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US Airpower

grip

grip

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It seems the new 5th generation of stealth fighters F-22 and F-35's are lacking in reliability, with the Navies Aircraft Carriers becoming outdated, overly expensive to build and maintain. Are amphibious ships with choppers and drones the new Naval mobile airpower infrastructure of the future?
 
grip said:
It seems the new 5th generation of stealth fighters F-22 and F-35's are lacking in reliability, with the Navies Aircraft Carriers becoming outdated, overly expensive to build and maintain. Are amphibious ships with choppers and drones the new Naval mobile airpower infrastructure of the future?
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Carriers and modern day fighters are still incredibly powerful force projection assets. They're not going away anytime soon. We still are going to see more drones and amphibious ships; one does not replace the other.
 
The US navies air craft carriers are not outdated. The oldest in service is expected to be replaced in 2022 (scheduled date being 50 years or so from commissioning)

The F35 and F22 do require more maintenance than non stealth jets
 
Fear not. We shall bring death from above until all the tyrants have fallen.
 
ecofarm said:
I'm referring to shoe-wearing military men. Ain't that awful inclusive of me.
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........boot blousers, you ain’t fooling anyone...


**** them low-quarter wearing mars.
 
Fred Reed: Understanding Air Power

(TEASER)
Now, we read a lot of PR about “surgical strikes” and “precision weapons.” Think carefully about this. Intel says a terrorist leader of indescribable potency is in a house in a flimsily constructed suburb. The Air Force then makes a surgical strike with a five-hundred-pound bomb, taking out half a block. Pretty surgical, that. Perhaps it was the right block—it is possible—but still kills seventy-five people. The male relatives of the dead then join the insurgency. Ray-rah air power. The Air Force can’t afford to understand this, as then it would have to find a day job.
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grip said:
It seems the new 5th generation of stealth fighters F-22 and F-35's are lacking in reliability, with the Navies Aircraft Carriers becoming outdated, overly expensive to build and maintain. Are amphibious ships with choppers and drones the new Naval mobile airpower infrastructure of the future?
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Navy aircraft carriers have been considered outdated since post ww2 against near pear threats, however they themselves are not outdated. they can project force and are mobile airbases, if a country only wanted defensive capabilities aircraft carriers are worthless, but for offensive capabilities especially against less sophisticated militaries they are great tools.


On the f-22 and f-35 yes they both require massive maintenance. However they are not unique in this reguard. Russia's su-34 and su-35 with their 3d thrust vectoring engines can fly many hours with minimum maintenance, however around 1k flight hours they require major upkeep, their engines must be replaced or sent back to depot to be remanufactured which either way is expensive, and their jets minus the mig21 were not easy to upkeep, they took major manpower to work on as their designs favored the need for manpower due to soviet unions needs over the need for quick repairs.
 
beerftw said:
Navy aircraft carriers have been considered outdated since post ww2 against near pear threats, however they themselves are not outdated. they can project force and are mobile airbases, if a country only wanted defensive capabilities aircraft carriers are worthless, but for offensive capabilities especially against less sophisticated militaries they are great tools.


On the f-22 and f-35 yes they both require massive maintenance. However they are not unique in this reguard. Russia's su-34 and su-35 with their 3d thrust vectoring engines can fly many hours with minimum maintenance, however around 1k flight hours they require major upkeep, their engines must be replaced or sent back to depot to be remanufactured which either way is expensive, and their jets minus the mig21 were not easy to upkeep, they took major manpower to work on as their designs favored the need for manpower due to soviet unions needs over the need for quick repairs.
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Yeah, this confirms my thoughts that manned aircraft and its projective power is in decline.
 
grip said:
Yeah, this confirms my thoughts that manned aircraft and its projective power is in decline.
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Projective power is not in decline though, and force projection takes many forms, for exaple the us prefers sea and air over ground force projection, while russia prefers ground and air force projection over sea, and china is kinda in the crossroads where they are not quite sure but given time they will figure out how they wish to use their military.


Manned aircraft are quite valuable fyi, drones can not replace them except for certain taks, and against a state actor drones can easily be jammed. Much of the push for drones is not because they are some super new tech, we actually were using them right after ww2 in testing, but rather that pilots are harder to obtain then aircraft. In ww2 you could quickly train a bunch of soldiers to fly piston pounders, they were simple in every respect, now you have sophisticated jet fighters, with sophisticated firing systems and tactics, this requires pilots to be more physically capable than ever to handle the gforce, and trained much longer as well for these new systems, which makes pilots in demand but short supply, anywhere drones can be used means we can keep pilots safe friom harm as well as recruit new ones who wish to fly without being in harms way.


However drones would fail quickly in a war against a sophisticated state actor unless they could act by ai alone and not need input which could be jammed.
 
beerftw said:
Projective power is not in decline though, and force projection takes many forms, for exaple the us prefers sea and air over ground force projection, while russia prefers ground and air force projection over sea, and china is kinda in the crossroads where they are not quite sure but given time they will figure out how they wish to use their military.


Manned aircraft are quite valuable fyi, drones can not replace them except for certain taks, and against a state actor drones can easily be jammed. Much of the push for drones is not because they are some super new tech, we actually were using them right after ww2 in testing, but rather that pilots are harder to obtain then aircraft. In ww2 you could quickly train a bunch of soldiers to fly piston pounders, they were simple in every respect, now you have sophisticated jet fighters, with sophisticated firing systems and tactics, this requires pilots to be more physically capable than ever to handle the gforce, and trained much longer as well for these new systems, which makes pilots in demand but short supply, anywhere drones can be used means we can keep pilots safe friom harm as well as recruit new ones who wish to fly without being in harms way.


However drones would fail quickly in a war against a sophisticated state actor unless they could act by ai alone and not need input which could be jammed.
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RPV's need pilots. Full drones do not. You just tell them what to do and they go do it. The jamming effect would be similar to manned aircraft. They would be able to continue their mission. Full on drones with real usable combat capability for the US has been around at least since the 90's with Boeings X-47 series of drones which were designed to be autonomous and engage specified targets independently.
 
PirateMk1 said:
RPV's need pilots. Full drones do not. You just tell them what to do and they go do it. The jamming effect would be similar to manned aircraft. They would be able to continue their mission. Full on drones with real usable combat capability for the US has been around at least since the 90's with Boeings X-47 series of drones which were designed to be autonomous and engage specified targets independently.
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Yeah you keep bringing up those drones yet no branch has really adopted a full ai drone for anything but extremely few missions, which tells me the idea is not as grand as you make it sound.

Full ai drones can move on but we do not seem to being having such used except surveilance drones.
 
beerftw said:
Yeah you keep bringing up those drones yet no branch has really adopted a full ai drone for anything but extremely few missions, which tells me the idea is not as grand as you make it sound.

Full ai drones can move on but we do not seem to being having such used except surveilance drones.
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If you were a pilot would you want to be replaced by a machine? Here's the other thing, there has never been a public match up between a drone UCAV and a piloted machine RPV or otherwise. Nobody has really put these things through the paces since the 90's when Boeing was doing it. The thing about unmanned craft of any type is you can test them to destruction in real world conditions doing literally everything you would want to throw at them in testing. I have yet to see anything remotely similar. You cant do that type of testing with a manned vehicle.
 
PirateMk1 said:
If you were a pilot would you want to be replaced by a machine? Here's the other thing, there has never been a public match up between a drone UCAV and a piloted machine RPV or otherwise. Nobody has really put these things through the paces since the 90's when Boeing was doing it. The thing about unmanned craft of any type is you can test them to destruction in real world conditions doing literally everything you would want to throw at them in testing. I have yet to see anything remotely similar. You cant do that type of testing with a manned vehicle.
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I do not think pilots are what keep fully autonomous drones from being adopted, my belief is it is the lack of versatility. Yes they can be programmed to move to points for intel or to attack, but having a full ai capable of human response time and variables will require such massive programming that ai will likely never be used for such systems as the sole control for a very long time.

The human brain can actually perform more than a supercomputer, and even if someone came up with hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of terabytes of code to mimic perfectly the versatility of the human brain, there would be a need for a system that can access and process that data in a rapid manner which we are far from. Yes systems can use ai and guidance like terrain and starlight, however even with ai they are a far cry away from replacing human pilots, which is likely why autonomous drones have not seen any adoption other than a few niche tasks.
 
PirateMk1 said:
If you were a pilot would you want to be replaced by a machine? Here's the other thing, there has never been a public match up between a drone UCAV and a piloted machine RPV or otherwise. Nobody has really put these things through the paces since the 90's when Boeing was doing it. The thing about unmanned craft of any type is you can test them to destruction in real world conditions doing literally everything you would want to throw at them in testing. I have yet to see anything remotely similar. You cant do that type of testing with a manned vehicle.
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Such aircraft are of a very limited use at best, almost completely worthless most of the time.

Quick scenario. I am part of an Infantry Battalion, holding a position along a peak and down a ridgeline. Enemies are situated at the bottom of the slope moving in to my position, but also infiltrating up both sides of a ridge towards one of my companies I have positioned for overwatch. And on the reverse slope is a small village of neutral civilians that we have been put in place to defend from enemy forces.

Now exactly what good is an unmanned drone going to do there? I can tell you, absolutely none. Because nobody in their right mind is going to trust a flying calculator with putting ordinance anywhere close to where friendlies are located. A human pilot can assemble both digital and conversational instructions, either relayed from controllers on the ground, airborne observers, and even by talking directly with the forces on the ground. A flying calculator with missiles can not do that.

If a pilot is making their approach and recognize that among the bad guys he was about to strike is a platoon of friendlies, he can make the snap decision to stop the attack and pull back. An autonomous drone can not do that.

We can keep telling you this over and over, but you do not seem to get it. Nobody in the US military trusts the damned things. We are nowhere close to the point where they can ever be used, short of in some kind of bizzaro world "everything is a target" free-fire kind of zone, the likes of which we really have not seen since WWII. Friendly Fire is simply to big of a deal, and hitting neutral (or even hostile) non-combatants is a war crime that nobody wants to even look like they are touching.

Because I can guarantee, that is going to happen. Fighting some Grand Fenwickians in Myopia, and our drone for some reason pegs that a Myopian village is hostile and blowing the crap out of it. Killing all 120 people in an Ashram. That is just the kind of thing that the UNSC would go nuts over and throw more Resolutions than you can shake a stick at. Not to mention the obviously follow-up, of the demand of a war crimes tribunal.
 
PirateMk1 said:
RPV's need pilots. Full drones do not. You just tell them what to do and they go do it. The jamming effect would be similar to manned aircraft. They would be able to continue their mission. Full on drones with real usable combat capability for the US has been around at least since the 90's with Boeings X-47 series of drones which were designed to be autonomous and engage specified targets independently.
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You mean UAV - the military doesn't use drones anymore.
 
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