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birdguy

I never thought about this before...

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It never crossed my mind that an F-35 pilot might have drone for a wingman.  How about a flight of four with two manned and two drones?  I was never a fighter pilot but I think it would make me nervous to have some guy on the ground covering my six.  Has the guy on the ground got the same range of visibility as the guy in the manned aircraft?  Does he or she have the same expertise to fly a fighter in combat as an airborne pilot? Does the pilot sitting at a console miles away have the same 'pucker' factor as the pilot in the cockpit when things get hairy.  The console pilot has nothing at stake or anything to risk as far as his own body is concerned.

In short the drone pilot is never in harms way like the cockpit pilot is.

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/10/13/us-air-force-must-build-trust-to-add-drone-wingmen-report-says/

Noel

Edited by birdguy
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Noel, the takeaway I gleaned from the linked article is calling for autonomous or semi-autonomous guidance making use of machine learning to generate the algorithms for the drone's artificial intelligence 'pilot.'

It is also implied that the drone(s) might possibly be under the control of the F35's flesh-and-blood pilot. Alternatively, the drones might be controlled by an air battle manager. The "untethered CCAs could operate from a nearby E-7 Wedgetail or E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS."

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Fr. Bill    

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Yeah, Fr Bill, I read that too.  But to me mixing artificial intelligence or remote operator control from another aircraft miles away with human intelligence and emotions in the heat of battle is a flawed idea.  And having a pilot trying to control two aircraft at the same time seems to be ludicrous.  Unless the lead aircraft has a back seater controlling the drone aircraft. But then why not have a pilot operating as wingman instead of a back seater?

I'm of the school of thought that just because you have technology capable of doing something you don't have to use it.  

Noel

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50 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Is a flawed idea.  I'm of the school of thought that just because you have technology capable of doing something you don't have to use it.  

Noel

Why waste money on expensive aircraft, training pilots when you can build cheap throw away drones.  Fighter jets are like DVD's, slowly becoming obsolete.

 

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3Green, we're talking about two different things.  You're talking about pure drone air strikes.  I have no problem with that.

I'm talking about drone wingmen flying along side human pilots.  Very bad idea in my opinion.

I would think fighter would want to trust their lives to people he knew.  Fellow pilots from the same squadron.  Pilots he hoisted a few with at the O Club.   Pilots he trained with as a team.  Pilots he sits next to at an after action debriefing.  Someone he can punch on the shoulder and say, "You're full of word not allowed" with a smile.

If I was going out on patrol as a Marine I would want to go with my mates.  Guys I trained with.  Guys I knew and trusted.  Not with some robots controlled by someone I didn't know sitting in front of a monitor miles away.

Now if you want a robot only patrol that's a different story. 

Maybe I'm too old and my military experience is too old for a discussion of this type.  So 3Green tell me about your military experience and trusting your life to a robot controlled by someone sitting in front of a monitor miles away or your buddies who you know and who know you and are your friends. 

Noel

Noel              

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16 hours ago, birdguy said:

 I was never a fighter pilot but I think it would make me nervous to have some guy on the ground covering my six.  Has the guy on the ground got the same range of visibility as the guy in the manned aircraft?  Does he or she have the same expertise to fly a fighter in combat as an airborne pilot? Does the pilot sitting at a console miles away have the same 'pucker' factor as the pilot in the cockpit when things get hairy.  

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/10/13/us-air-force-must-build-trust-to-add-drone-wingmen-report-says/

Noel

 

I think you're vastly underestimating modern drone technology Noel. Even basic off the shelf drones you can buy yourself are capable of switching to autonomous mode when the drone is drifting out of range or low on power, and then autonomously flying back to the operator. Now consider what sort of advanced capabilities military drones have.

Not a difficult prospect at all for a drone flying in formation to avoid the other aircraft in its vicinity. Even in manual mode the automation can oversee and prevent collisions with the other aircraft in its formation.

I see drones flying in formation with a manned aircraft as being in a safe autonomous mode in formation and controllable by the man in the cockpit when required but still with the automation able to instantly take over in the event the pilot is incapacitated or does something stupid.

And It's not like the pilot in the jet is constantly juggling two joystick, one for his jet and one for a drone, another drone controlled with a joystick in his teeth and one between his knees... manual control would only be initiated when the manned jet is in a safe location and on autopilot. Otherwise the drones are flying autonomously.

Look at the precision these guys in the video below are capable of. Orders of magnitude harder than simply safely maintaining a formation.

 

 

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15 hours ago, birdguy said:

f I was going out on patrol as a Marine I would want to go with my mates.  Guys I trained with.  Guys I knew and trusted.  Not with some robots controlled by someone I didn't know sitting in front of a monitor miles away.

 

I don't think thats how it works. The drones would have autonomous modes. If "a guy on the ground" was controlling them then he's not going to be constantly waggling a joystick to maintain formation. Precise, safe formation flying would be automated and way more precise than a human could manage. If a controller on the ground (who could be former pilot) takes over manually then it would be departing the formation to strike a ground target or along with the other drones engage an air target. I seriously doubt you will see a close range dogfight (which rarely happens now) with a manned fighter and several ground controlled aircraft all darting around each other at ultra close range, like a video game. The manned jet would be overseeing from range. 

I would think its more likely that the drones would fly autonomously with the F35 or comming 6th gen aircraft and then be tasked by the pilot to engage air or ground targets. With manual control by the pilot available if the pilot requires it and is in a safe position at range with autopilot on.

Edited by martin-w

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"Humans will always have a cognitive advantage within the battlespace, in terms of making decision through uncertainty, relying on intuition, breaking rules and norms, and being able to use adaptive thinking from past life experience, and applying it in new and different ways,” Penney said. “Autonomy just simply is not going to be able to do that.”

it seems to me that the lady that wrote this, is biased, as she's a former F16 pilot. Like many fighter pilots she's refusing to accept that the day will come when the machine surpasses the capabilites of the human pilot and human fighter pilots become a thing of the past. And it'll be sooner than many think.

She's vastly underestimating the potential of autonomous systems. 

We can also consider the following scenario, namely a former pilot, on the ground, in a virtual reality booth, dogfighting in an advanced drone and pulling 20 G and thus out maneuvering and defeating any aircraft with ease, that has a man in the cockpit  who is incapable of handling more than 9G.

I think she's very naive. 

 

Edited by martin-w

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6 hours ago, martin-w said:

it seems to me that the lady that wrote this, is biased, as she's a former F16 pilot. Like many fighter pilots she's refusing to accept that the day will come when the machine surpasses the capabilites of the human pilot and human fighter pilots become a thing of the past. And it'll be sooner than many think.

That day has already come for many factory workers who lost their assembly line jobs to robot/drones.

Let's extrapolate the drone pilots to tank drivers and artillerymen and combat soldiers.

There's an old saying that goes something like, "He who has the most toys wins."  That can easily be changed to, "He who has the most robot/drones wins."

We already have robot vacuum cleaners to clean homes.  Driverless cars.  Amazon is working on drones to deliver packages.  Many office chores will become automated.  Who needs a stenographer when you can talk into your iPhone and it can transmit you letter to the sender's iPhone.  We are already texting.

ATMs have replaced many bank tellers.

We don't need pastors anymore.  Go to church and a loud speaker will tell you when to stand, sit, or kneel and which hymn to sing and then deliver the sermon.

And when we come home from church in our driverless cars our household robot will have lunch waiting on the dining room table...some sort of composite plastic thing printed out in a people free factory.

And if we replace fighter pilots with drones why not airliner pilots with drones?

What will we have become when all we have to do is sit around talking or texting each other on our phones waiting to see who wins the drone wars.  And what do we do when we lose the drone war and our cities and towns are occupied by enemy drone warriors?

I see a future where people will become lazy drones themselves in the original sense of the word simply being born and waiting to die because drones have taken away our purpose for living.  We may still need undertakers because that hasn't been automated yet.  But it might soon be with home crematoriums in the basement.  When grandpa dies just take him down to the cellar and feed his body into the flames.  That's one chore we might still be able to do ourselves.

I might ask you Martin, why are we sending people to Mars and the Moon when, as you say, the machine surpasses the capabilites of the human?  Just because?

Artificial intelligence, robots, drones...what do we need people for?

I'm glad Chuck Yeager and Robin Olds and Chappie James aren't still around to see the demise of the fighter pilot.

Noel

Edited by birdguy
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The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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That ship has long since sailed.

Manned acft operating together with drones is not a new concept at all.  The Israeli Air Force successfully used remotely-piloted drones paired up with F-4s as hunter-killer teams on SEAD missions (suppression of enemy air defenses) in the Bekaa Valley during the 1982 war in Lebanon.  They took out 19 Syrian SAM sites in a matter of two hours without losing a single airplane...quite a turnaround from the heavy losses they took from air defenses in the 1973 October War.  The early destruction of the Syrian air defenses paved the way for a really lopsided victory in the air campaign--over the course of the next two days, 82 Syrian MiGs went into the dirt with only one Israeli fighter lost (to ground artillery fire).


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F-4s Bob.  I would assume the back seater was controlling the drone.  Could this be done in a single seat fighter with the pilot handling both his own aircraft and the drone at the same time?

Noel


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Boeing envisions individual fighters being able to control up to 3 or 4 loyal wingman drones, with AWACS and other large aircraft (stick a control station in the back of a tanker, for example) able to control many more. This article from a few years ago talks about the general concept and potential uses.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33271/everything-we-learned-from-boeing-about-its-potentially-game-changing-loyal-wingman-drone

Have you played any combat sims with wingmen you could command (a number of space sims would also be good examples)? That's more what these loyal wingmen drones would be like. You see an enemy aircraft on radar or IR and tell the drone to go shoot it down, or tell the drone to protect vulnerable aircraft like AWACS or tankers, and the drone goes and figures how to do it on its own. As for how it would be done, modern helmet mounted sights on fighters already allow the pilot to look over their shoulder and launch missiles at targets behind them, that same ability could be used to send drones after a target or on some other mission (ie. look at a friendly aircraft and tell a drone to go protect it). With modern AI and computer systems they don't need a human controlling every little thing they do.

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13 hours ago, birdguy said:

F-4s Bob.  I would assume the back seater was controlling the drone.  Could this be done in a single seat fighter with the pilot handling both his own aircraft and the drone at the same time?

I'm pretty sure they were ground-controlled RPVs.  When we talk about "loyal wingman" drones, that doesn't mean (as the pictures all seem to suggest) a drone flying in close fingertip formation with the fighter...it would more likely be in lateral proximity but in a different altitude block, so as to not pose a collision risk.

As mentioned above, the fighter "master" doesn't need to fly the drone like one would an R/C model--it could task the drone to perform high-level complex automated tasks, e.g. shadow the lead aircraft at 1000 ft above and behind, orbit at a specific location/altitude, scan a sector with its radar and downlink to the fighter, fly out to a long-range target designated by the fighter and launch a weapon, etc.


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I buy that Bob.  I had visions of an F-35 pilot controlling both his aircraft and the drone on his right wing.  Or someone in a trailer at Nellis operating as his wingman.

Having flights of manned aircraft and drones operated from a remote site be it on the ground or an AWACs aircraft nearby makes sense.

But the old fuddy-duddy in me wonders about we becoming too dependent on drones.  Drones can only do what they are told to do or programmed to do.  But can they make independent decisions based on immediate situations like people can?  Can they be programmed to respond to an infinite number of situations many of which the programmer has never experienced or even thought of or considered?

Noel

 

Edited by birdguy

The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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On 10/15/2022 at 3:42 PM, birdguy said:

I see a future where people will become lazy drones themselves in the original sense of the word simply being born and waiting to die because drones have taken away our purpose for living.

 

Nope.

Its not compulsory that we let our automated vacuum cleaner clean the carpet, we can switch it off and do it ourselves if it crumbles our cookie, its not compulsory. Human beings will be  able to do what entertains them, rather than the boring tasks they don't want to do that are soul destroying. 

Some people are inherently lazy, but most get bored and require stimulation. If automation is making our lives easier by doing mundane tasks, and if its no longer required that we engage in the same job day in and day out that bores us to tears, and we can have more leisure time, then we can go on one of the hikes you used to go on, or create works of art, or study something new, or what human beings should be doing, namely, be the custodians of the natural world and spend our time looking after the flora and fauna. If if you really want to be doing the mundane tasks we do now, go ahead, I don't see it as being compulsory to let Robbie the robot do your garden. 

Its worth remembering that great strides, advances in science and technology, development of advanced societies, advances in medicine... all started to occur when we had more free time available and were no longer spending the majority of our time simply surviving.

 

On 10/15/2022 at 3:42 PM, birdguy said:

I might ask you Martin, why are we sending people to Mars and the Moon when, as you say, the machine surpasses the capabilites of the human? 

 

Because the machines don't YET surpass the capabilities of humans. And sending humans to the Moon. Mars and beyond is, as we've said before, about making us a multiplanetary species to avoid existential threats. Currently, most geologist and biologists prefer boots on the ground because no machine can function as well as a scientist on the scene. One day, something the size of the human brain will be as capable as the human brain, but even when that future scenario is manifest, there will be those that are adventuresome and seek challenges and have the urge to find out what's over the next hill, because its human nature, its what we've always done and probably one of the main reasons we've survived up to now, as a species.

 

 

 

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