The US Air Force’s jet-powered robotic wingman is like something out of a video game
The US Air Force has successfully tested an advanced, jet-powered drone called the XQ58-A Valkyrie, that could someday accompany human-piloted fighter jets on missions. The concept is a bit like something we’ve seen in video games, a drone (or swarm of drones) can fight alongside a human pilot, or absorb enemy fire in their place.
The vehicle was developed as a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory and Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems as a relatively cheap platform that can fill a electronic warfare, strike, and surveillance role on the battlefield, controlled by a piloted aircraft on its own or as part of a swarm group. It can carry a small payload of bombs, and can use a conventional runway or can be launched via rocket.
The prototype completed its first test flight (of five planned missions) on March 5th over the Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona, and the Air Force says that it “behaved as expected” over the course of its 76-minute flight. The battery of test flights that it will go through will look at how well the drone’s systems worked, and how well it takes off, flies and lands.
What’s interesting about this particular plan is that it’s an early demonstration of a concept called “loyal wingman.” While this test saw the drone fly on its own — not alongside the fighter aircraft that it’s designed to accompany in the future — the idea is that it could fly alongside a piloted vehicle, which would control it. From there, it could do everything from provide a bit of extra force projection in the air, fly ahead to scout out terrain, or even taking enemy fire in place of its human-piloted companion.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 11 2019, @01:31PM (5 children)
Everything's better with a rocket on it! Is there a frickin LASERS option?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 11 2019, @01:37PM (2 children)
There is an espresso option:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/how-much-would-you-pay-for-coffee-roasted-in-space/ [arstechnica.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 11 2019, @01:47PM (1 child)
why does much of this come across as some kind of propaganda?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 11 2019, @02:33PM
Because, if we can bluff everyone, we'll never have to test the system in real life.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 11 2019, @04:06PM (1 child)
The lasers aren't portable enough, yet. Still need something the size of a ship to power them effectively.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday March 11 2019, @10:33PM
They can laze through an argon matrix synthesizing an excited bromide, it will consume the sample during firing, but that's fine for a weapon.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Scottingham on Monday March 11 2019, @03:05PM (3 children)
What's really interesting is that without the weak meat sack in a cockpit, the jet is capable of flying significantly better/faster. The jets themselves can likely do sustained 15G rolls / climbs.
That would not be fun to experience.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 11 2019, @03:17PM (2 children)
Yes, it does put air warfare on a whole new level. The unmanned jet can target and get to an enemy missile/drone/aircraft much faster than the "command" aircraft with the human in it. So, they go on the attack much faster, but they are also much harder to target. The real dogfight takes place between un-human robots, while the manned craft is left 20, 50 miles, maybe further away from danger. Given a fleet of, let's say 20 of these drone fighters, a single pilot might take out an entire enemy air wing. Even if he's attacked from two different angles, while ground radar is trying to get a lock on him. Everything would depend on how fast his mind can work, and how autonomous the drones are.
Of course, when he meets some situation that defeats his drones, his ass will almost certainly be blown away.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:10AM (1 child)
I wonder why flight drones get way more optimistic comments in our little community than the tank https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/11/169240 [soylentnews.org]
Do we believe that our tanks might fight us, but our airplanes never will?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:16AM
Planes need to regularly land for fuel and ammo. In a post apocalyptic world where we can't shoot them down, they will all fall out of the sky anyway.
Tanks can go rogue, can hide and lie in wait for years, and can go scrounging through urban areas, even coercing civilians into providing supplies.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday March 11 2019, @03:23PM (7 children)
Assuming secure, unjammable communications (which is a big ask, but entirely do-able in most circumstances... Assuming that, fighter pilots really should not exist:
- Air superiority: normally they are using missile and fighting beyond visual range anyway. Nothing you can't do remotely, no advantage to being tied into a cockpit.
- Putting a cockpit into an aircraft takes a lot of space, adds weight, and the pilot can't take the accelerations that the airframe is capable of anyway.
- Ground support, by the type of aircraft being discussed, is also done from a safe distance, generally using missiles.
The exception is close air support by something like the A10. But the USAF doesn't like that kind of mission anyway, because it puts them at the beck-and-call of another service.
The problem is: most of the USAF generals are ex-fighter jocks. They can't stand the idea that fighter pilots are mostly obsolete. Look at the insane amount of money thrown at the F-35 program: the planes are so expensive that they will never be risked in any sort of close air combat. Maybe they'll fly a few missions over areas where air superiority is already guaranteed, just to give the pilots some combat medals. If they ever get into shooting distance with a real opponent, it will only be by accident.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday March 11 2019, @04:05PM
Any what? My understanding is that close air combat has become extremely rare, mostly due to 2 factors:
1. The US doesn't generally have to go up against other nations that have air forces that pose a serious threat to US aircraft. For instance, in the 2003 Iraq invasion, not a single Iraqi plane actually took off.
2. There are these things called guided missiles that make air combat more a matter of "press a button at 15 miles away" rather than anything resembling the footage of furballs over World War II battlefields or even the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. And that can be done from the ground at least as well as from a fighter, again because you don't need to be anywhere near the enemy in order to attack them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 11 2019, @04:42PM (1 child)
We couldn't imagine the Great War until it happened, and we thought it was the War To End All Wars, and then later we renamed to to World War I.
If we fail to prepare for "the unthinkable", then we lose. So, let's make a plan to simultaneously fight most of the world. We could be fighting Russia, or China, or a European Caliphate, or a pair of those as allies. Hopefully they don't all gang up on us, but it is possible.
So communications are dead. (GPS included) Forget it. An AI might work. If it has a glitch though, that will be fully exploited to wipe it out.
Today we build 100 planes, but in WWII we would build 10000 planes. Today we are horrified when a pilot dies, but in WWII we'd send people off with a 1-in-3 chance of death for that flight and a probable survival time of a month. One day we will face that kind of situation again, and we will have to recalibrate our ideas of horror and unacceptable loss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:32AM
If you are preparing for that sort of war, then you are preparing for a general nuclear war. There is no way that the US won't use an all-out nuke strike in that scenario.
I think that the USA would in fact use nukes in the face of any successful or sustained military invasion of the USA mainland.
If China or the the Arabs land a million troops in Oregon, they are going to get nuked, and so is every known nuclear launch site or major military concentration. Boomers and mobiles would be held back for a second strike and/or to deter others, but the military that attacked would be glassed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 11 2019, @06:12PM (1 child)
Secure, unjammable communications? Sounds like a whonking great EM emitter, and thus a wonderful beacon to missiles designed to home in on such. Unless the drones are controlled by cables instead of wireless of course, and that would play merry hell with drag and maneuverability.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday March 11 2019, @06:24PM
"Secure, unjammable communications? Sounds like a whonking great EM emitter, and thus a wonderful beacon to missiles designed to home in on such. "
The planes are already radar beacons. They're in constant contact with the ground, other aircraft, their missiles in flight, and much more. On top of that, they have this great, honking radar dish on the front that will cook your lunch for you. Being a radar beacon is a hazard of life, but they also have countermeasures to reduce this danger.
Spread-spectrum, frequency-hopping, possibly directional communications for remote control? Just a drop in the bucket...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SpockLogic on Monday March 11 2019, @06:16PM (1 child)
No, the problem is most of the generals are fighting the last war not the next one.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:34AM
A good percentage of them are fighting the war before that. Some would like to go back to swords and crossbows on horseback.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday March 11 2019, @03:25PM
Side-drones, a staple of ye' old side/top scrolling shooting arcade games. It's kind of amusing that they even named the company that makes the "video game drones" after a video game character. OK they probably didn't name it after the God of War protagonist Kratos, but they really could have after all -- GOD OF WAR, and instead the normal greek mythological Kratos which I gather is the character that the video game character was based upon.
How many powerups or enemies will the human pilot have to gather or shoot down before the side drone activates, if video games taught us anything these things come at a price of some kind. With that in mind I do wonder what the cost of the Kratos drone is, just so it doesn't become cheaper to have the actual pilot protect the drone instead of the other way around. But they better be really cheap cause there are plenty of them in video games and they tend to go away after a while (or when you "die" and here you probably just can't insert another coin -- unless it's a giant sack of tax-payer coins) or when they are replaced by another power-up.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Monday March 11 2019, @03:45PM
Robotic voice: "Yes, ma'am. As Captain Rod Johnson's best friend, I can assure you that he's the bravest and coolest guy I've ever met. Look at these jet packs he designed ..."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Informative) by darkfeline on Monday March 11 2019, @07:42PM
They're called options, from the game Gradius.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Informative) by arslan on Monday March 11 2019, @09:14PM
Wow, this really does seem like life mimicking video games or in this case anime (which also has a video game made after it). Very similar to the x-9 Ghost in Macross Plus. That shit didn't end well...