared for them?

One hundred percent.