Boeing successfully flies unmanned autonomous military 'wingman' aircraft that may become pilot's buddy Boeing this week successfully completed its first official test flight of its autonomous uncrewed military airplane. Nicknamed the Loyal Wingman, the 38-feet-long aircraft was able to autonomously whiz around the skies of the Australian outback crewless. Having said that, it was under the careful watch of a test pilot in a …
> it was under the careful watch of a test pilot in a control station at the Woomera Range Complex
Next stop, placing these under the auspices of a "theatre" AWACS.
The role of the E-3 is to carry out airborne surveillance and command, control and communications (C3) functions for tactical and air defence forces.
Tell me again how the service life of an F35 fighter is expected to be 50 years. At this rate they will be obsolete by 2030
The likely plan is that F35 (and anything else that's still flying that can be suitably upgraded and is expected to be around post 2030, so Typhoon, Rafale, F22, possibly Grypen) will be upgraded to operate with a small swarm of these (Given US defence spending: 3 to 5 per manned aeroplane; given UK defence spending: 3 to 5 manned aeroplanes per one of these).
One 'wing man' drone does the dangerous stuff, like using it's radar (and so giving away its position to all and sundry), others then act on the data, launching missiles at identified targets say, (which also increases the risk they are detected). The F35 (or whatever) acts as a 'control node' for their wingmen, passing data between them (if they can't do it themselves), passing data from the wingmen up the chain to the AWACS or to another F35 or to the navy or the army, and receiving data from back down the chain to re-task wingmen. The F35 also puts a man-in-the-loop to exploit opportunities that the wingman doesn't recognise or to stop them wondering off in an unanticipated manner
> You might call it a remote-control super-autopilot more than anything else.
Says all. Controlling drones remotely (the "unmanned" part) isn't really new, the "autonomous" part seems to be still missing.
I'd wait with the big public announcements till the day it can take off, follow a leader, do vaguely useful stuff and come back to land, all on its own. (And without crashing or shooting down its own buddies!)
Sounds like marketing suffered premature ejac bragging...
I think the term Wingman is there simply to make it seem less scary than drone. These harmless little planes will always follow the lead of a trained and responsible pilot. Yeah, right.
Meatware pilots are very expensive and break easily: the US military has been wanting to replace them with something cheaper and more reliable for years.
Well, it IS supposed to become state-of-the-art killtech, they possibly can't call it "fairy glitter unicorn princess"
I mean, they *could*, and it would add embarrassment damage to the burning wreckages of their opponents as well, but... it... somehow... might be ... .hard to sell.
The shape of the battlefield of the future is changing. What will we end up with ? One human pilot and three drones for wingmen ? Will the squadron be counting human assets and dozens more drone assets ?
And what of communication security ? All of this has to be encrypted, otherwise the enemy could hack into the drone's comm channel and give it orders. I'm sure they have given that thought.
So the real question is : when will they remove the human element entirely ?
"So the real question is : when will they remove the human element entirely ?"
Answer: when the Law [Of Armed Conflict] lets them. The only thing preventing autonomous deployments is the requirement to always have a human in the loop, or responsible for certain actions. Same reason why we haven't yet got autonomous cars roaming the roads freely.
Which isn't to say that the technology is perfect, it isn't, yet. But the tech will get there before the regulations permit it.
"... with any humans 'in the loop' becoming further and further away from the front lines"
The humans in the battle zones will merely be "collateral damage", but they'll be there - the civilian population.
This will be the case even in the most abstracted scenario - a war conducted entirely by computers - there will be casualties (see Star Trek episode A Taste of Armageddon). That's the difference between a video game and real conflict.
> The humans in the battle zones will merely be "collateral damage", but they'll be there
He's talking about the humans who matter.
Nobody cares if you wipe some civilians, there is plenty of them around and they serve no useful purpose, quite the contrary.
When the RAAF used to display their F-111s at air shows, the pilots used to do fuel dump and burns by lighting the afterburners and then dumping fuel.
In anticipation of future air show participation, have the Aussies asked Boeing to facilitate the same? In the absence of afterburners, they can add fit a suitable ignitor...
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