| ▲ | dmix 2 hours ago |
| Why do I get the feeling that the market shifted beneath their feet to drones and these old aircraft companies are using "loyal wingman" to make a half-hearted half-way play between old/new products to stay relevant, which just buys them time to keep selling expensive jets... until pure drone upstarts start eating their lunch. Like when Blackberry tried to make BlackBerry Storm after iPhone and Blockbuster tried to make Blockbuster Online after Netflix. Technology shifts rarely wait for these stodgy middle ground transitionary products to find a market. |
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| ▲ | icegreentea2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Roughly everyone expects the 6th generation fighters (the ones currently in development like F-47) to be the last manned generation. Most observers expect many/most 6th gen fighters to become optionally manned within their life span. The real question is basically - is full autonomy both technically possible and culturally/politically acceptable within 5, 10, or 20 years? Because full autonomy isn't really ready now (or else we wouldn't need hundreds to thousands of drone operators in the Ukraine war). And at least the USAF doesn't think remote control will let them do what they need (which is to fly from Japan to Korea or Taiwan, or Philippines to Taiwan, and contest/control the skies in the face of a basically peer adversary). Because no one knows that answer, everyone (governments, militaries, manufacturers) is hedging, and CCA is part of that hedge. |
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| ▲ | remarkEon an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think we are underestimating and/or forgetting that the enemy gets a vote, and remote piloting something from Virginia all the way out to Japan or Korea or Taiwan involves many signals integrity steps along the way. This is to say that you should assume these signals are interrupted and you will not be able to maintain continuous control of the aircraft from whatever datacenter box the "pilot" sits in. That means fully autonomous decision making, functionally for the entire journey, and independent release authorization. >or else we wouldn't need hundreds to thousands of drone operators in the Ukraine war I don't think this is the reason the systems are not fully autonomous right now ("fully autonomous" here meaning that they can complete the kill chain independently, no HITL). Even if we assume it true that the drones are not "good enough" to be at parity with a human operator, if you had an essentially limitless amount of them, would you really waste the manpower on operating them in FPV mode? You would not, you would completely saturate the battlefield with them. Thus, as it was in the beforetimes and ever shall be, logistics wins wars. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > This is to say that you should assume these signals are interrupted and you will not be able to maintain continuous control of the aircraft from whatever datacenter box the "pilot" sits in. That means fully autonomous decision making, functionally for the entire journey, and independent release authorization. Only if every mission is absolutely critical. If disruptions are rare then you don't need autonomy. | | |
| ▲ | rzerowan 5 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Or more interestingly with the low-earth sat/data network. Seeing as projectssuch as starlink are basically mil in nature with a side of barely profitable civilian use.
The whole data centers in space makes more sense. These are not for running cat blogs and video streaming , which is waht they are/will be marketed as.
Realworld application will always be a command and control node spanning the globe for the mil use. And as its rolloed out globally can basically provide jammingfree links for the autonomous commands from space. |
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| ▲ | dash2 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > And at least the USAF doesn't think remote control will let them do what they need (which is to fly from Japan to Korea or Taiwan, or Philippines to Taiwan, and contest/control the skies in the face of a basically peer adversary). I mean, they wouldn't think that, would they? It would put their pilots out of a job. But most flying has been done by autopilot long before AI, and even if/when you need a human in the loop, why would you want to put that human in the cockpit rather than safely in Virginia? |
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| ▲ | ironhaven 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Manned-Unmanned teaming is not a new concept created in the last couple months to placate fighter pilots in the age of ai. With 5th generation fighter using datalink they to use the active radar in far away AWAC planes for targeting so the stealth fighter can get closer to the enemy without breaking cover by turning on active radar. If you can outsource the radar on a jet it is not a huge leap in logic to put the very hot missiles onto a unmanned aircraft. All of these concepts where written up 20 years ago by both china and the US |
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| ▲ | budman1 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| mistakes in A/A combat can have serious repercussions. not only loss of expensive air vehicles, but things like civilian airliners. 'loyal wingman' gives the kill / no kill decision to an Air Force officer. And having the decision maker geographically close eliminates jamming, delays, and the requirements to have a satellite infrastructure (like is required for Predator UAV's). i hope we never assign a piece of code, AI or not, to be the decision maker. |
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| ▲ | jacquesm an hour ago | parent [-] | | > i hope we never assign a piece of code, AI or not, to be the decision maker. This is already a past station, just not at Airbus. | | |
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