Reply to: Su-35

[Paddy]

You mean the Gary Powers incident? IIRC, it was a SAM hit.

No, that’s what the US claimed… after first denying is was shot down at all. The whole point of the U2 was that it flew higher than SAMs could reach

[KaiserWilly]

I would imagine that the primary use of the Su-35 is interception. Would you trust a drone to intercept and judge the situation? Don’t forget the Mig and Su were beefed up to chase the US U2 spy planes and successfully shot one down.

You mean the Gary Powers incident? IIRC, it was a SAM hit.

[Paddy]

I would imagine that the primary use of the Su-35 is interception. Would you trust a drone to intercept and judge the situation? Don’t forget the Mig and Su were beefed up to chase the US U2 spy planes and successfully shot one down.

[gingerjedi]

I saw the last flying Vulcan again at the weekend along with the superb Red Arrows at Weston air day, the commentator said there was a competition to win a flight in a Spitfire which would be a lifetime event in itself but this one would be flying alongside the Vulcan, it doesn't get much better than that!

[Gibbon]

These days an aircraft can throw itself around harder than a pilot can survive even suited up, so at that level I'd expect drones to outperform manned a/c

That being said, modern air combat has a decent amount of shooting at a distance so in many scenarios, maneuverability is not the issue, missile guidance and range, how you detect things coming your way, stealth and countermeasure are the critical factors.

But currently I believe it is the case that no drone stands much of chance against a modern fighter, since pilots are picked from the sharper end of people and they really care about not being shot down, though the difference will erode.

Drone can be used to saturate in a way the manned a/c can't.

A cruise-style missile costs about 1% of the cost of an fully equipped fighter and pilot, so if you had 100 of them converging on a target one fighter would be hard pressed to take down them all, in many cases it would simply not have the ammo. For £1 billion you could buy 1,000 or so cruise missiles, could the RAF shoot them down ? How many countries have a defence budget where a gigaquid would be affordable ? My guess is 50, I've met individuals who could do that, not all of them like us.

That's today's tech where cruise comes in pretty dumb, they are pre-programmed to follow a route, not hard to see later generations taking evasive and cooperative action.

Be do need to remember that air combat and attaining command of the air is not an end in itself, you have to kill people and blow things up if you want to win and ever smarter bombs seem to be inevitable.

What the hell have you been reading, are you seriously suggesting that it would be better to buy cruise missiles rather than manned aircraft. A cruise missile is a tactical one use, one mission weapon of limited range. Very limited in the price bracket you are talking, for the more sophisticated longer ranger weapons you are looking at a couple of million.

Also they are only useful against fixed assets, useless against mobile ones and area denial roles like the Typhoon in Libya for instance stopping the army from deploying armour.

Drones are great in asymmetrical warfare, but against an enemy with a modern integrated air defense system a lot less so.

The Tornado GR4 is still a highly rated bomber and whilst the much maligned F3 version was a poor dog fighter it was a highly developed missile platform which was it's function. It also performed very well against the Yanks in all the flying exercises I was involved in.

[Dominic Connor]

encyclopedia[/url]
Yes, but can a drone match the evasive of a manned A/C? And win? I'm not so sure.

These days an aircraft can throw itself around harder than a pilot can survive even suited up, so at that level I'd expect drones to outperform manned a/c

That being said, modern air combat has a decent amount of shooting at a distance so in many scenarios, maneuverability is not the issue, missile guidance and range, how you detect things coming your way, stealth and countermeasure are the critical factors.

But currently I believe it is the case that no drone stands much of chance against a modern fighter, since pilots are picked from the sharper end of people and they really care about not being shot down, though the difference will erode.

Drone can be used to saturate in a way the manned a/c can't.

A cruise-style missile costs about 1% of the cost of an fully equipped fighter and pilot, so if you had 100 of them converging on a target one fighter would be hard pressed to take down them all, in many cases it would simply not have the ammo. For £1 billion you could buy 1,000 or so cruise missiles, could the RAF shoot them down ? How many countries have a defence budget where a gigaquid would be affordable ? My guess is 50, I've met individuals who could do that, not all of them like us.

That's today's tech where cruise comes in pretty dumb, they are pre-programmed to follow a route, not hard to see later generations taking evasive and cooperative action.

Be do need to remember that air combat and attaining command of the air is not an end in itself, you have to kill people and blow things up if you want to win and ever smarter bombs seem to be inevitable.

[Cliphead]

Can an English Electric Lightning do most of that? But in the 50's?

Don't need to do this with a drone.

[stek]

Can an English Electric Lightning do most of that? But in the 50's?

[AtW]

"Predators had been armed with AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles, and were being used to "bait" Iraqi fighters, then run. In this incident, the Predator did not run, but instead fired one of its Stingers.

It was like 10 years ago.

Manned fighter vs ONE drone will probably result in a win by the fighter, however it would lose against fleet of drones unless fighter manages to disrupt them electronically in some way.

New fighters cost too much, teaching pilots also is expensive - the future belongs to drones: without risk to pilot they can attack targets that otherwise would be too high risk for pilots to engage.

[scooterscot]

Yes.



No.

"Predators had been armed with AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles, and were being used to "bait" Iraqi fighters, then run. In this incident, the Predator did not run, but instead fired one of its Stingers. The Stinger's heat-seeker became "distracted" by the MiG's missile and missed the MiG. The Predator was hit by the MiG's missile and destroyed.[52][53] Another two Predators had been shot down earlier by Iraqi SAMs, one of them on September 11, 2001.[54]"

General Atomics MQ-1 Predator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, but can a drone match the evasive of a maned A/C? And win? I'm not so sure.

[AtW]

That being said, do drones carry air-to-air missiles?

Yes.

A manned fast jet could surely take out a fleet of drones with guns without much hassle, no?

No.

[scooterscot]

Question is if you were fighting an enemy, which would you fear most ?

a) 50 drones
b) One really cool jet

A top tier fighter over 10 years in service will cost at least 50 times that of a drone /RPV

Politically they're cheaper too, so you can attack well defended targets without loss of pilots.

That being said, do drones carry air-to-air missiles? A manned fast jet could surely take out a fleet of drones with guns without much hassle, no?

[AtW]

Question is if you were fighting an enemy, which would you fear most ?

a) 50 drones
b) One really cool jet

I'll put my money on Death Star

[Dominic Connor]

Drones

Question is if you were fighting an enemy, which would you fear most ?

a) 50 drones
b) One really cool jet

A top tier fighter over 10 years in service will cost at least 50 times that of a drone /RPV

Politically they're cheaper too, so you can attack well defended targets without loss of pilots.

To me the biggest plus is more subtle.
Because each one is cheap, it doesn't matter so much if it is crap.

"Crap" in this context means, you build it to fight an enemy whose tech you think you know.
Turns out when you do fight it is against someone you didn't expect who has different tech.

History shows that predicting who you will fight in the next war is a mugs game.

Yet...
The RAF has pathetically low diversity in its manned aircraft, the Eurofighter and before it the Tornado try to be all things to all men and that makes them both stupidly expensive at the same time as not optimised for any given task.

We don't have any serious bombers, no a/c capable of launching from carriers because we don't have any carriers, an almost risible anti-tank capabilty again an enemy that can shoot back (ie anything better than an Arab army).

I read how they are already planning the upgrade to the Typhoon in 10 years, because this thing is so amazingly expensive, they don't bin them, just kludge until votes can be bought by throwing it all away and because the projects are so expensive they don't start unless they're "sure" they will succeed regardless of cost.


That means you don't get innovation, low risk taking means low rewards, but with cheap drones, it matters a lot less if you (for instance) build a drone that's tulip hot at taking out fast light boats attacking a big ship and it doesn't work or you never get attacked by them.

Instead what we do is try and hang that capability on a 70 million quid jet that costs £17,000 quid an hour to run, to shoot a boat we don't expect to be attacked by any time soon.

But we *may* have to deal with little boats, or jungles or defend a shipping lane against an enemy with subs which currently we can't really do any more and as above, if the RAF had to attack someone with proper air defences we'd have to buy a new air force afterwards.

[quackhandle]

Very impressive.

Similar moves to the Eurofighter Typhoon I saw at Cosford last year - my eardrums are still recovering now.

qh