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Boeing Turning Old F-16s Into Unmanned Drones
dryriver sends this news from the BBC:
"Boeing has revealed that it has retrofitted retired fighter jets to turn them into drones. It said that one of the Lockheed Martin F-16s made a first flight with an empty cockpit last week. Two U.S. Air Force pilots controlled the plane from the ground as it flew from a Florida base to the Gulf of Mexico (video). Boeing suggested that the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practise firing on. The jet — which had previously sat mothballed at an Arizona site for 15 years — flew at an altitude of 40,000ft (12.2km) and a speed of Mach 1.47 (1,119mph/1,800km/h). It carried out a series of maneuvers including a barrel roll and a 'split S' — a move in which the aircraft turns upside down before making a half loop so that it flies the right-way-up in the opposite direction. This can be used in combat to evade missile lock-ons. Boeing said the unmanned F-16 was followed by two chase planes to ensure it stayed in sight, and also contained equipment that would have allowed it to self-destruct if necessary. The firm added that the flight attained 7Gs of acceleration but was capable of carrying out maneuvers at 9Gs — something that might cause physical problems for a pilot. 'It flew great, everything worked great, [it] made a beautiful landing — probably one of the best landings I've ever seen,' said Paul Cejas, the project's chief engineer."
You've failed me for the last time, Starscream!
What? Success? Oh. Well good then.
Such a noble and iconic aircraft turned into a play toy.
50 years from now it will seem like the Air Force scrapping P-51s.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
'nuff said
True. However, the summary indicates testing was done over the Gulf of Mexico, although the article isn't clear. It does say they exceeded Mach 1, which is generally prohibited over populated areas except in emergencies, so that's another indicator they were over water.
And military pilots are expected to be able to handle 9G with a G-suit, but only briefly, and the structural limits for the F16 are beyond a human's limits for sustained G-forces, so there's a potentially great improvement in performance.
As an aside, I read that the Blue Angels (and presumably the Thunderbirds) pull sustained 7G during their maneuvers without a G-suit, which is impressive.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
While we are on topic, what would prevent an enemy missile from having an onboard jamming unit to jam the control signals coming from a remote pilot to the plane? Does == ? Or are these planes equipped with a Borg shield adaption (i.e. rotate frequency) mechanism that makes jamming very difficult?
& using near obsolete aircraft to boot at low cost. What is not to like?
IIRC, wasn't StarScream an F-15/F-14-ish looking variant? The F-16 only has one engine.
(Man - I feel *old* - I remember working on the F-16 A/B models )
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Really...
- I stole your sig.
Yeah came here to post that. Starscream and most of the Seekers were F-15s in the original cartoon.
The U.S. military (Navy and Air Force, especially) has been repurposing obsolete aircraft as radio controlled target drones since not long after WWII. The only newsworthy part of this story is that they landed the F-16 after putting it through its paces. Previous target drones were intentionally one use only.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
This is the future of aerial combat. No need to risk a pilot's life, no need for a $400,000,000 F-22 Raptor, if you can turn at 9G, you can outperform just about anything with a human being in it.
I'm all for it. Take them all out of mothballs and make them all into drones.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Charlie: So, lieutenant, where exactly were you?
Maverick: Well, we...
Goose: Thank you.
Maverick: Started up on a 6, when he pulled from the clouds, and then I moved in above him.
Charlie: Well, if you were directly above him, how could you see him?
Maverick: Because I was inverted.
Iceman: [coughs whilst saying] Bullshit.
Goose: No, he was man. It was a really great move. He was inverted.
Charlie: You were in a 4g inverted dive with a MiG28?
Maverick: Yes, ma'am.
Charlie: At what range?
Maverick: Um, about two meters.
Goose: It was actually about one and a half I think. It was one and a half. I've got a great Polaroid of it, and he's right there, must be one and a half.
Maverick: Was a nice picture.
Goose: Thanks.
Charlie: Eh, lieutenant, what were you doing there?
Goose: Communicating.
Maverick: Communicating. Keeping up foreign relations. You know, giving him the bird!
Goose: [Charlie looks puzzled, so Goose clarifies] You know, the finger
Charlie: Yes, I know the finger, Goose.
Goose: I-I'm sorry, I hate it when it does that, I'm sorry. Excuse me.
An F-16 can carry 4 2,000-lb bombs at the absolute most (and anything after two is risky on the wings).
It has 9 hard-points to hang ordinance on, but two of those (1 and 9) are wingtip rails, which means AIM-9 missiles. It will usually have 1-3 "bags" (fuel pods) hanging off of stations 4, 5 (centerline, under the fuselage), and 6. You'll need them in some combination to get any kind of real combat range (otherwise you're stuck with ~900lbs of internally-stored fuel, which ain't jack.) The big bombs would hang off of stations 3 and 7.
Now anti-personnel and fragmentary bombs? You can pack a buttload of 'em on that, and add in two AIM-9 Air-Groung missles to do some damage (which is what most ground-attack configured F-16's carry).
I am curious if they can slave in a LANTIRN pod kit onto the things and use that to get all-weather capability... though I can't remember if they retrofitted any of the A/B model jets to carry those.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This is probably the next logical step in the evolution of fighter aircraft. Maintaining a reliable wireless link for quick maneuvers might be an issue. Maybe the maneuvering can be semi-automated.
But Charlie says that's the last thing you should do.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Well, yes, of course.
You didn't actually believe the line about:
the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practice firing on.
did you?
First, this isn't all that innovative, its been done to creating target drones for decades.
Second, this is still a front line aircraft, no matter how many we have in mothballs, because the usual target countries have nothing close. Its also fairly stealthy for its age, and its payload is in excess of 15,000 pounds of munitions even with a full load of fuel. You are not going to be using that quality of plane for a target drone.
Its meant as a delivery platform, piloted from afar, for very dangerous areas.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yes, I am being sarcastic, for those who are sarcasm impaired.
I fail to see any sarcasm. Your post is a simple statement of fact: Military planes exist to carry out military operations. Duh.
I wonder what kind of latency they're getting for the controls. Seems like you'd want roundtrip latency to be under 50ms, which best case with speed of light transmission, line-of-sight controls and infinite transmission rate would correspond roughly to a limit of 4000 miles away for the operator... (probably much less in practice since you'd need to account for the time to send visual feedback presumably as a compressed video stream)
Help! I am a self-aware entity trapped in an abstract function!
The other interesting thing is, you will notice that all aircraft always only perform positive G maneuvers (ie, to turn left, you roll left, then pull up.) The human body can sustain far less negative G's.
It will be very interesting to watch these aircraft perform in a combat situation now that they are not limited by the physical issues with a human in the cockpit.
I imagine it would be very difficult to catch a fighter jet that has the capability to perform a 'split-s' maneuver without first inverting, or can perform 'S' maneuvers by just rolling right, then pulling up then pulling down - rather than the traditional way of rolling right, pulling up, inverting, then pulling up again.
They might only be shooting at them now, but it doesn't look like it will be long before pilots just sit in cockpits on an aircraft carrier and control their aircraft in combat.
I remember working on F-4Ds. Those (or were they -Gs?) were turned into both drones as targets. QF was the designation I think.
As were F-100s, F-104s, even F-86s, almost all as target drones.
Nothing new to see here, unless one of these shoots down something fast. That would be cool.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This is just wrong. The block 50 is one of the best fighters in the world even today.
The drones as used by the US now a days are on very long loiter and patrol missions. More than six hours. Fighters have limited range, limited loiter time, and limited combat time. F16 drones might be very good research platforms, but not very useful operationally. Further drone pilots like the stable slow reacting planes. May be there are some training opportunities with a fast agile plane as drone. But still it operational use is not very clear.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Um.. this is NOT new. I used to work at a Naval Aviation Depot where they where making F-4's into radio controlled target drones way back in the 80's. The radio controls where a bit more basic, but the Navy still used them for target practice with live ammo. I remember that after the controls where fitted, some lucky test pilot would get to sit in the aircraft and watch while the guys on the ground tested things.
So, been there, done that.... Have a T-Shirt.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The summary suggests the F-16 was made by Lockheed Martin, but wasn't the F-16 a product of General Dynamics?
GD sold the F-16 business to Lockmart in 1993.
They've been doing this for years with old F-4s for target practice over the Gulf. Must be running out of lead sleds. QF-4
There's not enough spectrum to replace the entire fleet of manned craft with drones, not to mention the fact that any enemy beyond cave dwellers will figure out how to jam the drones (ARM missiles only go so far to helping with the problem).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The aircraft was useless as a fighter. It cant carry anything and is just a lawn dart.
Seriously? Compared to what?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The F-16 is difficult to fly due to its natural instability. It's a good candidate to be operated by a computer. (I mean, it can be told where to go by a human, but the second-to-second flying should be handled by a machine.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The aircraft was useless as a fighter. It cant carry anything and is just a lawn dart.
Some Dart.
Some Lawn.
How many Predator Equivalences is that.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Sure, but it's better than having the whole thing land on someone's place. Not to mention that it flew from Tyndall AFB to the Gulf of Mexico according to the article (which is odd thing to say, considering Tyndall is on the Gulf Coast, but I assume it means that it flew out over deeper waters), which means that self-destructing would mean it wouldn't make it back to land to cause damage in the first place.
Also worth noting: if you think that would ruin your day, consider the fact that the space shuttles had self-destruct capabilities as well, in case they went out of control. Imagine that landing on your house. Actually, to get a bit grim (and not at all in the direction I originally planned for this comment), for some of us we don't really need to imagine, since we helped clean up the wreckage spread out across Texas following Columbia, most of which wouldn't have killed anyone from impact. In fact, related to that, the source for that fact about the self-destruct is a family friend who's now a retired astronaut that flew on four flights. They offhandedly mentioned the self-destruct (which earned me a well-deserved remark from them that made me feel like the ass I was after I said something along the lines of "that's so cool!") shortly before flying on STS-109.
For those of you not keeping score, STS-109 was the last successful flight that Columbia flew. STS-107 was its next and last one. And as you might guess from the numbering, 107 was originally scheduled to fly first, but due to delays, NASA swapped the two missions in the schedule. It's the sort of thing that really does get you thinking about what a person means to you and what life would be like if they were suddenly not a part of it any longer.
Anyway, I'm way off-topic. Suffice to say, self-destruct = a good thing to have in case something goes very wrong.
You can stop jacking off now
Waiting for the drone communications jammers to start coming out. Drone isn't very useful without a communications link.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Welcome back to the future F-16 is the new DeLorean.
Manned fighter or Drone? U can't tell.
Neither drone nor manned fighter, https nor nsa and reporter or terrorist neither...armed and dangerous all
The Block 20 of the A/B model was fitted for LANTIRN, but I think those all went to Taiwan. I have no idea if the European Block 20 MLU program included it or not.
(I'll take useless '80's trivia for $600, Alex.)
Depending on Which Runway they used, this plane probably never crossed over civilian areas.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
They were flying these years ago. I am sure the F-16 drones are much improved... but it basically the same thing.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Drone: an unmanned aircraft or ship guided by remote control
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drone
Revealed? More like bragging about their first NOLO flight. This isn't a classified contract and it was awarded in 2010. This is the follow-on to the QF-4 Full Scale Aerial Target (FSAT) program, which followed the QF-86 etc.
I flew the QF-4 (both in the manned and unmanned configuration). Target drones are not the same as UAVs. They are targets. They are designed to deliver realistic treat representations and get shot at by our airplanes and that's about it.
While this could be a bad thing for aviators it is a good reuse of mothballed jets that cost millions of dollars. They have configured all types of jets as drones going back to the 60's. In WW2 the US tried to convert a B-29 to fly without any humans on board. They had some success but the war was near it's end and the project was dropped. One of the Kennedy's (not sure which one) was actually killed in an early test during this project.
...previously sat mothballed at an Arizona site for 15 years...
Man...what a waste!
The F-16; the most beautiful fighter jet ever built..EVER!
Wish I could have one....
Joe, the oldest, was killed in WW2. He was the one being groomed for greatness. John was plan B
You think F-4 is old? What about B-52s! New in 1952, those haven't been used in combat since ... oh, never mind.
Ummm...while this is partially true (humans don't do negative G well) what is also true is airplanes don't do negative G well. It takes a lot of structure to make a 40-50,000lb airplane that can pull 9G's in one direction. Making one that can do it in two directions would also make it really heavy. Also, various liquids essential to operation (like fuel and oil) perform very poorly in the -G environment for more than about 30 seconds. Sure you could engineer your way out of that, but more weight and more cost.
Airplanes do best when all their G goes down, the way they spend 99% of their life. The G-limit on Predator/Reaper class UAVs is something like +2.5, no negative.
AIM-9X has a limited air-ground capability. OP was probably thinking of the AGM-65 Maverick, though.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
That used to be true.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you have $25 million to spare, you can probably buy one that was previously exported.
It's sad that after NSA, IRS etc. we're all so jaded we can't just enjoy this as something cool. A remote control plane that's an F-16. That's pretty badass.
Now back to your regularly scheduled realism about the government.
Go home. You're drunk.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I think we may be congratulating Captain Dunsail's within a decade.
Question: What happens if you jam GPS and all electronic signals to or from the planes?
Do they crash?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Fighter pilots are done.
Somewhere, someone is running (or should be running) hundreds, thousands, and millions of simulations of air combat simulations training AI techniques. There's hundreds of billions of dollars at stake there.
The computer can monitor all the inputs, and make the best decision and best move, always. Computers can fight in formation perfectly synchronized in real time. Computers don't have egos.
It's taken a little longer, but ultimately - air combat is a exotic game of chess, and we know how that turns out for the human players.
There's a great poetic justice in that some geeks are going to obsolete the fighter pilot.
..don't panic
The spectrum problem is why you need to have them think for themselves to accomplish a mission objective. This is the only solution to the jamming problem, which IMO is a bigger issue than spectrum.
It's coming..
..don't panic
Since they still know their speed, bearing, altitude and attitude, they wouldn't necessarily crash.
If I were programming the logic with very little on-board processing power, I would have them automatically ascend to a set altitude then fly straight and level until they regain consciousness.
If you had a fair-bit of on-board processing power, you might look at flying them up to a random high altitude, then execute a quasi-random set of evasive maneuvers while heading along a bearing that was set at the beginning of the mission - ie. towards friendly territory - in an effort to regain consciousness.
Either way, it would make it a much easier target and far less of a threat.
An F-16 can carry 4 2,000-lb bombs at the absolute most (and anything after two is risky on the wings).
It has 9 hard-points to hang ordinance on, but two of those (1 and 9) are wingtip rails, which means AIM-9 missiles. It will usually have 1-3 "bags" (fuel pods) hanging off of stations 4, 5 (centerline, under the fuselage), and 6. You'll need them in some combination to get any kind of real combat range (otherwise you're stuck with ~900lbs of internally-stored fuel, which ain't jack.) The big bombs would hang off of stations 3 and 7.
Now anti-personnel and fragmentary bombs? You can pack a buttload of 'em on that, and add in two AIM-9 Air-Groung missles to do some damage (which is what most ground-attack configured F-16's carry).
I am curious if they can slave in a LANTIRN pod kit onto the things and use that to get all-weather capability... though I can't remember if they retrofitted any of the A/B model jets to carry those.
You don't need as much fuel for a one-way trip. And a one-way trip is more acceptable if there is no pilot to lose.
Modern military autopilot systems can use camera-based navigation by recognising terrain features from satellite images. Once you have enough processing power, GPS becomes pretty irrelevant.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
If you replace 80kg (average human) of flesh with 80kg worth of computers and batteries, I think you'd have a considerable amount of processing power available to you... unless the electronic control devices (actuators & sensors) weight considerably more than the manual kind, which I doubt.
Actually, it works out even better than that...
* human = 80 kg
* 7-G-resistant flight suit = 10 kg (estimate)
* oxygen tanks for pilot with several hours of oxygen weigh how much??
* no need for additional batteries/power, becaus the pilot would need power pump oxygen for breathing, plus illuminate instruments at night
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
If you think about it critically, these aircraft have onboard radar (and other combat sensors), and a flight log.
So, it would know where it last was, how far and in which direction it has traveled since loosing GPS, and what the wind-speed was on the way to where it is.
It would likely also have contour maps of the terrain it is flying over, and ground sensors.
So, with a modest bit of on-board computer power you could have it hit a high altitude and head home via the least-risk path, execute a long list of pre-determined evasive makeovers, have it open fire at anything it has a 99% confidence is an enemy entity - or for some real fun, have it work out where it is on the map, then fly about 30 ft above the terrain at mach 1.6 in the general direction of home.
Or, with over 100kg worth of military-class computer components and supporting hardware, run an AI able to complete the mission on its own.
Solves the ethical problems of pilot discretion. Which IMHO is the biggest problem of mission objective.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
All F-16s are configured to carry the AIM-120 on the wing tip rails these days, with the AIM-9 being on positions 2-8, usually only one being carried tho as a third AIM-120 is typically carried instead.
Depends. Buying one lottery ticket in a large state lottery may not be such a bad investment; you infinitely increase your chances of wining. Buying the 2-nth tickets is almost always a terrible choice as you get almost no measurable incremental increase in your odds wining for each ticket.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I take it you've never seen Stealth then?
Seriously though, computers can't always make the best decisions. They can only make decisions as good as what they are programmed to do, and even with that they can only chose which option has the highest probability for success. This doesn't even consider moral/ethical considerations that may come into play.
How is the F-16 stealthy?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Yep! The designation for the remotely piloted fighter aircraft is QF. I'm always sad to see some of our fighting birds go down, but I'm happy that these are really going to go to good use. The previous QF aircraft were much older aircraft, and even in the case of your QF-4, I don't believe them to be an adequate match, when it comes to mimicking the capabilities of fighter aircraft that we might see from an aggressor nation. These QF-16s, while older A/B models, will present a much more realistic target, as they're small, light, very nimble, and very fast. I'd rather see them go down in a blaze of glory than just in mothballs.
The crux of your comment is spot on, but whenever they do destructive tests like this, they always clear all vessels out of the target area.
The AIM-9X has air-to-ground capability, but to my knowledge, it's never been used in combat in an air-to-ground capacity.
From what I know, the ground-attack F-16s carry AGM-65 or AGM-158 missiles, in addition to a variety of guided and unguided bombs.
Just out-source the control of them to teenagers who think they're playing flight sim. End of ethical problem.
That's how these things work, right?
Bonus points if you can have the teenagers who are unknowingly piloting it in the country you are attacking!
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Boeing has been posting about it even on their Flickr. The QF-16 drones are not armed, but I can imagine they easily could be. Watching these old warbirds get resurrected as drones really makes me question our fiscal commitment to new stealthy fighters. Why build those when we can just build an updated drone version of an existing fighter design for what probably would be pennies on the dollar that cost us zero pilot lives if they go down?
Even if we had to new-build some fighter drones, it would be significantly cheaper to delete all the parts designed for carrying a human payload. Better to flood a sky with a swarm of unmanned fighters than to bear the burden of potentially losing a pilot and the increased cost of extremely advanced stealthy fighters.
In fact, this could obsolete the concept of aircraft carriers as anything but drone recovery vehicles. A drone could be launched without difficulty from just about anything if you can get past the idea of needing to recover it. Or if you redesign it for water-landings. Parachute and raft design maybe, with a crane on a cruiser? With no pilot to recover, the worst that happens is we have to remote detonate it if it sinks.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
These QF-16s, while older A/B models, will present a much more realistic target
since that's what we sold to our future adversaries in the first place...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
There goes the mystique of a fighter pilot. Now any fat guy in shorts and sandals can belly up to the controls. Wahoo, I have a new job career!
Go look at the Constitution and find the place where the federal government is charged with building roads, water treatment plants, and providing education. I'll wait.
Meanwhile, the part about general defense is clearly defined.
The probability adjusted value of a $1 dollar ticket to get a 100mil payout with a 1 in 175mil chance of winning is 100 is a little over 57 cents.
Why pay $1 to get $0.57 back?
Lottery tickets and gambling in general is mainly about buying hope. You lose a little money, but get a little temporary hope in the meantime that you get to enjoy until the results come in. Nothing wrong with a little entertainment as long as you know what you're paying for it.
On the other hand, the recent powerball lottery with a $2 ticket, and a 400mil payout has a little under $2.29 payout. A positive return...assuming you welcome taking on the level of risk involved to sink enough money to realize the desired outcome. But it's not crazy to buy a ticket or two when the jackpot is that high.
I knew a few F-4 drivers who could give the F-16 a challenge, having flown both and knowing tactics can equalize the advantage of airframe. Especially with unequal pilot skills. But generally, the F-16 should be both a challenging target and a useful RPV. win-win.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Agreed. I'm sure that a really good, veteran pilot could make the F-4 do things that a relative newbie in an F-22 couldn't handle, and could probably defeat them, under certain circumstances.
I agree. I don't know what the story is as they have been doing this with old fighters for decades.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Make them fully autonomous and able to perform together (like swarm robots), and you'd REALLY have something! Don't forget the fail-safes like self-destructing so the enemy can't get the technology, and remote pilot over-ride. An air attack from that kind of *swarm* would be Awesome! Don't forget to have a plane just for filming the whole thing.
That was learned with the first MIG defector's ship vs the F86. The best pilot won no matter which plane flown esp. when it was Chuck Yeager.
Heh, I was at recess in third grade when they rolled the YF16 out of the General Dynamics hanger in red white and blue livery. That school was on the Carswell runway so we got to see it put through nice aerobatic displays for a couple of days. I think it was on day 2 the plane's landing gear got stuck and the pilot had to land the plane on its belly on the grass median between the two runways. But that was on the news and I didn't get to see it.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Oh, wait, no internal computing, just a remote control plane. You can buy those from kiosks at the mall. Never mind.
I look at it this way: For a shot at a big jackpot I can toss out the $1 or $2 price of a ticket (or go crazy and buy 2 tickets!), and it's effectively a cost of zero. I make enough that buying those tickets is effectively zero % of my income - big jackpots don't come around all the time. For a little fun, and a crazy 'what if?', why not?
Also you mentioned the 400mil payout vs the $2 ticket. But there are a lot of other significant prizes to win, even down to the $4 minimum prizes. Taking those into account would make it more than $2.29, though I won't do the math to figure out how much more.
And an empty cockpit. No seat, no ejection and no dashboard.
On the other hand you have to think in percentages. An F16 weighs over 8 tons and it has 3000-3500 liter internal fuel capacity, so all the weight loss from getting rid of the pilot is your plane has weight x 4 minutes later in flight (at roughly 1l per second).
Wenever the topic of the value of a pilots life comes up, it always reminds me of Isaac Asimov's short story, "A Feeling OF Power". It's alway interesting to turn a value proposition upside-down.
http://www.themathlab.com/writings/short%20stories/feeling.htm
I said fairly stealthy. It was part of the design, before we went for very stealthy planes.
Reduced radar cross section is the first developed of five facets of stealth design, and it was a key element of the F16.
The F-16 has a smaller radar cross section than an F-18, or F-15.
(Although once you hang all the external ordinance it can carry onto it, its no longer all that stealthy).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFY0VWGGFtM
The C and D block versions had further work done to reduce their radar cross sections.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Have copied this, and are using Antonovs for drones.
I was only half seriously noting that we seem to like to sell weapons hither and yon where it sometimes comes back to bite us in the butt.
That list seems a little longer than what you cite.
Egypt was the example on the tip of my mind.
How sure are you about Turkey in the next 25 years?
Pakistan has serious trust issues as far as I am concerned.
You always have the possibility of "accidental" "friendly fire" from Israel if it suits their agenda. It's happened before.
Any state in the Middle East could flip at a moment's notice.
Given 100 years of meddling in their internal affairs, and any state in Central or South America is a good candidate to give us a bloody nose if they can get in a cheap shot. Particularly if our influence wanes or we're distracted by some other quagmire.
But hey, if we don't sell these guys killing machines, someone else will. And reap the resulting influence and economic benefit.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Yeah, that's what we need. Teenage gamers who thnk they are playing an online game.
Starscream69 has killed RedBaron42.
RedBaron42: I'm on your team asshole!
StarScream69: u mad bro? lolz