Air Force Converts F-16 Jets Into Wingman Drones (businessinsider.com)

New submitter Zmobie writes: In a new program, the U.S. Air Force has converted and tested F-16 planes as drones that are able to fly with complex mission parameters. The program is designed to use retiring F-16 jets to act as autonomous "loyal wingman" for manned F-35 jets and fly their own strike missions. Business Insider reports: "The U.S. has used F-16 drones before as realistic targets for the F-35 to blow up in training, but on Monday it announced fully autonomous air-to-air and ground strike capabilities as a new capability thanks to joint research between the service and Lockheed Martin's legendary Skunkworks. [...] But having F-16 drones plan and fly their own missions is only part of a much larger picture. The future of the U.S. Air Force may well depend on advanced platforms like F-35s commanding fleets of unmanned drones which can act as additional ears, eyes, and shooters in the sky during battles." Further reading: TechCrunch, Popular Mechanics, Engadget

Comments

AF pilots are not re-enlisting

[turkeydance]

they leave for the airlines while the "getting is good" before drones take over.

Re:AF pilots are not re-enlisting

[sl3xd]

Flying in the Air Force has been seen as a stepping stone to flying airlines as long as I remember.

Being a military pilot has always been seen by many pilots as a way to accumulate a lot of flight time, which is the #1 requirement to be an airline pilot.

Re:AF pilots are not re-enlisting

[kenwd0elq]

General Claire Chennault, the commander of the American Volunteer Group - the 'Flying Tigers" - in China before WWII, said that aviation is long hours of sheer boredom, punctuated by short moments of stark terror. Or perhaps he was only talking about flying fighters.

Re:AF pilots are not re-enlisting

[arglebargle_xiv]

The U.S. has used F-16 drones before as realistic targets for the F-35 to blow up in training

Sorta like MS discontinuing support for new processors/chipsets in order to force people onto Win10, the Air Farce has finally figured out how to get the F-35 adopted: Destroy anything else that might compete with it so you don't have any choice.

Re:AF pilots are not re-enlisting

[Gussington]

General Claire Chennault, the commander of the American Volunteer Group - the 'Flying Tigers" - in China before WWII, said that aviation is long hours of sheer boredom, punctuated by short moments of stark terror. Or perhaps he was only talking about flying fighters.

My father was in the Air Force for 20 years. Him and every one I knew that he worked with were raging alcoholics (not officially, but it seems like that's all they did), so I reckon it's not just the fighter pilots.

Re:AF pilots are not re-enlisting

[Gussington]

Flying in the Air Force has been seen as a stepping stone to flying airlines as long as I remember.

Being a military pilot has always been seen by many pilots as a way to accumulate a lot of flight time, which is the #1 requirement to be an airline pilot.

My father was in the Air Force in the 70's, and even when I kid back then I remember thinking I'd grow up to be a fighter pilot then move on to commercial airlines. Alas I was too lazy and got into IT instead. Much better pay and conditions, just not the glamorous title. But I can live with that.

Re:AF pilots are not re-enlisting

[sl3xd]

Don't forget the unspoken occupational hazard of all flight crews: they get a lot more radiation exposure than any other occupation — far more than workers in nuclear energy. The levels for flight crews are well above the levels allowed for nuclear work — and its unregulated because it's not something anybody can mitigate without banning flying altogether.

F-35 Control and Command

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume the F-35's can even get airborne.

Not a good assumption.

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[bobbied]

Oh they fly, sometimes.... But as it stands they cannot even fire the gun with the current software..

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[dbIII]

You assume the F-35's can even get airborne.

So long as it's not a hot day or not raining they seem to be getting into the air at times :)
I wonder if the story about one of them inverting when it few over the date line is true or was a joke.

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[Opportunist]

Oh they fly, sometimes....

...in whole or in part, certain restrictions apply, warranty void if exposed to oxygen...

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[Highdude702]

If O2 voids the warranty, O3 must make them explode..

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume the F-35's can even get airborne.

Not a good assumption.

You do realize there are already over 200 F-35s built, flying normal training missions on a daily basis, don't you?

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[Opportunist]

Read the fine print, it said Oxygen. Not what configuration thereof. That qualifies for O2, O3, H2O, H2SO4...

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[Rei]

Slashdot, the eternal home of F-35 trolling.

Concerning this particular story, I actually called it a while back. It's a logical extension. The F-35 is focused about bringing a revolution not so much due to its physical design, but the level of fault-tolerant integrated information awareness that it brings to the battlefield. Having drone "wingmen" which are cheaper and not as stealthy but carry more sensors and payload to the battlefield is a natural way to augment the F-35's capabilities. At the same time it helps overcome one of the main weaknesses of drones - the ability to jam them (the main reason that humans are still considered important). When EW isn't in play, the "wingmen" can be kept at significant distance from lead craft, reducing the risk of exposing them; on the other hand, in the case of loss of signal, they can close ranks and improve the gain (since each craft, before loss of signal, knew the locations and flight plan / mission at the time of loss of signal).

It's really a natural synergy.

These days, there's nothing about stealth that makes a craft "invulnerable"; stealth craft can be targeted and hit, and the ability to do so keeps improving. But it comes at costs. Radar systems have to be shorter range and/or larger and more powerful (harder to move/conceal and easier to target), and are more sensitive to weather. The locks you get are poor, making it not just harder to get a usable lock, but increasing the effectiveness of countermeasures. Conversely, IRST and LIDAR can offer detection of stealth aircraft at good distance if you know right where to look, or short distances if you don't, but not both at the same time. And there are physical limits (aperture) in this regard, not just sensor / processing limits. And sensors are already highly chilled, so it's not like you can mimic an improved aperture by improving the signal to noise ratio with better cooling. It all comes down to how many photons you're receiving.

Countermeasures will continue to advance, and the vulnerability level will slowly tick up - but a stealth aircraft always starts out with an advantage in that measure. To top it off, F-35, by virtue of its relatively small size, is more innately resistant to advances in anti-stealth technologies than larger systems that have to rely more heavily on shape and materials technology to gain an equivalent level of stealth.

There's a long laundry list of things people are going to want to add to F-35 with time, and I know varying people will always complain about random things from the list that it doesn't have at present. And one by one, they'll trickle in. F-35 is not meant to be an endpoint, but a starting point.

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[bugs2squash]

That explains why in a galaxy far, far away with much more advanced technology than we have, no-one can hit shit with a weapon.

Re:F-35 Control and Command

[Gussington]

That explains why in a galaxy far, far away with much more advanced technology than we have, no-one can hit shit with a weapon.

To be fair that was along time ago. In that same galaxy today, all the humans are all already dead, as the AI was far, far superior in battle.

Oh hell yeah!

[rickb928]

F-16s aren't so obsolete because of the airframe or performance so much as avionics and weapons systems.

So 'upgrade' them to drone management, free them from the G-force limits of human pilots in the cockpit, and boom!

If they become part of a hive mind, so much the better!

Re:Oh hell yeah!

[Rei]

I wonder how much you could realistically lighten a F-16 with a drone conversion.

Re:Oh hell yeah!

[Big Hairy Ian]

I wonder how much you could realistically lighten a F-16 with a drone conversion.

Surely the Rebels should do this! Have you seen how fat some of their fighter pilots are?

Re:Oh hell yeah!

[johanw]

Who cares how fat a rebel pilot is? They ony have to sit in a chair anyway, they don't have to be athletes.

Re:Oh hell yeah!

[The Grim Reefer]

Who cares how fat a rebel pilot is? They ony have to sit in a chair anyway, they don't have to be athletes.

When pulling high G's, yes you really do need to be an athlete and not a blob.

Re:Oh hell yeah!

[barc0001]

> If they become part of a hive mind, so much the better!

Macross Plus was supposed to be a warning, not a howto.

Re:Oh hell yeah!

[kenwd0elq]

And, the aircraft is capable of higher G-forces than the pilot can withstand.

No

[phantomfive]

The future of the U.S. Air Force may well depend on advanced platforms like F-35s commanding fleets of unmanned drones which can act as additional ears, eyes, and shooters in the sky during battles."

That works great until there is a jammer. In other words, it works fine against small, overpowered nations against whom there are already a myriad of options.

Re:No

[Aighearach]

Yes indeed, Mr. Harry Potter, I'm sure they never imagined you would have a jammer spell. Those defense engineers are so dreamy!

Re:No

[HeckRuler]

Obviously we just need autonomous kill bots that can operate in aggressive electronic warfare environments. Can't jam standing order stored locally. And with shielding they can even survive these little guys.

What could possibly go wrong?

Re:No

[ShanghaiBill]

That works great until there is a jammer.

When jammed, a drone will compete its last mission.

In other words, it works fine against small, overpowered nations against whom there are already a myriad of options.

Nearly any plausible scenario has the US going up against small, overpowered nations.

The only non-allies with sophisticated capabilities are Russia and China, which both have nukes. Conflict with either of them will mean exchanging ICBMs, not fiddling around with drones.

Re:No

[Opportunist]

You might remember that there already have been a few wars since 1945. You can quite quickly face an equal or near-equal enemy in a proxy war.

Or even face an actual enemy with modern gear if the US (or this time someone else, it's not like other nations can't be dumb) is stupid enough to sell them, like 1979 to Iran.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

From the system requirements section: "Always-on Internet connection required for software license verification by Raytheon."

Re:No

[sg_oneill]

That works great until there is a jammer. In other words, it works fine against small, overpowered nations against whom there are already a myriad of options.

Back in my uni days I remember asking a physicist friend how an emp device would work. He flipped over a piece of paper drew a relative simple (20-30 components, a few of which would need to be fairly large capacitors and fairly large coils) that would take out all the electronics in about a 30-40m range. He said anyone who knew their engineering could work it out, and theres not really an upper limit to scaling the things up.

The point is, I'm kind of surprised small and non state actors havent already tried to use these against UAVs. It seems like the kind of engineering problem whos answer to problems only ever would need to be "More juice".

Re:No

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The upper limit is the caps, not the juice. It's hard to get big enough caps to really affect UAVs. Especially since military UAVs are resilient to EMPs

Re:No

[ganv]

I think it is pretty hard to disrupt a drone that was designed to withstand EMP. It doesn't take a very heavy conducting shield to protect integrated circuits. And the penetration depth means it is exponential decay inside the shielding so you can't overcome it by simply using "more juice" unless you can create exponentially more juice. Jamming communication might be more effective. But autonomous systems are not so dependent on communication. And there are counter-measures to most common jamming methods. In short, the main vulnerability of drone air forces seems to be cost to engineer and build robust survivable drones. And I fear that vulnerability is not going to be enough to keep them from becoming very common.

Re:No

[Sarten-X]

There isn't a hard limit in physics for an EMP, but the inverse-square law and easy hardening techniques will make the required power (and thus the cost) get out of hand pretty quickly, unless you start deploying mankind's most compact and inexpensive power sources: nukes. Those will get you an EMP, but being the first nation in 50 years to use them in warfare will bring a new kind of political hell that you really don't want to defend against.

Re:No

[phantomfive]

but being the first nation in 50 years to use them in warfare will bring a new kind of political hell that you really don't want to defend against.

So that's an interesting question.......what do you think would happen if a country used nukes? It would probably depend on which country used them........

Re:No

[Rei]

That's exactly it. You keep distance when jamming isn't an issue and you close ranks when it's problematic. The closer you are, the higher the gain.

Even with a complete loss of signal, the drone knows where you last were and your last flight plan, so it's not going to get lost from you.

Re:No

[Rei]

A pre-assigned mission is great when you have something pre-assigned, rather than providing support or searching for targets of opportunity. And when the target isn't at risk of moving. And when there's a predictable and unimposing threat picture to deal with. Etc.

But you're absolutely right that a craft can carry out a "rote" mission on its own without any need for external communications.

Re:No

[johanw]

Or maybe when the Russians get pissed off enough by the US they will sell sophisticated air defense systems to all enemies of the US that face invasion. And then just wait until the US runs out of cruise missles or money to build them, whichever comes first.

Re:No

[johnsmithperson123]

Considering the fate of the last several top of the line Russian/Soviet air defense systems, probably not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:No

[necro81]

You might remember that there already have been a few wars since 1945.

Correction: turns out 1945 was the last time we officially were at war. At least, if you're talking about how how it pertains to the Constitution.

Korea: just some misadventure by the 38th parallel. War never actually declared.

Vietnam: just some misadventure on the Mekong. War never actually declared. I think this movie summed it up best: Bob Hope doesn't play at police actions.

Cold War: a convenient shorthand for simmering tensions between two nuclear-capable factions. War definitely not declared.

All those fun and games we had down in Central and South America? That's just the military and intelligence agencies off at summer camp. War never declared.

Remember that time when we put the beatdown on Saddam Hussein because he invaded Kuwait? Nope, not a war.

You better believe we would never go to war to stop a genocide in the Balkans.

Remember that other time we put the beatdown on Saddam Hussein, because he supposedly had weapons of mass destruction? That wasn't a war either. Can you believe it?!

And the gift that keeps on giving in Afghanistan? We still haven't gotten around to declaring that a war.

Now, I'll grant you - those last two were A-OK due to an authorization for the use of military force. I'm not sure what Iraq had to do with 9/11, but G.W. can't be wrong.

Still, it ain't a war unless Congress says so.

Isn't it?

Re:No

[Gr8Apes]

And then just wait until the US runs out of cruise missles or money to build them, whichever comes first.

Already lost the money battle as the USSR which caused them to dissolve. The first will not occur. Study history or be doomed to repeat it.

Re:No

[Ol Olsoc]

Back in my uni days I remember asking a physicist friend how an emp device would work. He flipped over a piece of paper drew a relative simple (20-30 components, a few of which would need to be fairly large capacitors and fairly large coils) that would take out all the electronics in about a 30-40m range. He said anyone who knew their engineering could work it out, and theres not really an upper limit to scaling the things up.

The point is, I'm kind of surprised small and non state actors havent already tried to use these against UAVs. It seems like the kind of engineering problem whos answer to problems only ever would need to be "More juice".

Hardened components and builds. These EMP devices can work pretty well against commercial and unhardened equipment, but when you know someone is going to try this, you prepare accordingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Now the biggie in EMP isn't discharging a big cap, it's discharging a thermonuclear device. The major problem again is that EMP pulse, unless you are lucky enough to be where you catch a serious radiation pulse - you are likely to have more problems than that in that case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:No

[Ol Olsoc]

I think it is pretty hard to disrupt a drone that was designed to withstand EMP. It doesn't take a very heavy conducting shield to protect integrated circuits. And the penetration depth means it is exponential decay inside the shielding so you can't overcome it by simply using "more juice" unless you can create exponentially more juice.

Don't forget that the integrated circuits in such a device are probably going to be built a little differently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Silicon on insulator or Sapphire is used.

Re:No

[Ol Olsoc]

but being the first nation in 50 years to use them in warfare will bring a new kind of political hell that you really don't want to defend against.

So that's an interesting question.......what do you think would happen if a country used nukes? It would probably depend on which country used them........

Odds are that we will find out in a few years. This has a bit to do with the current occupant, and a bit to do with that we simply have them. It will probably be involved with being backed into a corner, so bring out the toys.

Re:No

[supremebob]

Come on... anyone who's watched Futurama knows that you send waves of waves of your own men against the kill bots until they reach their programmed maximum kill count and shut down!

Re:No

[SScorpio]

It wasn't a programmed maximum kill count, it was a kill count buffer overflow.

Re:No

[ShanghaiBill]

Already lost the money battle as the USSR which caused them to dissolve.

Indeed.
Russia's economy is smaller than Italy's.
It is about the same size as the economy of Texas.
Compared to China, Russia's economy is smaller than the economy of just the greater Shanghai conurbation.

Russia is not going to win a spending contest with America.

Re:No

[Opportunist]

War is like porn. I know it when I see it. Call it what you want, but painting shit white won't make it smell like roses.

Re:No

[Gussington]

That works great until there is a jammer. In other words, it works fine against small, overpowered nations against whom there are already a myriad of options.

The whole idea of AI is that you don't need constant communication. Load mission parameters before takeoff, set and forget. Nothing you can think of mid flight can't be thought about pre-flight.

the obvious path toward future warfare

[ganv]

This is the obvious path toward future warfare. F-16s are just an easy transition technology. The real goal is many small drones with a smaller but still redundant number of support and control craft. A future air force that can tolerate significant losses because drones are cheap and don't have families, is much more powerful than current air forces as it can overwhelm most existing defenses. The main question is whether such a system can be reliable and cost effective. The network, control, and autonomous maneuvering technology are mostly in existence. We can't yet build them at scale in a reliable and cost-effective way, but that should be coming soon. The problem with a transformational new military technology like this is that inevitably someone overestimates the superiority it gives them and we end up with a major war.

Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[TWX]

So back when the US Postal Service decided to retire the postal jeep in favor of the Grumman LLV, rather than offer them for sale they decided to have them crushed. They played both sides of the argument. When asked why they were being retired they said because they were no longer good for delivery, and when they were asked why they were being crushed instead of sold they said that they didn't want the competition buying and using them. So they were too good to sell, and too bad to leave intact?

This point with the F16 and other airforce aircraft strikes me the same way. "X is too poor an aircraft for modern missions." "X is useful as a drone aircraft with no pilot." Which is it? I mean, we're in an era where asymmetric warfare is the norm. If we were specifically geared-up to fight the Soviet Union throughout eastern Europe then perhaps the weapons systems that we currently have might be getting obsolete against what Russia has in the pipeline, or even against potential adversaries like the Chinese, but we're generally fighting opponents that use consumer-grade drones to drop handgrenades on their opponents, or against opponents that don't even have what we would consider to be proper uniforms or unit structure. It seems a little silly to declare existing technology obsolete when it's meeting the needs.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Opportunist]

Well, if you were selling the F-16, that would most certainly cut into the F-35 sales. Consider: For one F-35 that may or may not ever be actually battle worthy, you could get 5 F-16 that have proven time and again that they are.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Tinsoldier314]

Your premise that, "X is too poor an aircraft for modern missions." "X is useful as a drone aircraft with no pilot." makes sense when you consider the risk of losing the most valuable thing, the pilots. Your premise framed another way, "X poses too high a risk for pilot loss in modern missions" and "X with no pilot can continue to provide value at low risk".

Personally, I love the idea of using older platforms as meat shields in the worst case and cheap force augmentations in the best. For missions where the F16 would've been just fine, we can continue to use it without fear of putting pilots in danger.

I just don't see a downside.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[JeffOwl]

How about "X is too poor an aircraft when it comes to high threat environments in which to risk the life of a pilot."

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Rei]

You know, this didn't even occur to me.. that drone wingmen might not just be sensor and force augmentation, but dogfighters. But my understanding is that auto-dogfighting is actually getting very good these days, so the ability to auto-dogfight without G-limits is no insignificant argument in favour of the conversion.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Gr8Apes]

You know, this didn't even occur to me.. that drone wingmen might not just be sensor and force augmentation, but dogfighters. But my understanding is that auto-dogfighting is actually getting very good these days, so the ability to auto-dogfight without G-limits is no insignificant argument in favour of the conversion.

And then you add smaller compact and dense drones, and very soon you wind up with the ultimate drone

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Ol Olsoc]

Personally, I love the idea of using older platforms as meat shields in the worst case and cheap force augmentations in the best. For missions where the F16 would've been just fine, we can continue to use it without fear of putting pilots in danger.

I just don't see a downside.

You are using the better plane as the"meat shield". The F-35 is one size fits all by committee design, and just like an Escalade pickup, or Honda Ridgeline, doesn't perform any task very well. A tactic like this, where it is protected by a lot of other planes might be it's best use.

I'll take an Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrttt! any day over this.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Tinsoldier314]

You are using the better plane as the"meat shield". The F-35 is one size fits all by committee design, and just like an Escalade pickup, or Honda Ridgeline, doesn't perform any task very well. A tactic like this, where it is protected by a lot of other planes might be it's best use.

I'll take an Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrttt! any day over this.

Even if better plane being is used as the "meat shield" that doesn't change anything. If the F-16 drones end up doing all the work, the pilot will still be protected in the definitely better stealth of the F-35 and if a piloted plane needs be in close proximity then it makes sense to put the pilot in the safer plane. Even if it was a piloted F-16 guarded by two autonomous F-16s, it's a great idea. Just because I used the phrase "meat shield" doesn't mean the only purpose of the F-16 was to die, it provides the most value when it survives and the drone is able to deliver the payloads effectively and return.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Ol Olsoc]

Even if better plane being is used as the "meat shield" that doesn't change anything. If the F-16 drones end up doing all the work, the pilot will still be protected in the definitely better stealth of the F-35 and if a piloted plane needs be in close proximity then it makes sense to put the pilot in the safer plane.

It's making an assumption that the F-35 is the safer plane. Always look for the weak link. Take out the weak link, and you are working your way toward air superiority.

The top brass has a saying that we are always ready for the last war. And no one listens. We are wonderfully prepared for extremely asymmetrical warfare. We can beat the living shit out of peopel living in the middle ages. Let's just pat ourselves on teh back, and declare ourselves the winner, world without end, amen.

Meanwhile, this completely ignores that there are countries that are our technological equals. A lot of people like to brag that it is the Russians, but they don't have the economic clout at the moment. Regardless, we're living in a fool's paradise if we think that we are the top we will remain at the top, and will always be the top.

And there is an interesting little twist. The United States has become extremely anti-science. and what happens with anti science nations is that they might spend like all hell, but if those pinko scientists and their whacky global warming and billions of years old universe malarky is banned, the new stuff that allows for continued military superiority is hindered. Just sayin' because I have no idea what Im taling about. Even if it was a piloted F-16 guarded by two autonomous F-16s, it's a great idea. Just because I used the phrase "meat shield" doesn't mean the only purpose of the F-16 was to die, it provides the most value when it survives and the drone is able to deliver the payloads effectively and return.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[david_thornley]

Anti-science typically means anti-science-that-doesn't-involve-killing-people-and-breaking-stuff. Declining empires tend to hang on to military capability for a long time.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Ol Olsoc]

Anti-science typically means anti-science-that-doesn't-involve-killing-people-and-breaking-stuff. Declining empires tend to hang on to military capability for a long time.

But things happen pretty quickly these days. And we never know where the big discovery will come from.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[david_thornley]

I think the next big discovery is a lot less likely to come from the US than it was a few years ago.

Re:Reminded of the argument about postal jeeps

[Ol Olsoc]

I think the next big discovery is a lot less likely to come from the US than it was a few years ago.

You aren't kidding. Now that we've decided that the laws of physics can be invalidated by a simple majority vote, science is going to be stifled. You never know what research will be politically offensive.

Didn't we already have a movie about this...

[thejynxed]

...if I recall, one of those autonomous drones got hit by lightning, went haywire and decided it wanted to blow up all sorts of things.

Re:Didn't we already have a movie about this...

[bobbied]

Number 5 is .... Alive!

Not malfunction, not malfunction...

Re:Didn't we already have a movie about this...

[desdinova 216]

I was thinking more likely http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03...

Re:Didn't we already have a movie about this...

[Ol Olsoc]

...if I recall, one of those autonomous drones got hit by lightning, went haywire and decided it wanted to blow up all sorts of things.

Yeah - well that kinda falls under the "cool story bro" movies division. Aircraft are hit by lightning fairly often - apparently once per year per aircraft - whacky metric, so a lot are hit multiple times.

Last time a plane had a know lightning hit big problem was in 1967. Now it's just a pucker string moment. https://www.scientificamerican...

Re:Didn't we already have a movie about this...

[Ol Olsoc]

Number 5 is .... Alive!

Not malfunction, not malfunction...

Gotta admit, Stephanie had pretty nice software.

Implication

[Dunbal]

So the Pentagon finally realized that the F-35 is SO bad it needs an F-16 escort? And what's the logic behind sending a non stealthy aircraft as wingman for a stealthy one?

Re:Implication

[bobbied]

The F35 isn't all that stealthy.... It's better than the F-16, but the F-16 shows up on radar like a 100W light bulb in a small dark room so that's not saying much. The stealth really just makes it slightly harder to shoot down with a radar guided weapon and those are hardly ever used when you are close. Usually the weapon of choice is IR tracker guided, which is *really* hard to defat using stealth and flares are pretty effective countermeasure....

I've always thought it was funny when the DOD tried to sell the F35 as necessary because it was stealthy... For close air support, who cares about stealth? Yea it helps you in the air to air world or ground to air (i.e. it helps you get to and from the target) but if you have air superiority and stay above 10,000 feet going to and from the battle lines it's not going to help your survival rate that much. If you don't have Air superiority and you are flying ground attack close air support missions, you are going about this all wrong. Personally, give me an F-18 and the ordnance load it carries over stealth thank you, and buy a pile of F-22's to fly CAP over the area shooting at anything flying w/o the proper IFF codes for the day.

The F35 is proof that you cannot make an aircraft that does everything well and if you try to make one that does everything equally well, you end up with one that does nothing well that costs you a lot of money. It's a jack of all trades, but master of none.

Re:Implication

[lgw]

So the Pentagon finally realized that the F-35 is SO bad it needs an F-16 escort? And what's the logic behind sending a non stealthy aircraft as wingman for a stealthy one?

The F-35 isn't particularly stealthy in the strategic sense, it's just hard to get a missile lock on. If anything, the F-16s will ensure no missile locks onto the F-35 until the F-16s are used up.

The F-35 has nifty radar that lets it target an enemy without the enemy being able to just home on the radar. The F-16s have never been given that - the avionics are pretty old. While I doubt this is the case, it's theoretically possible for the F-35s to identify targets and the F-16s only turn on their radars when they have a missile in flight.

Mostly though, I think the F-16s are just seen as expendable at this point, but they're still high performance missile platforms and so why not get some use out of them. Of course, yes, this is an admission that the F-35 isn't going to get the job done by itself.

Well, that's not new....

[bobbied]

I worked at a place that converted F-4's into radio controlled drones way back in the 80's.... Of course, the idea was for them to tow targets to train the anti-aircraft gun crews and missile testing, but the idea is not new.

Re:It will work when the Software is Finished.

[bobbied]

The F35 is defiantly a failed IT project... The current software barely lets the thing fly... Forget any weapons.... Oh no, that's planned for a couple of software revisions from now... In programming terms... We haven't figured out how we are going to do that yet, so we don't know how long it will take or if it's even possible on the hardware we have...

Seriously, this software development program is in serious trouble. We will be lucky if they get it flying well before its hardware goes obsolete..

Kinda defeats the purpose

[OYAHHH]

Defeats the purpose of a F-35 doesn't it? Let's build a super stealthy aircraft and then have multiple none stealthy aircraft going into battle with it. Basically the F-16s will be saying, "There is an F-35 in the neighborhood, look harder and you will find it.

Re:Kinda defeats the purpose

[dunkelfalke]

F-35 is not super stealthy, or it wouldn't be exported, like it happened with F-22.

Re:Kinda defeats the purpose

[rocket rancher]

Defeats the purpose of a F-35 doesn't it? Let's build a super stealthy aircraft and then have multiple none stealthy aircraft going into battle with it. Basically the F-16s will be saying, "There is an F-35 in the neighborhood, look harder and you will find it.

You have a point...almost. The *exact* same argument was used way back in the Dark Ages (1970-1990) when the US DoD was struggling to find a way, any way, to counter the increasing numerical gap and decreasing technological gap between US forces and Soviet forces. One just had to look at a sitrep from the Fulda Gap in southern Germany -- Warsaw Pact had 270 Soviet tank divisions and 4500 aircraft vs NATO's meager 115 divisions and 1500 aircraft -- to see that the balance of military power was tilted very heavily in the USSR's favor. The Sovs could suffer nearly 3:1 losses and still win the day.

The were two ways that the US decided to address the imbalance. The first and most (in)famous was the development and deployment of tactical nukes into Germany. Truly not a good idea. Once it leaked to the press that the Americans had decided that nuking Germany was ok to stop the Russians, PR was so bad that they had to be withdrawn, with a serious loss of face for the Americans.

The second was the development of "force multipliers." The deployment of multi-role combat aircraft like the F-16 in the 70s and F-18 in the 80s that could engage targets in the air or on the ground was one way of addressing Russia's 3:1 advantage.

Another force multiplayer (and the reason why you are not quite right) was the development and deployment of airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) that could detect and direct NATO's numerically inferior assets to converge on incoming Soviet assets. NATO didn't have to have numerical parity if it could determine where the axis of attack was and direct resources to meet it. This (it turned out) was a huge win for NATO. The Westinghouse radar on the E-3A AWACS could see for a radius of 600 miles and could easily discriminate between ground and air targets. But the take away here is that its range meant it could sit well behind the forward edge of battle, effectively immune from counter attack.

Yes, as you point out, and as AWACS detractors forty years ago pointed out, the enemy knows it's there. But knowing it's there and being able to do something about it are two different things. Seriously -- a stealthy F-35 is not going to be your priority target when it is the easier-to-see and (probably) easier-to-kill F-16 that is raining hell on your infrastructure.

Re:Kinda defeats the purpose

[Gussington]

Defeats the purpose of a F-35 doesn't it? Let's build a super stealthy aircraft and then have multiple none stealthy aircraft going into battle with it. Basically the F-16s will be saying, "There is an F-35 in the neighborhood, look harder and you will find it.

You know you don't always have to have a F35 present with every F16. The price of the F16 means you can have hundreds of them in the air flying decoy sorties, while the real mission utilises the F35's

Re:Top Gun 2!!!

[neoRUR]

More Like "Top Drone"...

Looks like Stealth predicted the future

[Jzanu]

Good near future sci-fi flick turns out to predict technology a decade later.

Re:Top Gun 2!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

All female cast, just like the Ghostbusters reboot.

Clever move

[manu0601]

Next step is a grounded F35 used as a control center for unmanned F16. That will fix the numerous F35 issues.

Re:Clever move

[PrimaryConsult]

Try to build wraith, end up building command center. Sounds legit!

Meanwhile all you needed to do was research cloak for your Banshees (A10s).

Heh, F-35s are that bad, eh?

[fustakrakich]

They need protection by the aircraft they're supposed to replace?

Re:It will work when the Software is Finished.

[Highdude702]

maybe they should hire musk to fix it since LHM cant do it apparently

Half the *required* software open source, Walmart

[raymorris]

> The network, control, and autonomous maneuvering technology are mostly in existence.

And available at Best Buy. Hobby drones can be programmed with a mission amd sent to go fly it autonomously. Hobby drones can accept updates in flight. They have "return to home" failure modes. Many of them are based on an opensource software package that does most of what a military drone would need to do, and is modular so new capabilities can be added fairly easily.

Now where did they get that idea?

[Solandri]

The program is designed to use retiring F-16 jets to act as autonomous "loyal wingman" for manned F-35 jets

I wonder what the guy who came up with this idea used to do as a kid...

Sounds good until it shoots ME

[RubberDogBone]

The F-16 is a fantastic plane. Effective, fast, and cheap as hell. Why we don't have swams of the damn things I don't understand. It can match or beat 90% of the things our opponents fly, and for the remaining 10%, we could continue to use the F/A-18, F-15 and the F-22 and F35s that we have on hand.

If we lack pilots for the F-16, making them autonomous sounds great. They are a cheap platform, $20 million or so each. Which is one quarter to one sixth as much as an F-35. At six-to-one costs, flood the damn skies with the things. Even if the enemy shoots some down, overwhelm them in numbers and let the F-35s make easy kills.

Just keep the sharp end aimed over thataway, thanks

OK, you made me spit tea out my nose.

[tlambert]

F16s are obsolete because Americans pilots are too big for the cockpits.

OK, you made me spit tea out my nose.

throw out the one advantage

[stealth_finger]

So the only thing the F35 really has going for it over current jets is the 'stealthy' aspect, which is completely negated flying next to an f16. I wonder how many falcons you can get for the cost of one lightning.

Does anyone else

[kilodelta]

Get a foreboding vision of SkyNet out of all this?

What can go wrong?

[fgouget]

Somehow this reminds me of something...

Re:Old jets

[DreadCthulhu]

With a drone, you can get by with much less maintenance since with no pilot, you can have a much higher acceptable failure rate. That changes the cost equations massively.

So much wrong with this...

[bradley13]

The F-16 is a pretty decent fighter. However, using it as a drone attached to an F-35 doesn't make a lot of sense. Just off the top of my head:

- The F-16 is designed for a human pilot. All the systems and design put around accommodating a human make the F-16 a damned expensive drone. It's also much bigger than it needs to be. Finally, the the airframe and general design stops at what a human can tolerate. A purpose-built fighter drone could have massively better performance (for example, higher G's).

- Pilot overload: There's no realistic way that an F-35 pilot in hot airspace is going to have time to manage drones. So either he isn't in hot airspace - in which case he just as well stay on the ground, and let a drone-expert manage the F-16. Or he *is* in hot airspace, has no time for the drones, and lets a drone-expert manage the F-16.

It sounds like they're trying to give this drone a lot of autonomy. I'm not worried about Skynet (not yet, anyway), but do we really want to put life-and-death decisions in the hands of a half-assed AI? "Go blow up that target". A pilot can at least theoretically notice that the target has been misidentified, and isn't a tank but actually school bus. Also: too much push-button death leads to stupid strategies. Reference: All the drone attacks the US has carried out in the Middle East, and the apparent indifference to civilian casualties.

Finally, expensive technology like this is part of the reason that the US military budget is astronomically high. If I were a US taxpayer, I think I'd be annoyed at spending so much money on expensive toys. The F-35 is already a boondoggle; this is just boondoggle icing on the cake.

Re:So much wrong with this...

[jittles]

- The F-16 is designed for a human pilot. All the systems and design put around accommodating a human make the F-16 a damned expensive drone. It's also much bigger than it needs to be. Finally, the the airframe and general design stops at what a human can tolerate.

My understanding is that the F-16 is perfectly capable of exceeding a 9G turn, it is the pilots who are not capable. I could be wrong about this, but even if it cannot exceed a 9G turn, it can likely keep itself in that turn much longer than a human would be able to endure. So perhaps not a total waste, and certainly better than just scrapping them.

jamming

[micahraleigh]

Can't our enemies just jam the GPS / comm signals? (like Iran did under Obama)

So

[BitztreamNotARealNam]

How's life in the hypocrite lane?

Only one word

[CmdrTamale]

Watchbird

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29579/29579-h/29579-h.htm