| ▲ | mrtksn 4 hours ago |
| Elon Musk recently made some remarks about F-35 on Twitter: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860574377013838033 It's exactly what I was thinking about: Having a pilot onboard is overhead and its a limiting factor for the flight envelope as you have to keep it alive. Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. Why just not drop any manned vehicles and go for the remote control + AI? What is the logic? Sunken cost fallacy? Military industrial complex needs it? The only thing I can think of is the political implications of downing plane with a soldier on board. |
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| ▲ | compass_copium 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| >Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. There have absolutely been programs to reduce the visual signatures of aircrafts. Yehudi lights, COMPASS GHOST, BoP, etc. Don't get your information on anything from Musk. |
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| ▲ | mrtksn 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Good point but all these things can be fitted on a drone too. | | |
| ▲ | compass_copium an hour ago | parent [-] | | It's not like UCAVs aren't being developed, though. Piloted aircraft have lower latency and are better for some tasks. If UAVs were ready to replace piloted aircraft in all combat roles, they would have. They have almost completely replaced piloted aircraft in ISR, for example, where they are a great fit (no Gary Powers, no latency issues). The Pentagon doesn't want to lose trained pilots. | | |
| ▲ | mrtksn an hour ago | parent [-] | | Does it justify the expense and the shortcomings though? Horses also have some advantages over tanks, like refueling from the grass on the roadside but they become mostly ceremonial anyway. |
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| ▲ | oefrha 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths. That’s not a gotcha you seem to believe it is, it’s like the first thing you learn about stealth technology and has been apparent to anyone following military news to any extent in the past forty plus years. That you somehow think it’s something that went unnoticed and the thousands of people working on this every day has been “pretending” after reading some Twitter posts is absurd and funny. |
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| ▲ | mrtksn 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wow really? Someone else already noticed that invisible to radar isn’t invisible to eyesight and event teaching it? lots of smart people out there. I’m happy that you’re feeling smart and superior but that’s not the point, the point is signal collection and processing came a long way, and maybe low radar cross-section isn’t that big of a deal anymore. At least enough to justify spending huge sums on a plane that keeps having issue and falling short. | | |
| ▲ | compass_copium 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >maybe low radar cross-section isn’t that big of a deal anymore That's simply not true. There is not a peer or near-peer country that is not developing a variety of low-RCS aircraft. |
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| ▲ | reisse 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Why just not drop any manned vehicles and go for the remote control + AI? What is the logic? When the F-35 program was started in late 1980s-early 1990s, neither reliable remote control nor AI existed (I'm not even sure supersonic-reliable remote control exists now). Now, if there exists research programs utilizing unmanned fighter jets, they're likely classified and we won't know about them for quite some time. |
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| ▲ | euler_angles 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | DARPA's Air Combat Evolution program (ACE) began with AIs fighting each other in a simulated environment in a tournament. Then the winning AI fought against a human (USAF Fighter Weapons School graduate) in that simulated environment, and won. The company that developed the winning AI, Shield AI, has gone on to deploy an AI in an actual F-16 that has flown against a human in trials. https://www.darpa.mil/program/air-combat-evolution | | |
| ▲ | zcw100 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Many people underestimate the challenges of working in this environment. The DARPA challenge is like saying that boxing is the same as hand to hand combat. There are many similarities but the first has rules and parameters and the second has none. I find that people in IT tend to arrogantly proclaim things along the lines of, "I've set up a Kubernetes cluster. This can't be any more difficult." but it's more like setting up a Kubernetes cluster where you're paying someone else just like you to do everything they can to destroy it including giving them a knife and stabbing you. Then letting them loose in the datacenter. | | |
| ▲ | euler_angles 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I've worked with quite a few people who were part of the AI effort, and my current boss was the architect for ACE a few years ago. All of those people were painfully aware of the gap you describe here and were actively working to bridge it. |
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| ▲ | wepple 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > remote control + AI? We might be getting close to advanced AI for a lot of domains, but are we ready to have one making independent decisions with bombs? I’m not a military expert but I’d much prefer having a human making decisions rather than AI for at least the next decade. I’m not sure that remote connectivity is reliable and high bandwidth enough everywhere for a drone fighter jet |
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| ▲ | mrtksn 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | We already have drones that are making independent decisions with bombs, but that’s not the point. You can still have people in the loop, people that are not on board. | | |
| ▲ | wepple 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | For 100% of tasks that an F35 can perform? I know we currently have this capability, but aren’t up to speed if you can rely on it everywhere and every situation. | |
| ▲ | lloeki 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Arguably even before drones, missiles have some form of "AI" to autonomously make calls, e.g Tomahawk TERCOM and DSMAC (arguably navigation, but hey, for a missile navigation ends in controlled descent into terrain) |
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| ▲ | orwin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Once an AI is able to land aircrafts on any airports, highway or carrier, is able to decide on an emergency landing, or on an emergency discharge an won't crash because of a faulty sensor (MCAS) or weird UFOs that trigger those sensors, i won't be opposed to AI-driven aircrafts. In the meantime, Aircraft+"Ai-driven" drone is a great idea (look up to "nEUROn" if you want an idea of a combat drone capability) |
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| ▲ | lm28469 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range We didn't wait Musk to know planes weren't literally invisible or silent lmao, maybe don't take your military analysis from a man child with 0 experience in the domain. They either fly high enough that you neither hear nor see them, or low/fast enough that you're dead long before you're even aware something is coming. Also we already have unmanned aircrafts, a lot of them. Internet army experts will tell you f35 are useless because they're not invisible (duh) meanwhile in eastern Europe people are getting killed by 70+ years old tanks and other ww2 era surplus |
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| ▲ | mrtksn 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Musk can be many bad things, but he is also right in some things. Flying high might make it invisible for human observers but the idea is that it’s not invisible in that wavelength, therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it. Also, this is a brand new machine that is still not ready. Just write it off, liquidate any useful work that might have been done on it and go all in drones. What’s the point of insisting on a job not done when already looks obsolete? | | |
| ▲ | lm28469 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If a bunch of microphones and binoculars would defeat stealth fighters (or any kind of jets) don't you think someone in the US, Chinese or Russian army would have thought about it ? Just as a reminder the thing is coming at mach 1.5-2 and as soon as it can it'll send a little present coming your way at mach 2-4 > therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it. What's the probability some over worked dude who tweet 20 times an hour came up with something the US military–industrial complex hasn't thought about in the last 50 years ? Remember the early Ukraine invasion when a couple of bayraktars almost single handedly saved the country during the initial wave ? It was neither stealthy nor fast https://defence-blog.com/bayraktar-tb2-drones-saved-the-coun... btw his brand new idea is at least a hundred years old: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eyPsCUn0O68/V8jmQwIYR5I/AAAAAAAAK... | | |
| ▲ | red-iron-pine an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > Remember the early Ukraine invasion when a couple of bayraktars almost single handedly saved the country during the initial wave ? It was neither stealthy nor fast The Bayraktars are the budget-drone option. A big part of their success was less that they're good, and more that the Russians kept all of their EW and AA turned off to achieve tactical surprise. Which they sort of did, but not enough to anchor the fight, and the budget drones were effective at killing a lot of AA early on, increasing their window of lethality. Once they got their EW & AA game together the Bayraktars stopped being dangerous very quickly. | |
| ▲ | orwin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I highly doubt f35 will use supersonic speed for anything else than repositioning/travel. In combat theaters i doubt it speed will go higher than Mach 0.8. And anyway, if you want CAS, to stop an army, A-10 will probably be a dozen time better suited than any multirole, and especially the f35 with its ridiculously low availability rate, or even better in that particular case, an AC-130 (that is probably able to direct a drone fleet in its latest revision, but that was speculation last time i checked) (the A-10 is the best modern plane in my opinion, i really like the F15, f18 and Rafale (those curves!), because i really like the idea of aircraft carrier but that plane is the best.) | |
| ▲ | mrtksn 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ukrainians already built a microphone network to detect incoming missile and planes. | | |
| ▲ | hkpack 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Microphone network is mostly used for low speed and high noise Iranian Shahed drones which are also made from composite materials and have very low radar visibility. (For example, Moldovan military recently mentioned that they cannot detect them with their old USSR-made radars). When one is flying towards you, you hear it from few kilometres away for minutes as it has very loud petrol-powered engine. In contrast, when you hear low passing cruise missile, you will have just few seconds until it passes over you. |
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| ▲ | invalidname an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | He is wrong about that with the current technology. All you have to do to see that is look at Israel vs. Iran. In a decade drone technology might be enough to do something similar to what the F35 does, but right now the F35 is still the peek of technology. There's a reason Israel ordered more of them. AI might be able to do a dogfight which is great in terms of flight envelope, but completely unnecessary in modern stealth warfare. Despite everything you heard, stealth does work. It isn't perfect but it destroyed Russia's top of the line anti-aircraft missiles in Iran without a problem. The planes are ghosts, by the time you see them it's already too late. Drones have the advantage of reduced risk to the pilot but since a human sitting at the base will have to deal with signal delay, transmission jamming and low resolution... The difference in having a pilot physically present is huge. AI is unpredictable and unreliable e.g. Iranians were able to fool a US army drone by sending it signals that made it land. Then they took it apart and reverse engineered it. | |
| ▲ | mangamadaiyan 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Musk can be many bad things, but he is also right in some things Indeed. A broken clock also tells the time correctly twice a day. |
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| ▲ | potato3732842 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is already the air force's tentative plan. They made several announcements (10+yr ago) when it was new about the F35 being the last manned fighter and then kinda walked that back because PR but kept pursuing it. |
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| ▲ | AnimalMuppet an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range Sure. It's just that radar lets you see tens or hundreds of miles away, and visual doesn't. And sound lets you hear where something is only at the speed of sound, which is less useful for something that can fly faster than the speed of sound. So developing a weapons-quality track from visual and sound data is problematic. That means that, while not invisible, it's "invisible enough". |
