...the latest overweight, over budget and late fighter took to the skies yesterday at Fort Worth.

It was even mentioned on the BBC!

(PS, for anyone who doesn't understand my cryptic description, it may just have been the F-35!)

Enir, it is my opinion that we will not see another manned fighter aircraft. It is also my opinion that we will NEVER see a fighter wing comprised exclusively of UAVs.
For the first statement, UAV technology has advanced, however it is moving at too slow a pace to, in my opinion, be at an advanced enough state to perform all the functions of a modern fighter/bomber by the time the JSF's projected life span is over.
For the second, I doubt that we will ever see a unit comprised of UAVs as there is absolutely NO replacement to a pair of eyes and brain in the cockpit. Cameras have distinct disadvantage over eyes; they break. So do radios. Also, having a person actually sitting in the cockpit lets him take the entire situation in much faster and make a decision where the consequences directly affect him, not a robot. A pilot is much less likely to put himself or others in a situation that could cause serious harm to friendlies.
Also, if used in the role of CAS, as the Marine Corps might, having a pilot could, and probably would, drastically reduce the chances of dropping bombs on a friendly.
UAVs are to be used to supplement manned aircraft, not replace them. The proper use of a UAV is something that a manned aircraft cannot do (eg. predator, global hawk) or something far to dangerous for a human (suicide precision-attack runs behind a substantial air-defense network, eg. if we wanted to put a bomb in the Politburo's meeting room with the USSR's 1980s air-defense network. A plane would have been lucky to get within 100 miles of Moscow, however a small, expendable UAV might be able to penetrate the defenses because it can maneuver in ways that would kill a pilot. Another good use of UAVs would be as Wild Weasels, the vast majority of fixed-wing crew lost during Vietnam were SAM-hunters, not air superiority.

Any body seen the movie Stealth?  Current UAVs are nowhere near that level.  They are nothing more than remote controlled planes. 

And the scary part is, when wars become entirely a push button affair, war becomes too easy an option.

DaveSims wrote on Dec 17^th, 2006 at 11:18am:


Stealth was full of crap. First of all, we dont even have a normal robot with that kind of intelligence, let alone a plane.  And besides, most of the movie just made no sense.  Using a Hollywood production as an example: not really a good idea because Hollywood is usually wrong.

UAVs will probably not be like the one in Stealth, but will definately have a lot more automation, flying predetermined routes entirely by computer and scanning the ground for targets or threats.  And besides, a lightning strike won't magically make a robot evil

Pretty impressive weapons platform to me.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0163.shtml

beefhole wrote on Dec 17^th, 2006 at 10:00pm:

But you just said it twice