UCAV the future or present?

hypewaders,

A UCAV weapons platform can put up a much larger volley of missiles for cheaper then your AA cruise missiles can.

A UCAV weapons platform would be more capable, equally cheap in maintenance and far more survivable, resulting in a cheaper better solution then yours.

Your idea is not economical: specialized single kill aerial unmanned weapons are no match to generalized multiple kill aerial unmanned weapons platforms. A UCAV can do everything a fighter interceptor can but better, the only thing yours can is be a better missiles for a higher price. If your system were practical cruise missiles would have replaced manned aircraft already, but cheapness of simpler limited weapons launched from a weapons platform has prevailed.

 

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Planes will come back with unexpended munitions. The reason is that the target is too cheap to be an economic kill with the weapon used. One reason the gun will stay around until the laser can match its capablities. The most expensive AAM was the Pheonix. A million bucks a pop. AMRAAMs are about a quarter to half a million. I'll build a cheap decoy that looks on radar and IR like a plane. It'll cost $10,000 apiece. I send them into your swarm, and they waste themselves on them. My planes come in and perform thier strike while you're launching the new ones.

what WellCooked was saying Hyperwaders, is that you might as well make your wings reusable. You also don't consider how expensive they would end up with the current procurement process.

There's a UCAV being built right now, the X-45 I think. It is a weapons delivery system. While it may cost $20 million, it can use that half million dollar missile, achieving the same thing you are at half a million a kill, rather than three or more. And, it's already half way developed, which means that it'll be here faster and cheaper than your idea, which would still have to go through the procurement system.

I'd be more interested in a missile I can pop off, and send backwards, perhaps with a small drag chute. Once behind the guy on my tail, it'll lock on and take him out.

 

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Additions to Hypewaders UCAV:
Dispersed processing - use each UCAV as a component in the overall processing ability. Targets can be detected before they enter jamming range, the more intelligent "swarm" could target the aircraft then entering the area and launch a proportion of its component UCAVs at the target. This way, targeting is faster and more accurate.
Ramjet/Scramjet propulsion - ramjets work well at up to mach 5, scramjets work well above mach 7 - both better than current fighters.
Glider-type flight before contact - gliders, once aloft, can stay there for hours without using any fuel. Using the dispersed net to identify thermals, it is theoretically possible to keep the UCAVs aloft for days or weeks (depending on the prevalence of thermals). The glider, if undeployed should be able to land relatively easily, and if deployed will merely need to jettison the wings. They could then use either a one-time chemical rocket, or if they are high enough, gravity, to accelerate themselves to ramjet speeds.
I just thought - if you combine the dispersed network of the "swarm" with a ground based intelligence-gathering dispersed network, then enemy fighters can be tracked before they get within range of the swarm, and the ground network can check against planned flight paths for friendly aircraft before targeting the fighter.
And don't forget, UCAVs could in all likelihood make harder landings than manned fighters, as long as they are built solidly.

 

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Geodesic is catching on, but still a bit attached to old paradigms. I'm proposing that realatively cheap decentralization of sensors and controls will dramatically trump the extravagent concentration of expensive assets. My proposed one-kill-only vehicles do return, cruise platforms and all, from every sortie during which they do not kill or get killed. In peacetime, this means cost-effective return from sorties otherwise flown at considerably greater expense using the old knights-in-armor.

The wings and cruise engine would serve multiple functions as re-usable loitering platforms, and also expendable decoys under threat. Chemical/kinetic acceleration for the attack weapon would provide the very short-duration "dogfight" motive force, shucking off the wing/engine assembly designed for loitering. Understand, I'm talking about an approximately $2k engine and a $1k foam/fiberglass/aluminum-mesh wing being discarded on engagement with a sufficiently proximate (seconds away) manned bogey. Understand, I'm suggesting putting thousands of hair-trigger close-range air-to-air missiles up in a sustainable matrix: Not something I would personally want to run the gauntlet of. I would not wish to fly through such a swarm aboard any available manned aircraft, with any available training and experience under my belt.

Further in the future, it is not unreasonable to imagine automated UCAVs physically removing human enemy pilots from their aircraft, and turning the formerly-manned behemoths upon their owners. Mass-produced manned fighters have systems that a more maneuverable droid will someday be straightforwardly programmed to exploit.

Even in the nearer term, there will of course be countermeasures- but not manned ones. That's my whole point: Small, multitudinous, and aggressive UCAVs can today render much more exhorbitant, but smaller-fleet investments (manned first-strike aircraft) obsolete in aerial combat.

 

I jsut realized another problem with this. Range. While an AIM-120 is capable of considerable range, the radar built in is only capable of seeing a few miles-enough to find the target after the inertial guidance gets it that far. It needs the larger, more powerful radar on the plane to get the longer range, by "seeing" with it. A radar with enough range to make full use of the missile's rocket motor's range will be too big and expensive to put on an expendable munition. Thus you might as well put AIM-120s on an X-45 than make an AA cruise missile.

 

That's why I said ground based radar shoul be linked into the network.

 

Please understand, a short-range matrix of killer bees requires no powerful radar. They strike autonomously from extremely close range. Manned aircraft must in this scenario run the gauntlet through a dense zone-defense, self-adjusting matrix of kamikaze droids. Use your imagination, and then imagine volunteering yourself to be the first hero to fly into the Swarm. (poof) Or the second... or maybe if you're lucky, the 30th manned platform to barge in quick succession through the same track through the frenzied cloud of streaking sky-pirranhas

 

UAV versus manned AC :
Actually, I'm not so sure which platform would be easier to jam by the enemy.
I would say (to be short) that short "bursts" of jamming "energies" (there are many)
could disorient or disable a hi-tech UAV quite easier than even a less sophisticate
manned jet fighter with less sophisticate electronics... but a human brain in the
cockpit able to judge the situation "on site" rather than a remote operator could
do.