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Pentagon Office Planning 'Avatar' Fighters and Fighter-Launched Drone Swarms (washingtonpost.com)
schwit1 writes: High over Alaska last summer, the Pentagon experimented with new, secret prototypes: Micro-drones that can be launched from the flare dispensers of moving F-16s and F/A-18 fighter jets. Canisters containing the tiny aircraft descended from the jets on parachutes before breaking open, allowing wings on each drone to swing out and catch the wind. Inch-wide propellers on the back provided propulsion as they found one another and created a swarm.
They must have figured the name SCO is available now.
Nope, no sig
life finds a way
Null0
The LAST thing we need is expanding military capability.
No, the last thing we need is people who think you should die for expressing your opinion having greater military capability. And the way to make that not worth it to them is to have countermeasures that are wildly more sophisticated than what they have to fight with. Small, non-manned tools like this REDUCE what we have to spend and deploy in any given scenario. And at the same time the technology lends itself to everything from fire fighting to wildlife monitoring in other venues. You're confusing tools with tool users. Just say it: you don't think it's appropriate to push back against groups like ISIS or regimes like North Korea's. Don't bother explaining why, since that's an irrational point of view and any attempt to justify it is going to be based on a broken world view. But at least just say what you mean, in plain language, and quit pretending that advances in technology are, in and of themselves, a bad thing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
comments here say this would be good counter to russian anti aircraft weapons, but real beneficiaries of drone swarm technologies, which are relatively cheap and easy to deploy(and will be ever more so as times goes on), and not that secret, will be smaller nations defending against bigger costlier high tech aircraft, missiles, and drones( and big ships at sea).
this would be another form of asymmetric warfare, like guerrilla and terrorist warfare.
in fact, biggest losers will be usa and nato.
Indeed. Release a drone from altitude and you don't technically even need to give it active propulsion, just active flight surfaces to control its glide. That said, with a glider or weak-powered craft, you are going to be fairly subject to winds. Then again, that only matters for some types of applications - it would be a problem for using them to conduct a ground attack or surveilance, but if you're using the drones as sort of a smart aerial "screen" against incoming missiles, maybe not.
Well the Tacit Rainbow project used very small jet engines I believe. I think that was sort of a big problem with that project in the 80s, the actual loiter time was much less than what was advertised so they did. But now drones loiter for 14 hours fully loaded, so I think the game has changed.
The war is in fact endless. It is part of being a human to do war.
It is like a medal - there are two sides of it - you want to have one you get the other one too. The wars of humanity will end with humanity.
This does not mean that we should not try to prevent war as much as possible but if we want to eradicate war and violence we will ultimately fail. Society that has refused violence and war and was at the same time not protected by another bigger and less peaceful does not exist long - attempts have been made, none were successful.
OC concentrating on war only is as silly as refusing to fight in any conditions. Leadership of NK is as delusional as leadership of today's Germany.
In words of a great poet of war: "Doing right ain't got no end" so there will always be war. Endless as you said.
Yep, we can always count on China to keep the sea lanes free and open.
TFA description doesn't mention the 'Avatar' details at all.
The swarms are cool, but the 'Avatar' program is with *full size* F-15, F-16, and F-18's that are autonomous drones that follow a lead pilot in an F-22 or F-35...from TFA:
This is also the future for Google's AI-cars, the actual practical application will be in long-haul trucking. AI will never replace human drivers...Google's cars with no steering wheel will never be implimented. However, we will see the self-driving car tech used in the same way as this aircraft application. One human-driven lead vehicle with AI drones following the human.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Now if we could only get the cool technology developed for something other than our war with Eastasia thanks.
Like the internet and GPS?
Not really. Take out the radar and the SAM systems are blind plus it still must be LOS for the target and the launcher. Plus how do you network them? RF? that gives away locations and can be jammed plus limited bandwidth if you are not in LOS. Fiber optic and or copper? Makes things a lot less mobile and fixed targets are easy to hit.
Also networked radar does not defeat stealth. Bi static might but again that is a complex problem.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Somebody needs to go and look up the definition of avatar.
The idea of recycling old jets into autonomous aircraft goes back many decades, the new part is putting AI in them, but suggesting there could still always be a man-in-the-middle is deceptive. It only works 100% if the jet can fly itself and make weapons fire decisions autonomously, that is not an avatar, that is the terminator, with wings.