Eh, they've got to persuade retarded politicians (who know less about military engineering than your average newfag) that it's worth spending X billion on the project.
I remember hearing a few rumours a while ago about an upcoming project for an unmanned Air Superiority Fighter. Just imagine the shitshow that will turn into. Do you think the 'scale-able autonomy'they're talking about here will morph into that?
l…. lol?
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I hope that's a rumor. It's probably not.
That is nowhere near enough money.
Actually I predicted this would happen immediately as soon as UK took stock of it's F-35's. F-35 is far too expensive to run and maintain meaning that they will need a replacement for it. All things considered if they manage to keep operational costs to under $20k per flight hour this aircraft might sell like hotcakes.
But then this is going to be a shitshow.
That is literally buzzwords that tell you nothing but impress retarded people.
At best this aircraft is going to be what the F-35 should have been
It will be 16 years of arguing where they should setup the photocopier and water cooler. 1 year actually designing and building the aircraft.
Should clarify they will insist this aircraft is a replacement for the Eurofighter but it's really the replacement for the F-35 Merkel.
To be brutally honest, I think the fighter/drone duality may be a good idea.
a) during low intensity warfare, you want some drones to schwack some mudhuts and caves from above. Drones are neat and can be quite cheap, only problem is that the prop driven ones are rather slow, so to get a good reaction time for when TIC happens, you need to have some up all the time, which means you need lotsa drones, with lotsa pilots and lotsa infrastructure to support all that. Shit costs money, yo!
By putting a jet engine or two on the drone you reduce the time it takes from takeoff to get to the area of operation and assisst troops. It is obvious that this version is not meant to be a super long loiter time recon drone. It's too large, too fuel hungry and too fast for that.
b) during high intensity nation vs. nation warfare you want a large number of air superiority fighters, so that you can maintain air superiority at all times, and make sure your own ground troops are safe from enemy air. This was a lesson hard learned by the Wehrmacht on the eastern front of WWII.
But maintaining a shitload of fighters that are basically giant Aluminium paper weights during peace time costs a lot of money, and unless you plan to increase your military budget any time soon (aka: not gonna happen), you better find something useful for these planes to do, while you are not using them to shoot down ruskies.
The combination of the two roles makes a lot of sense. Instead of using slow prop driven drones just use fast jet engine ones. Instead of having a bunch of useless fighters rust in some hangar waiting for a war to come, use them to bomb mud huts.
Of course this shit comes with disadvantages too, but the drone control technology is already implemented into any modern air superiority fighter. It doesn't make much sense not to use it as a drone as well, especially since the Eurofighter is living/flying proof that an almost entirely computer controlled, aerodynamically unstable aircraft is viable/flyable.
Lets wait and see how this one turns out. Might actually be kinda cool.
If it's closed circuit autonomous rather than remote controlled then surely the EW wouldn't affect it any worse than a normal aircraft (although BVR missiles are kind of useless if you're limited to visual range)? Unless Russian EW assets equipped with some kind of multi-Terawatt microwave beam that can fry circuitry at long range it could be a way to significantly expand the airforce without investing lots of training and upkeep bux in pilots built with MK1 Meat.
Granted if they are fully autonomous then I can then see that leading to automated aircraft going rogue and targeting things that aren't Russian military aircraft because some faggot programmer decided that his D&D group was more important than thorough bug checking, but that does sound kind of entertaining in its own right.
This reminds me of when I was a kid making my own Pokemon that did all the things and was the most powerful.
sentient planefus when?