Which modern nation has highest potential in aerospace?

[Glider]

Delcryos
I have one concern about drones and thats jamming. History is full of examples when one side deveops something for the other side to come up with a coutermeasure a few months later. To depend on a drone that can be jammed leaves you wide open. Certainly they have their uses and will play an important and growing role but I wouldn't be quite so quick to write them off the manned plane. A strictly automatic drone that doesn't need any control from the ground is an inflexable beast and could work out very expensive.
FJ
Re the modern fighters, the F22 is normally accepted to be the best but as we all seem to agree with limited sales oppertunities. The F35 is seen more as a general purpose plane at least in the UK with the Typhoon as the fighter. There is room for both but I believe that for the first time in at least three decades the USA don't have the worlds best fighter available for sale to almost any other country. We didn't have a real alternative to the F15 and F16, we said we did, but not really but now we do. The JSF will sell to a number of countries of course it will but not in the numbers the USA sold say the F16.
If you have ever seen the Grippen you will know what I mean, its puts up a stunning display and has already sold to a few countries. Plus of course, Europe has other options in the Rafael and Eurofighter.
Other evidence. The Indian Air Force bought Mig 31's put the best avionics they could find in the West and beat the American F15's in a recent red flag excercise. Times are a changing.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by Glider

The Indian Air Force bought Mig 31's put the best avionics they could find in the West and beat the American F15's in a recent red flag excercise. Times are a changing.

When that exercise went down I understand that the IAF basically ignored the "hard deck" and did other things that were considered very dangerous by the visiting US Pilots. At the same time I heard that many in the Pentagon are perceiving the exercise as a "wake up call." I even heard that the folks who flew that exercise did poorly on purpose for political reasons. Comments?!?

[Glider]

FJ Comments as follows
The Indian Airforce is very professional unit, its experienced and their pilots are as good as the best in the world. As an example, in the UK we have the Empire Test Pilot training scheme which is attended by pilots from around the world, including some from the USN. As the name implies it trains test pilots so you do get the best of the best, as the saying goes.
Certainly five years ago the record pass marks for both the fixed wing and rotary branches are both held by Indian Airforce pilots. I do not believe for one second that the Indian airforce would have behaved in a dangerous manner.
Indeed if there is one comment about the Indian culture is that they do tend to follow rules. I have worked with people from India in both the Navy and in civilian life so have seen this in action, and found it frustrating at times.

As for the wake up call. That would be a political thing and I wouldn't trust any politician as far as I could throw them, so that is more likely. The questions would be why pick on India? If the USA want to make a point why not point out the the Eurofighter can out perform the F15 and the F35, which it can?
Do you really believe that aggessive USAF pilots would have just accepted an order to throw a fight?
Have we seen any evidence behind these accusations?
Why hasn't anything leaked out?

Remember the shock that was felt when it was realised that the Mig29 had a sight mounted on the helmet allowing their pilots to have a much greater firing envelope. This meant that they could take on the F16 at the time on an equal footing. It is possible for the USA to be beaten at its own game.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by Glider

FJ Comments as follows
The Indian Airforce is very professional unit, its experienced and their pilots are as good as the best in the world. As an example, in the UK we have the Empire Test Pilot training scheme which is attended by pilots from around the world, including some from the USN. As the name implies it trains test pilots so you do get the best of the best, as the saying goes.
Certainly five years ago the record pass marks for both the fixed wing and rotary branches are both held by Indian Airforce pilots. I do not believe for one second that the Indian airforce would have behaved in a dangerous manner.
Indeed if there is one comment about the Indian culture is that they do tend to follow rules. I have worked with people from India in both the Navy and in civilian life so have seen this in action, and found it frustrating at times.

As for the wake up call. That would be a political thing and I wouldn't trust any politician as far as I could throw them, so that is more likely. The questions would be why pick on India? If the USA want to make a point why not point out the the Eurofighter can out perform the F15 and the F35, which it can?
Do you really believe that aggessive USAF pilots would have just accepted an order to throw a fight?
Have we seen any evidence behind these accusations?
Why hasn't anything leaked out?

Remember the shock that was felt when it was realised that the Mig29 had a sight mounted on the helmet allowing their pilots to have a much greater firing envelope. This meant that they could take on the F16 at the time on an equal footing. It is possible for the USA to be beaten at its own game.

Great perspective Glider, I heard these "rumors" at work (I work at an AF base) and I always wondered about their justification, and the take on the Eurofighter in lieu of an exercise with India brings out another angle on this. Perhaps the unit that went over to India "just sucked." ?!?!

As far as the Eurofighter out performing the F-35, I beg to differ, but only time will tell!

[Glider]

FJ, I enjoy these debates. As for the F35 and the Typhoon, I had better be right as we are using the F35 as our strike plane and the Typhoon as the fighter. If the RAF have it the wrong way around, we are wasting a simply huge amount of money.
Remember the unit that went to India was on the Indians home territory and you can bet your last cent they had been practising hard.

The F-22 will be the superior fighter comapred with the F-35 JSF. Too much weight is spent for VTOL capability on the F-35 that is not on the F-22 for it to be any other way.

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I personally think International Law should ban the production or deployment of armed "drones".

Just imagine what happens if their are un-manned attack aircraft, choppers, and ground units if a dicator gets hold of the controls. Democracy could be gone in the blink of an eye - even in the USA. A few robotic Appaches could effectively rule any city.

=S=

Lunatic

[plan_D]

Drones cannot become a massive part of the military. You need a man there and then to judge the situation, nothing is better than a human's judgement.

This is really a silly question in my opinion. The U.S and Europe share so much technology it's a blend more than a rivalry.

[delcyros]

First off, glider, armed drones are much cheaper than manned planes. R&D is still underway but this belongs to the future, sure.
All manned planes cannot deal with a equally careful unmanned design in valid performances. Independent guidiances are in development, too. They have reached (esspeccially in Israel a very high degree). Jamming is still possible, but the next generations of armed drones would need no ground directioning, some cruise missiles are semi independent working today (in operational use). They will render F-35 as well as F-22 useless. Since technology is not that expensive it can be bought or developed by most countries independently.
By the way, there has been much confusion about independent european politics recently, but if it comes hard on hard, I do not doubt that all european countries would work for the US, no matter how splitted public opinion will be.
A ban on armed drones would be interesting, but is very hard to controll...

[Glider]

Delcyros. I think we are closer than you think in some areas. Armed drones are in the future we seem to be close on that. Armed drones are cheaper than manned aircraft. Again I agree on a one to one basis, but I think the expence will be in the number you will need to do a number of different tasks.
Independant guidance is in development, that I realise but as far as I am aware they tend to be single function specific.
Cruise missiles are semi independant, again I agree but again they are mission specific.
A manned aircraft gives you flexibility, and there will always be the need for weapon systems that give you options. In the Falklands we went to war with the Sea Harrier which is a fighter, but it proved quite good at dropping bombs and ground support. The RAF Harriers that came later were better ground attack planes but they carried air to air missiles for self defence and would have made themselves dangerous against Argentine helicopters, ground attack aircraft, C130, recce and other types of target had the chance arisen.
You could certainly argue that the cruise missile could have taken the place of the Harrier in the GA role, but I don't see it shooting down another plane.
Also I must go back to jamming. If you allow for directions to be given to the drone, by default it is at risk of being jammed. If you dont you have to programme it before launch and you have an inflexible system. If it is clever enough to make its own decisions on route, you are in danger of having one very sophisticated loose cannon flying around the sky.

Technology will find a way to defeat the best intentions, may I give a lighthearted theoretical example. The early stealth aircraft were I understand safe because their radar returns were about the size of a sparrow and were lost in the clutter. Logic tells me that they are in trouble once someone designs some software to look for sparrows flying at around 600mph, and treats the rest as clutter.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by RG_Lunatic

The F-22 will be the superior fighter comapred with the F-35 JSF. Too much weight is spent for VTOL capability on the F-35 that is not on the F-22 for it to be any other way.

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Lunatic

Not really RG. There will be a version of the F-35 with just STOL capability in as much, the VTOL ducted fan package will not be in this version. Even with the center "fan" installed, the weight of this aircraft was purposely kept to a minimum through out the design and construction. Engineers received cash bonuses for coming up with weight reduction ideas. This did not happened (to my knowledge) during the F-22 development (the F-22 was one of the last projects I worked on while at Lockheed).

I once lived in the Antelope Valley, just a few miles from the "Skunk Works." I have many good friends that helped develope this aircraft and when the fly-off was conducted against the Boeing "Laughing Guppy," the X-35 performed so well that many F-22 program managers took note and supposedly an effort was made to "Win the JSF Contract but don't make the F-22 look too bad."

When both aircraft are built and deployed, I think the deployment concept (at least in the USAF) will have the same relationship that the F-15 and F-16 has today...

By the way, with the F-35 being smaller and looking like a smaller F-22, is also known as "Minnie Me."

[Nonskimmer]

Originally Posted by FLYBOYJ

By the way, with the F-35 being smaller and looking like a smaller F-22, is also known as "Minnie Me."

Cute.

[cheddar cheese]

And damn they both look good too

[delcyros]

Yes, glider, we may share the main opinion.
However, the Drones are the fastest developing technology department in aerospace techniques in our days. Bioniks, network solutions and electronic warfare will bring these designs in operational use quite soon. The flexibility you mention is the reason why designs like F-22, Eurofighter, Gripen and other 5th generation fighters are still in development, but I think, this is a major strategical mistake, a huge waste of time and money. Pilots are able to make decisions, true, but they are not free to do that in general, they do have the limits as would have a independent programmed drone. Just keep the stealthy potential in mind, Israel used today a 5 ft. long (very) stealthy semi independent drone for tracking and recon duties, they are extremely cheap and hard to detect (actually it has a radar reflection zone going to be near zero). Next generation drones made by US, europe and other countries will carry weapons for multiple purposes. No manned plane could match an air engagement optimized independent armed drone, they would be able to outmanouvre (todays) SAM and AAM misseles with ease, while a manned plane always suffers from the thread of extreme G-forces. Not to speak of the stealthyness and the ability to carry more weapons or systems.
And they will be able in within a decade or two to intercept sattelites or orbital targets, while I don´t see such improvements in this timeframe for manned planes...

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by delcyros

Yes, glider, we may share the main opinion.
However, the Drones are the fastest developing technology department in aerospace techniques in our days. Bioniks, network solutions and electronic warfare will bring these designs in operational use quite soon. The flexibility you mention is the reason why designs like F-22, Eurofighter, Gripen and other 5th generation fighters are still in development, but I think, this is a major strategical mistake, a huge waste of time and money. Pilots are able to make decisions, true, but they are not free to do that in general, they do have the limits as would have a independent programmed drone. Just keep the stealthy potential in mind, Israel used today a 5 ft. long (very) stealthy semi independent drone for tracking and recon duties, they are extremely cheap and hard to detect (actually it has a radar reflection zone going to be near zero). Next generation drones made by US, europe and other countries will carry weapons for multiple purposes. No manned plane could match an air engagement optimized independent armed drone, they would be able to outmanouvre (todays) SAM and AAM misseles with ease, while a manned plane always suffers from the thread of extreme G-forces. Not to speak of the stealthyness and the ability to carry more weapons or systems.
And they will be able in within a decade or two to intercept sattelites or orbital targets, while I don´t see such improvements in this timeframe for manned planes...

While I agree to a point Delcyros, don't rule out the day of the combat pilot yet. I'm old enough to remember folks saying that modern fighters didn't need guns, all combat will be with missiles, etc., well lessons learned in Viet Nam changed all that. Until UAV technology, bionics, network solutions and artificial intelligence are molded into a "foolproof" technology, there will still be a man in the cockpit, and even when we reach the point where this technology is deployable, I think the combat area will still have some kind of forward combat controller in an aircraft watching and to a point, controlling the action.

Remote controlled drones are subject to possible jamming.

Autonymous drones are subject to being spoofed - i.e. fooled into mis-evaluations. It will be a long time before AI will be as smart as a human when it comes to battlefield decisions.

Politically, who is going to authorize a drone to use deadly force in any but the most hostile of enemy territories? In any other environment, the chances of destruction of non-enemy targets is quite high.

We are likely to see an increase in the use of drones, mostly remote controlled, against lesser opponents in "hot zones" over the near future. However I think it will still be another 20+ years before we see AI drones with full combat capability patrolling boarders - they are just much too likley to end up shooting down passenger jets (espeically if spoofed by the enemy/terrorists).

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Lunatic