If a drone jet aircraft can withstand g-forces that no human could, why doesn’t the military develop a pilotless fighter jet?
https://www.quora.com/If-a-drone-jet-aircraft-can-withstand-g-forces-that-no-human-could-why-doesnt-the-military-develop-a-pilotless-fighter-jet
It’d be the structural limit of what it was made from. I imagine that 40 G’s or so wouldn’t be too difficult to manage. One of the problems would be the gyroscopic precessional forces on the jet engine though when turning at that rate. There’d also be a huge amount of aerodynamic drag in a turn like that, with an associated loss of speed.
Tau.Neutrino said:
If a drone jet aircraft can withstand g-forces that no human could, why doesn’t the military develop a pilotless fighter jet?
https://www.quora.com/If-a-drone-jet-aircraft-can-withstand-g-forces-that-no-human-could-why-doesnt-the-military-develop-a-pilotless-fighter-jet
Would there be any point?
Fighters and attack planes are primarily weapons platforms, taking weapons to where they can be employed. Attack planes take bombs and missiles to use against surface targets, fighters have missiles and guns to use against other aircraft.
If you just want to deliver a certain amount of explosion/damage to a certain point, then there’s already ‘pilotless aircraft. Surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles. But,they’re a bit limited.
The main advantage of piloted planes is the persons controlling them. They’re instantly and infinitely re-programmable, and can act autonomously, as the occasion demands.
The infamous British Defence White Paper of 1957 predicted that no new piloted aircraft would be needed in the future, and a number of promsing programmes were immediately halted. They felt that missiles could take over all of the roles that aircraft filled.
After a couple of years, the UK govt quietly revised their opinion about that.
So, it’s been tried, and found to be wanting.
captain_spalding said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
If a drone jet aircraft can withstand g-forces that no human could, why doesn’t the military develop a pilotless fighter jet?
https://www.quora.com/If-a-drone-jet-aircraft-can-withstand-g-forces-that-no-human-could-why-doesnt-the-military-develop-a-pilotless-fighter-jetWould there be any point?
Fighters and attack planes are primarily weapons platforms, taking weapons to where they can be employed. Attack planes take bombs and missiles to use against surface targets, fighters have missiles and guns to use against other aircraft.
If you just want to deliver a certain amount of explosion/damage to a certain point, then there’s already ‘pilotless aircraft. Surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles. But,they’re a bit limited.
The main advantage of piloted planes is the persons controlling them. They’re instantly and infinitely re-programmable, and can act autonomously, as the occasion demands.
The infamous British Defence White Paper of 1957 predicted that no new piloted aircraft would be needed in the future, and a number of promsing programmes were immediately halted. They felt that missiles could take over all of the roles that aircraft filled.
After a couple of years, the UK govt quietly revised their opinion about that.
So, it’s been tried, and found to be wanting.
The time’s be a changing though. Drones that are either fully or partly or not autonomous are rapidly growing in numbers. Why put an expensive pilot & aircraft in harm’s way when you can get a drone to do the same or maybe even better job at a far lower cost.
Spiny Norman said:
The time’s be a changing though. Drones that are either fully or partly or not autonomous are rapidly growing in numbers. Why put an expensive pilot & aircraft in harm’s way when you can get a drone to do the same or maybe even better job at a far lower cost.
If we’re going to have people-controlled drones doing all of the fighting, then you’ll need some really sophisticated comms-and-control systems for managing dozens, hundreds, even thousands of drones in the air at the same time. With a pilot, that’s not necessary to the same scale.
If we have fully-autonomous drones, then we run into the same problems with coping with ‘ethics questions as with driverless cars e.g. do i hit the old lady on the pedestrian crossing, or crash into the loaded school-bus?’
Or ‘ís it really ok to bomb and strafe this column of refugees?’. Machines may not be able to ask or answer that kind of question.
Need to take into account the changing nature of air warfare.
The old paradigm of sending up fighters to engage in close air to air combat is a bit outdated, as is the idea of massed numbers of slow bombers being escorted to the target by friendly fighters. More and more attack and bombing is going to done by smart and stealthy cruise missiles with ranges in the hundreds of km. The missiles will launch well away from the target area and will fly to target and hit with great accuracy. Flying manned bombers deep into enemy territory may not be required, nor will escort fighters, so the defending fighters might not have much dog fighting to do. What they will need to do is to be able to locate and destroy the cruise missiles using long range air-to-air missiles. These missiles will have smart targeting and homing technology too. You can always build a missile more agile than a plane.
Never trust the machine
wookiemeister said:
Never trust the machine
Bu always trust your instruments.
similarly, despite the doom predictions of robots taking over all our jobs, the latest news
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-26/sa-among-worst-hit-by-20m-jobs-lost-globally-to-robots/11245092?section=technology
is that they are set to take 0.6% of jobs globally
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—-dgreports/—-dcomm/—-publ/documents/publication/wcms_202326.pdf
which should be about 6% if we talk only about manufacturing
SCIENCE said:
similarly, despite the doom predictions of robots taking over all our jobs, the latest newshttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-26/sa-among-worst-hit-by-20m-jobs-lost-globally-to-robots/11245092?section=technology
is that they are set to take 0.6% of jobs globally
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—-dgreports/—-dcomm/—-publ/documents/publication/wcms_202326.pdf
which should be about 6% if we talk only about manufacturing
Think about how ridiculous it is that a labour saving device is a source of gloom.
“Tharg! Me invent bow and arrow!”
“Great, now we’re all fucked.”
dv said:
SCIENCE said:
similarly, despite the doom predictions of robots taking over all our jobs, the latest newshttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-26/sa-among-worst-hit-by-20m-jobs-lost-globally-to-robots/11245092?section=technology
is that they are set to take 0.6% of jobs globally
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—-dgreports/—-dcomm/—-publ/documents/publication/wcms_202326.pdf
which should be about 6% if we talk only about manufacturing
Think about how ridiculous it is that a labour saving device is a source of gloom.
“Tharg! Me invent bow and arrow!”
“Great, now we’re all fucked.”
but… but the modern bow and arrow, the AR-15,
dv said:
SCIENCE said:
similarly, despite the doom predictions of robots taking over all our jobs, the latest newshttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-26/sa-among-worst-hit-by-20m-jobs-lost-globally-to-robots/11245092?section=technology
is that they are set to take 0.6% of jobs globally
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—-dgreports/—-dcomm/—-publ/documents/publication/wcms_202326.pdf
which should be about 6% if we talk only about manufacturing
Think about how ridiculous it is that a labour saving device is a source of gloom.
“Tharg! Me invent bow and arrow!”
“Great, now we’re all fucked.”
The Luddites smashed up knitting machines and looms.
Tau.Neutrino said:
If a drone jet aircraft can withstand g-forces that no human could, why doesn’t the military develop a pilotless fighter jet?
https://www.quora.com/If-a-drone-jet-aircraft-can-withstand-g-forces-that-no-human-could-why-doesnt-the-military-develop-a-pilotless-fighter-jet
No idea about fighter jet.
Grollo Aerospace make supersonic ramjet drones. “Delivers efficient flight up to Mach 3 over a large range of altitudes.”
Have a look at this. https://www.grolloaerospace.com.au/rocket-engine.html
“MLG-500 is a liquid propellant (liquid oxygen / Jet A-1) rocket motor producing 500 pounds of thrust. It is a regeneratively-cooled unit allowing reliable sustained operation and potential re-ignition during flight. It is designed for incorporation into a combined-cycle rocket/ramjet propulsion system currently under development.”
Now ain’t that beautiful. Australian, too.
mollwollfumble said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
If a drone jet aircraft can withstand g-forces that no human could, why doesn’t the military develop a pilotless fighter jet?
https://www.quora.com/If-a-drone-jet-aircraft-can-withstand-g-forces-that-no-human-could-why-doesnt-the-military-develop-a-pilotless-fighter-jetNo idea about fighter jet.
Grollo Aerospace make supersonic ramjet drones. “Delivers efficient flight up to Mach 3 over a large range of altitudes.”
Have a look at this. https://www.grolloaerospace.com.au/rocket-engine.html
“MLG-500 is a liquid propellant (liquid oxygen / Jet A-1) rocket motor producing 500 pounds of thrust. It is a regeneratively-cooled unit allowing reliable sustained operation and potential re-ignition during flight. It is designed for incorporation into a combined-cycle rocket/ramjet propulsion system currently under development.”
Now ain’t that beautiful. Australian, too.
> why doesn’t the military develop a pilotless fighter jet?
Well, essentially, they do. They’re generically called “missiles”.
Got one. https://www.gforces.net/a-discussion-on-typical-examples.html
“The Sprint was a two-stage, solid-fuel anti-ballistic missile (ABM), armed with a W66 enhanced-radiation thermonuclear warhead used by the United States Army. It was designed to intercept incoming ICBM reentry vehicles (RV) after they had descended below an altitude of about 60 kilometres, where the thickening air exposed the RV to observation by radar. As the RV would be travelling at about 8.0 km per second, Sprint had to have phenomenal performance to achieve an interception in the few seconds before the RV reached its target.”
“Sprint accelerated at 100 g, reaching a speed of Mach 10 in 5 seconds. Such a high velocity at relatively low altitudes created skin temperatures up to 3,430 °C, requiring an ablative shield to dissipate the heat. The high temperature caused a plasma to form around the missile, requiring extremely powerful radio signals to reach it for guidance. The missile glowed bright white as it flew.”
…
shit
…
The USA planned to set off radiation-enhanced H-bombs over its own cities.
Tau.Neutrino said:
If a drone jet aircraft can withstand g-forces that no human could, why doesn’t the military develop a pilotless fighter jet?
https://www.quora.com/If-a-drone-jet-aircraft-can-withstand-g-forces-that-no-human-could-why-doesnt-the-military-develop-a-pilotless-fighter-jet
They have: UCAVs – Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles. Both the US navy and USAF have projects underway.
Ask yourself what is the fighter supposed supposed to do which is control and dominate air space. I think we are a generation away from that being done by means other than manned fighter jets though they may well be retained for other duties where a human in the loop is deemed vital.
Escorting and preparing to shoot down domestic airliners for instance. And air shows.