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.

Comments

And the agency is called SCO

[drew_kime]

They must have figured the name SCO is available now.

Re: I routed for the Marines and the Colonel

[HumanWiki]

Null0

drone swarms not good for usa

[sittingnut]

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.

Re:Days of anti-aircraft missiles numbered

[bradrum]

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.

Full-size drone 'wing-man'

[globaljustin]

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:

One new project not previously reported is called Avatar, and calls for the Pentagon to pair high-tech “fifth-generation” fighter jets like the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with unmanned versions of older jets like the F-16 Fighting Falcon or F/A-18 Hornet, which would be flown without a pilot for the first time.

The Avatar effort was previously called Skyborg by SCO and is known as “the Loyal Wingman” concept in the Air Force, Roper said. The program will require unmanned fighters to act with enough autonomy that the pilot in the manned jet doesn’t have to direct them all the time.

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.

Avatars can be jammed, they really mean autonomous

[dsmatthews9379]

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.