
Manned fighter to face autonomous drone next year - onewhonknocks
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33866/manned-fighter-to-face-an-autonomous-drone-next-year-in-a-sci-fi-movie-like-showdown
======
nmstoker
Presumably designers are just scratching the surface jettisoning all sorts of
current design assumptions that could be removed based on differences in the
acceptability of loss, ability to work cooperatively and handle inhuman
conditions. You can position the control systems differently, split some of
them up, strengthen the airframe by binning almost everything from the cockpit
& getting rid of landing gear completely. The gear adds weight and breaks
holes in the structure and it's dead weight during most of the key operational
tasks - instead use a cooperating "lander" drone to help it land and the risk
of that failing isn't as serious without humans. The ability to act with
coordination across a group of drones that the article mentions will be hard
to beat unless you use a similar array of drones. Seems like the pilot in the
plane can't last much longer. Now we just need to see if the budgets involved
bring this into being faster than self driving cars!

~~~
dfsegoat
Re: ditching landing gear, As I understand it, the Gremlins UAV swarm platform
uses a ‘live capture’ system from to launch/recover from a C130 - no gear.

You basically turn cargo aircraft into aircraft carriers.

[https://www.darpa.mil/program/gremlins](https://www.darpa.mil/program/gremlins)

~~~
jointpdf
My mental image for this is the Protoss Carriers from Starcraft.

~~~
vulcan01
My mental image is the Arsenal Bird from Ace Combat 7 :)

~~~
matheusmoreira
I thought the same thing!

[https://i.redd.it/4deoeuq9e4m21.png](https://i.redd.it/4deoeuq9e4m21.png)

Drones are the game's main theme and it's great.

------
JadoJodo
I have to wonder when it will switch to small, inexpensive drones instead of
the larger, jet-type ones. Imagine fighting against a swarm of 10,000 drones
(each with a small explosive, EMP, etc). Similar to the Fire Bats[0] in WWII.

[0]
[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bat_bomb](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bat_bomb)

~~~
jonas21
There was a discussion on HN a few days ago about classifying autonomous drone
swarms as WMD:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23423240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23423240)

~~~
redis_mlc
Militaries use cluster bombs and area artillery, so that ship sailed decades
ago.

------
GhostVII
I don't really get the hype/fear surrounding drone warfare, at least not when
it comes to combat. It sounds super scary to have these drones that can
outperform pilots, until you realize that guided missiles are already able to
destroy pretty much anything from tens of kilometers away already. It doesn't
matter if pilots are slower than drones when they are able to fire off
missiles before the drone even detects them.

The main benefit of drones is surveillance imo, since they can just circle an
area for hours. For combat I think we will have pilots for the foreseeable
future, they can react more quickly and have a better view of the situation
than a drone operator. Also I would imagine having a pilot can also be useful
if you don't want other countries shooting down your planes (or if you want to
start a conflict) - Iran would have been much more resistant to shooting down
a US predator drone if it was a manned aircraft instead. I don't really know
though.

~~~
nexuist
The key to understanding where aerial warfare is going is understanding that
next generation fighter jets aren't meant to be soldiers, they're generals.

What do I mean by that? What I mean is that most of the time, the F-35's
purpose is not to go up against MiGs or other foreign fighters. The F-35 is a
flying eye-in-the-sky that can scan surfaces, oceans, mountains, etc. to
identify and classify targets. It has ordinance to take out those targets, but
that's secondary to its main mission of basically being a one-man Google Maps
team.

Could the F-35 get into a dogfight? Sure, but a lot would have to fail for
that situation to ever happen - given its sensor suite it should be able to
detect and fire upon an enemy fighter before it is ever in visual sight.

You can also tell this intention from the way pilots are trained: they must
first reach the rank of Officer and learn abstract combat tactics in a
classroom setting before they ever step foot in an aircraft. This is not by
mistake.

Personally I think the future is squadrons of autonomous drones assisting
human pilots. You come in with an F-35 and a dozen Predator drones and send in
the drones to do your dirty work (close air support, recon, remote bombing,
etc.) while you command the battlefield and drop a few guided bombs 40,000
feet up.

~~~
Balgair
> Could the F-35 get into a dogfight? Sure, but a lot would have to fail for
> that situation to ever happen - given its sensor suite it should be able to
> detect and fire upon an enemy fighter before it is ever in visual sight.

I've heard that the future of air-to-air dogfights are more like two enemies
in the dark, each with a gun and a flashlight. The first to use the flashlight
is likely to be the first to be shot.

Here the flashlight is the active sensors systems, the darkness is the stealth
fighter's design, and the gun is the hyper advanced weapons systems.

~~~
credit_guy
What if a _drone_ holds the flashlight? And when you shoot at the drone you
give up your position?

------
adamfeldman
Lots of great content on this blog. Relevant here:

"The Alarming Case of the USAF’s Mysteriously Missing Unmanned Combat Air
Vehicles"

[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-
case...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-case-of-the-
usafs-mysteriously-missing-unmanned-combat-air-vehicles)

~~~
blarg1
Fascinating!

------
baybal2
Look how it folds out in Libya:

1\. Kaftar has all fancy jet fighters from Russians, and Egyptians. $50m
apiece, tear Turkish drones left, and right.

2\. The government has Turkish drones, $2m apiece. By the time Kaftar's Mig
inflicts a single loss, a swarm of 5 drones already bombed that Mig's airfield
to smithereens.

Government forces can expend all of their drones to get an enemy airfield, and
they would still win the trade.

~~~
redis_mlc
FYI: Most Russian military aircraft don't need much of an airfield - grass or
gravel is fine.

~~~
steelbrain
Source?

~~~
kwhitefoot
Not sure where one would find definitive information on it but it seems to be
'common knowledge' that the Russian air force has to have such a capability
because of the lack of development in distant parts of the country.

Anyway there are videos of aircraft doing it like this one:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVJWm0lf9v4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVJWm0lf9v4).

And this one is on a proper runway but illustrates the toughness of
Russian/Soviet designs: a landing gear failure where the aircraft was
apparently flying again after two or three days

[https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a18021/su-27-landing...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a18021/su-27-landing-
no-landing-gear-video/)

Of course the A10 can also use dirt runways.

------
MrTortoise
most one sided fights ever. Just look at G forces.

drone could have higher max speeds, higher max acceleration. fighter was
designed ... what 20 years ago?

Cost of drone? Cost of loss of either? total cost of ownership is vastly
different.

There is real cause to be very afraid.

~~~
cheeze
Yeah. I have no idea how a human would compete at all with g-forces alone. Add
the fact that you _no longer have to design a plane around a human_ and that
definitely gives you a pretty hefty advantage against an f18

~~~
chongli
Why even put the drone in a fighter? Just put it in a SAM. AI-based guidance
system with a multitude of sensors that’s been trained to defeat
countermeasures. Seems difficult for a pilot to do much against that.

~~~
United857
Perhaps cost? 1 reusable AI platform controlling multiple missiles, vs
multiple expendable one. Also I'm guessing maneuverability of a fighter
aircraft is much better than a SAM which is more or less ballistic.

~~~
chongli
_Also I 'm guessing maneuverability of a fighter aircraft is much better than
a SAM which is more or less ballistic._

Not at all. Missiles are far faster and more maneuverable than aircraft. The
only chance a fighter plane has against them is with countermeasures such as
chaff and flares as well as electronic countermeasures (ECM). All of these are
designed to fill the missile’s tracking and guidance systems. Without them,
the plane is helpless against the faster and more maneuverable missile.

Missiles are also far cheaper than aircraft. There’s no need to sustain the
life and health of a pilot and no need to carry fuel for return trips. This
makes missiles very small and light (and thus cheap) compared to a plane.

~~~
DuskStar
Planes have another advantage - endurance. Missiles have greater acceleration
and maneuverability, but they can't sustain that for as long as a plane can.
Which makes "run away" a solution in certain parts of the engagement envelope.

~~~
ajuc
Make a drone that casts away unnecessary parts and turns into a missile when
it's close to the enemy.

It can carry half the fuel (or fly twice as long), doesn't need landing
mechanisms, can be made with less focus on durability (just needs to survive
one flight). It can be very small and fly low (and subsonic) to avoid
detection. It could even land and wait near military airports on top of trees
etc.

Basically it would work like movable minefields in air. Denying territory to
the enemy planes.

~~~
DuskStar
I think "single-use missile sled" is actually a USAF project right now, but
that's meant to be deployed from a fighter/bomber.

------
IdontRememberIt
When I am watching Battlestar Galactica or most of the other scifi, I am
always puzzled to see that the scenarists never take AI to fully operate a
spaceship (piloting during landing/takeoff, firing, targeting enemies, etc).

~~~
akiselev
The series starts right after the Cylons, an artificial intelligence created
by humans, destroys several planets. Decades before they fought another war
when the machines first rebelled. By the time BSG tolls around, any artificial
intelligence is taboo and Adama refuses to even enable digital communication
between ship subsystems except in one scenario where they had to hard reset
all systems to flush a Cylon virus.

~~~
leetcrew
to add to this, it's implied (or maybe stated explicitly, I forget) that one
of the reasons galactica survived the initial attack is _because_ it's an
older warship without the sophisticated computer systems of the newer ships.
the newer ships were trivially compromised by the cylons.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
> the newer ships were trivially compromised by the cylons.

No.... Caprica six slept with Baltar who gave her access to the defense
mainframe. She modified a version of the new fleet control system with the
vulnerability that allowed the cylons to take over the fleet.

Galactica survives because she's a museum ship and would never get the update
and was built in a time where computer systems were not networked inside
battlestars. Another battlestar (spoilers) survives because it was shut down
and getting the upgrades.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
They did have that entire episode where they need to network everything
together and do the entire "getting hacked live" thing.

I forget if there was anything special with the computers at that point

------
TheSpiceIsLife
What’s the difference between a Tomahawk cruise missile and a drone?

Tomahawk is already (2015) available with reconnaissance camera and loiter
mode.

Is the distinction that _drone_ can return to base, or otherwise land and be
reused?

~~~
Eridrus
A tomahawk is not an anti-air weapon.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
That can't be the defining feature.

I suspect 'drone' is a catch all term for things that don't have more specific
names.

------
arthurcolle
Stealth is a 2005 movie that explores this concept. It didn't do too well in
the box office but I definitely enjoyed it although the AI is a little forced.

It looks like the drone in question here is the following (quoted from
Aerospace Testing International), also mentioned in the linked source:

'The “fighter-sized” 5th Generation Aerial Target (5GAT) is 12.2m (40ft) long,
a 7.3m wingspan and a maximum gross weight of 4,350kg (9,600lb). It is
designed to be launched and landed using a conventional runway. The drone
features two afterburning jet engines and a 95% carbon fiber airframe.' It
seems to be designed specifically to stress test our own flights as target
practice and doesn't seem like it's actually going to be going into combat
anytime soon.

~~~
cheschire
If you enjoyed that, be sure to check out Macross Plus. The rivalry is between
a traditional pilot and pilot who controls using a neural interface. A little
less hand wavey than what sci-fi thought AI was 15 years ago.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macross_Plus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macross_Plus)

~~~
arthurcolle
I have a hard time getting into animated stuff but I'll definitely try to
download a decent quality version of it and watch it. Sounds like its right up
my alley! Since this was created in 1994 and Stealth was created in 2005, I'm
wondering how you arrive at your third sentence! Haha :)

~~~
cheschire
I was referring to Stealth, which attempts to depict AI 15 years ago.

Macross Plus being much older doesn't attempt to get into AI for the opponent,
and instead uses something a little more down to earth at the time which was
neural interfaces.

------
ourmandave
I've seen a lot of AlphaZero chess replays where a move seems weak. But when
you run the lines it's a really sneaky trap or very strong combo.

I hope for Maverick's sake aerial combat and chess are two different things.

------
Zenst
If it's like early AI logic, fly as high as possible, say 40km which turns out
is a higher flight ceiling than the attacker in many instances. But the key
was the missiles had a ceiling hight of say 20 km, though if launched at 40km,
they would still work upon targets flying upwards and the AI logic wouldn't
think of them as a threat as those missiles don't work above 20km. Though that
means they can climb to that height. Also means if they fire a missile, it
won't climb to hit you. Great tactic using the limitations of the missiles to
your advantage.

Things like that will be were a pilot will have an early edge, pushing those
limits by fully understanding the mechanics of those limits and how they play
out. Be that pushing a sonic boom shockwave to effect a small pursing drone.
Those for unmanned autonomous system will be the achilles heal in much the
same way early Chess AI was able to be beaten by humans thru not doing the
obvious most logical move.

But if they want to tune AI for autonomous system, then doing a FTP simulator
game, running the NPC drones on a server will get you lots of unique free
testing and tuning of that AI done. Be much cheaper and we get a cool game to
play.

~~~
spullara
That doesn't sound like an AI at all. Sounds like poorly written static rules
created by a human who doesn't understand what they are doing.

~~~
Zenst
Maybe, though AI start of somewhere and will it think the missile can fly
higher than it thought and change that or learn that launch altitude comes
into play. But will always be some hard coded stuff, though the prospect of a
drone learning the laws of physics does intrigue me.

------
golem14
I feel a good or maybe the best way to eke our an edge for the US, China or
whoever would be to create a good simulation platform and offer a great SaaS
platform, maybe like kerbal space program, and let anyone compete. Then learn
from the simualations.

------
SiempreViernes
"[AI] would be able to make key decisions faster and more accurately"

That's a statement nobody here will have problems to accept right? I expect
nobody can think of any example that makes "more accurately" a problematic
claim.

~~~
casefields
Same stuff we heard with the early self-driving vehicle evangelists. Spoiler.
It's much harder than they portrayed.

~~~
nbardy
I don't think that's the case at all with flight vs vehicles. Autonomous
driving is complicated because you have to take into account a wide range of
scenarios and wide range of human behaviors, and a complex environment to
understand. And then make very fuzzy choices on how to react to those
scenarios.

Combat is a simpler zero sum game, pick and target and destroy.

Based on how AI plays top games right now(Starcraft and Dota), very fast quick
reflexes and pin point accuracy of their attacks I think the AI drones are
going to crush humans.

------
pcstl
Seems interesting, but all I can think of right now is the video game Ace
Combat 7.

------
BatFastard
Lets just hope the entrenched pilots don't find some way to handicap the
drone's ability to keep it "fair". Why the US is spending a trillion dollars
on the F-35 program is an exercise in pork politics.

~~~
casefields
Whatever happens, I bet it ends up like the Millennium Challenge. Contested,
with both sides claiming victory with caveats.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002)

------
Etheryte
Just as a heads up, at least on mobile, the site hijacks your back button.

~~~
dsun179
Yes. Hijacked on chrome android.

------
_0ffh
That was really just a question of time. Wait a few decades, and see the first
warships specialised for carrying drones and missiles (which are essentially
kamikaze drones) exclusively.

~~~
rrmm
They have them basically just missile frigates with new dispensers.

~~~
_0ffh
They will probably need a runway, for landing at least.

~~~
rrmm
I can think of ways around that, but depends on what sort of missions you want
to optimize for I guess.

~~~
_0ffh
Well, yeah, you could do vertical landing or water landing. Both have
precedent, but water landing probably implies craning the drones on board,
which is slow. Vertical landing on the other hand might work well. You'd still
need a flight deck for that, but a much smaller one.

~~~
rrmm
I guess something helicopter-carrier sized? I would think the main thing would
be to avoid supercarrier sorts of ships. Smaller ships with similar
capabilities would mean you'd be able to field more groups.

------
Jugurtha
I guess they'll be very careful with the objective function, not to produce a
Kamikaze drone:

\- Drone: Less than $10 million.

\- Fighter: Almost $100 million _and_ human on board.

It's not far stretched to treat the drone as a new type of missile. Air-to-
Air, Air-to-Surface, Surface-to-Surface, Surface-to-Air, and the new
generation: Anywhere-to-Anywhere missile.

------
phkahler
This sounds like a really cool project to work on. I dont think beating a
human will be terribly difficult. Ground targets? Easy for fixed targets at
known location.

Should such technology be created? That's question is above my pay grade. Bad
guys could do things like this today so it seems prudent to work on
countermeasures.

~~~
dfilppi
It doesn't need to be created if you don't mind being dominated by an
adversary that does create it.

------
saltedonion
I don’t see how this will work in a real battle. If the ai is fully self
contained with no communication to central command, then it’s like a dumb
missile. Once you press fire, you’ve lost control.

If the drone does require connectivity to central command, then shouldn’t it
be fairly easy to jam this signal?

~~~
varjag
Radio spectrum is vast, and you need to focus your jammer energy on the narrow
bands used in actual communication. Frequency hopping makes that non-trivial,
and that's before you consider directed beams and satellite uplinks.

~~~
stoneman24
In addition to frequency hopping, there are spread spectrum techniques to
smear the signal across a wider range of frequencies with lower energy in each
frequency. Once asked permission to switch on military radio on a project, the
answer was “go ahead, we’ll never notice”

------
xwdv
It will be great if in the future war is simply a function of how much money
you’re willing to spend to destroy a target. Probably not much anyone can do
to defend against a swarm of drones that never gets tired, never misses
targets and doesn’t even care about death.

~~~
nanna
This would be catastrophic. The fear of death has at least curtailed fighting.

~~~
xwdv
Some of our fiercest enemies don't fear death anymore, they yearn for it, to
be with their God. Let's set up the meeting.

------
ape4
The drone can take way more G-force.

~~~
dghughes
So can a missile.

~~~
baddox
And missiles tend to fair well in combat against manned aircraft.

~~~
saberdancer
Until it is jammed.

~~~
cheeze
Drones can jam missiles.

We can do this all day but I don't think it's helping anything.

~~~
ghaff
A lot of it boils down to capital cost vs. operational costs vs. capabilities
(overall and specialized) vs. other considerations like pilot safety. See also
just about any 4X game.

------
throwaway287391
Is this incredibly obvious or did I miss the part where they specified the
rules of the game? I assume they're not actually going to have the drone fire
actual missiles at the manned fighter...right?

~~~
1e-9
Hits can be simulated.

~~~
throwaway287391
So it's basically laser tag in the sky? Neat. Is it more or less a perfect
simulation or is it just enough to get an idea?

~~~
1e-9
I would expect them to use statistical models to estimate probability of kill
given the state of the target, drone, and environment at the time of a
simulated weapon firing. Certainly not perfect, but you probably won't find
many test pilots willing to have a live missile fired at them. Instructors are
able to judge pilot effectiveness from simulated firings, so it should be good
enough to evaluate a drone.

------
graycat
At least the one-on-one case of that battle is supposed to be a special case
of _differential games_ from R. Issacs and as in

Avner Friedman, _Differential Games,_ ISBN 0-471-28049-6.

------
nanna
How far off are other countries - China, Russia, any others? - from these
kinds of autonomous fighter drones?

------
yters
Soon all our future wars will be fought by eight year old script kiddies
controlling robots over the internet.

------
ww520
Would an airship based carrier hosting dozens of drones cruising at high
altitude become a reality?

~~~
ceejayoz
It's being explored.

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2014/11/10/aircraft-
ba...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2014/11/10/aircraft-based-drones-
sought-by-pentagon/18779017/)

------
cheez
Any chance these have already been in testing and account for UFO sightings
recently declassified?

~~~
simonh
The recently declassified 'UFO' sightings have been pretty thoroughly debunked
as spurious.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs&t=986s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs&t=986s)

~~~
cheez
hmmm, so trained pilots misclassified a bird?

~~~
simonh
Turns out humans are fallible, even expert one. If we assume a very, very tiny
chance that a trained pilot will misidentify a target, multiply that by the
millions of hours of pilot flight time in the US military, and out pop some
rare extreme outliers on a fairly regular basis.

But that isn't even speculation. We know the pilots misunderstood what they
were seeing, because the telemetry data refuting their misunderstanding is
right there on the recording.

To argue their case though, how often does the target tracking system they
were using pick up a bird? They may never have seen it do something like that
before, and may not even have known it was possible. Also it's one thing for a
knowledgeable expert to calmly review and decode the telemetry data at a desk,
but the pilot was a little busy also flying an airplane at the time.

~~~
cheez
But it could be a UFO from alpha Centauri!!!! Just kidding, I gotcha.

------
hindsightbias
They can just do what the Navy did. Get it carrier qualified and turn it into
a tanker.

------
7thaccount
My only concern is with drones being hacked and turned against the deployer.

------
vpribish
shouldn't this have happened about 20 years ago?

~~~
gridspy
Yes, but now we are talking about autonomy

Predator - entered service in 1995 25 years ago.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator)

