Boeing develops Skynet fighter jet

[Jito463]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-27/combat-drone-secretly-developed-by-raaf-and-boeing-unveiled/10851000

 

Okay, the title was clickbait, but it is an unmanned fighter jet designed to fly alongside a manned jet.  Dubbed the "Loyal Wingman", it's currently it's not equipped with weaponry of its own, but that's a relatively simple modification according to the article.  Boeing has been working with the RAAF (Australian Air Force) to develop the craft.

Quote

A large drone designed for electronic warfare, which could eventually carry bombs, will be publicly unveiled today after being secretly developed with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).

Key points:

• The drone is the first combat aircraft designed and developed in Australia in more than 50 years
• The cost of the project has not been revealed, but it is believed to be Boeing's largest investment in drones outside the US
• Once fully developed, the drone could eventually be exported to other nations, sources said

 

The unmanned system is roughly the size of a traditional jet fighter and was quietly developed in Brisbane by aerospace giant Boeing, in collaboration with the RAAF and the Defence Department.

 

A prototype of the yet-to-be-named unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is expected to be unveiled this morning by Defence Minister Christopher Pyne at the Avalon aerospace trade show outside Melbourne.

 

Details of the classified "Loyal Wingman" project remain scant, but the ABC believes the UAV is designed to fly up to several thousand kilometres.

 

Its primary purpose would be to conduct electronic warfare and reconnaissance missions, particularly in environments where it is considered risky to send manned aircraft.

So far as adding weaponry goes, the article had this to say:

Quote

On the aircraft's underside is a large payload bay that can carry a sensor or electronic warfare equipment, but industry sources said it could also be used to one day carry bombs.

They also included a graphic to describe the size of this drone (in spoiler tag due to the size):

Spoiler

The article claims it could be in production as soon as mid-2020.

[Teddy07]

My dream is to one day help develop military equipment. Who wants to program a toaster when you can program a fighter jet? But yeah very unlikely to happen

[paddy-stone]

OK, this is cool and all, but I have a problem with the quoted

Quote

Its primary purpose would be to conduct electronic warfare and reconnaissance missions, particularly in environments where it is considered risky to send manned aircraft.

Cos, the way I understand it, if this was shot down while on a mission, it's highly likely that they'd send in men to retrieve or destroy it, so that the enemy doesn't get its hands on the tech themselves.. unless they are equipped with a self destruct of some sort, but even then there'd be a chance of some of the tech surviving that could possibly be reverse engineered.

 

Anyway, other than that it's cool... not that war is cool really, but anything that means sending in less real people to do a job, is worthwhile.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

but anything that means sending in less real people to do a job, is worthwhile.

I'm all for keeping out soldiers safe from harm whenever possible, but I worry that we may start becoming too detached from....I guess the best term would be 'the horrors of war'.  There is a necessity to war at times, but I take some comfort knowing that real men and women are using their experiences to make judgment calls.

 

When the bullets that are flying and the bombs that are dropping come from some remote command center, those people don't have a personal stake in events on the ground.  If we get too used to that, then I can see it becoming all too easy to forget those are real people on the other end of the screen.

[RejZoR]

9 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

My dream is to one day help develop military equipment. Who wants to program a toaster when you can program a fighter jet? But yeah very unlikely to happen

I'm gonna make a fighter jet toaster.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

I'm gonna make a fighter jet toaster.

Someone beat you to it (okay, it's a propeller, not a jet...close enough).

[ScratchCat]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I'm gonna make a fighter jet toaster.

Eat bread bastard!! doesn't have the same ring to it.

[paddy-stone]

3 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I'm all for keeping out soldiers safe from harm whenever possible, but I worry that we may start becoming too detached from....I guess the best term would be 'the horrors of war'.  There is a necessity to war at times, but I take some comfort knowing that real men and women are using their experiences to make judgment calls.

 

When the bullets that are flying and the bombs that are dropping come from some remote command center, those people don't have a personal stake in events on the ground.  If we get too used to that, then I can see it becoming all too easy to forget those are real people on the other end of the screen.

I was talking more about using manned aircraft than soldiers on the ground in relation to this part

Quote

Its primary purpose would be to conduct electronic warfare and reconnaissance missions

 

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

I was talking more about using manned aircraft than soldiers on the ground in relation to this part

Quote

Its primary purpose would be to conduct electronic warfare and reconnaissance missions

 

Fair enough.  I should have clarified that I wasn't really directing those comments at you specifically, just using them as a launching board for some random thoughts.

[paddy-stone]

1 minute ago, Jito463 said:

Fair enough.  I should have clarified that I wasn't really directing those comments at you specifically, just using them as a launching board for some random thoughts.

No worries, yeah I hear ya... it's a tough call really though in regards to keeping it real enough that the people fighting the wars on our behalf, don't get so enured to the whole thing it becomes like a video game... and on the other side of the coin, trying to keep them from getting PTSD over this shit. Also I don't think I would prefer to send real people in to fight really, there are lives at stake... so I don't know where I would come out on that argument to be honest, as I can see both sides have valid concerns.

 

[leadeater]

51 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Cos, the way I understand it, if this was shot down while on a mission, it's highly likely that they'd send in men to retrieve or destroy it, so that the enemy doesn't get its hands on the tech themselves..

They are usually packed with explosives that can be remotely detonated for that purpose. There's some IT server and storage equipment SKUs I've seen that have that in them too.

[FPSwithaWacomTablet]

This came to mind:

 

[BuckGup]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

They are usually packed with explosives that can be remotely detonated for that purpose. There's some IT server and storage equipment SKUs I've seen that have that in them too.

You're shitting me. Like a 3U case with C4 build in to it lol?

[FPSwithaWacomTablet]

37 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

You're shitting me. Like a 3U case with C4 build in to it lol?

I recall hearing from an IBM conference recently that they have tiny explosives on the PSU cables, since even turning off a server PSU is too slow for an emergency shutdown. Usually found on their recent IBM mainframes.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, BuckGup said:

You're shitting me. Like a 3U case with C4 build in to it lol?

Nope not kidding, heard it from a company exec when they came over for a visit. If one company has it that means pretty much they all do it.

 

It's actually really important to them because in the past when an emergency evacuation was ordered a person(s) were assigned the role of laying explosives or throwing grenades at the servers and communications equipment until they were sure everything was properly destroyed. That meant they were staying behind longer than is ideal and had to be close enough to be at risk of injury carrying out the order. I have no idea how often that was required to be carried out but it was a problem and the best solution was put bombs in everything.

[leadeater]

14 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

dammit why don't movies have this O_O

One of the only IT jobs everyone actually wants

[straight_stewie]

12 hours ago, Jito463 said:

A large drone designed for electronic warfare, which could eventually carry bombs

This is why you've got to be very careful with news articles:
 

All planes could eventually carry bombs. Even something as unassuming as a Cessna 172. In the 70's and 80's, dropping "bombs" filled with drugs out of seemingly innocent GA aircraft happened to be a good way to smuggle drugs across the southern border of the United States. If you can accurately air deliver a few hundred pounds of drugs, what's to stop you from air delivering a few hundred pounds of explosives instead?

 

The reality is that, more than likely, the Loyal Wingman (which I guess is what we're supposed to call it for now) will likely never see combat, and a machine of it's type won't see widespread combat deployment for a decade or two, if ever. Think about the X-43 program. It proved that we could develop controllable hypersonic craft of missile size, in 2004.

It took 6 years to get to the X-51, which in 2010 proved that we could sustain that controlled hypersonic flight long enough to potentially build a hypersonic cruise missile.

Boeing claims that it will be in the late 2020's, at the earliest, before they have an example of a warhead equipped hypersonic cruise missile. That's potentially 26 years of lag time between first flight and deployable weapon, at the fastest development pace (and these types of estimations have a long history of being far too optimistic).

John Deere also experimented with "tractor wingmen", for lack of a better term. Some combines were equipped with a controller while some tractors were equipped with a receiver. This allowed harvesters to increase efficiency by controlling the offload tractor, from their better vantage point, to be able to better fill the trailer with product. So that is an example of these types of "follow me" technologies having good civilian applications as well.

[Nicnac]

I love this lol. What even is a standard drone?

[straight_stewie]

2 minutes ago, Nicnac said:

I love this lol. What even is a standard drone? 

Apparently a hobby RC plane. Looks to be about the right size.

[paddy-stone]

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

They are usually packed with explosives that can be remotely detonated for that purpose. There's some IT server and storage equipment SKUs I've seen that have that in them too.

Yeah. I had already said that... it's right after the bit you quoted of my text

 

[Ithanul]

17 hours ago, Jito463 said:

I'm all for keeping out soldiers safe from harm whenever possible, but I worry that we may start becoming too detached from....I guess the best term would be 'the horrors of war'.  There is a necessity to war at times, but I take some comfort knowing that real men and women are using their experiences to make judgment calls.

 

When the bullets that are flying and the bombs that are dropping come from some remote command center, those people don't have a personal stake in events on the ground.  If we get too used to that, then I can see it becoming all too easy to forget those are real people on the other end of the screen.

AC-130Ws use logitech flightsticks to aim guns and the video is feed through a computer screen.

 

Ain't much of a jump actually to this drone.  These new drone just looks like it is the next step from the current Global Hawks and Reapers. Those and Reapers are fairly big.  Checks on length of a Reaper, 35 feet, about 10 meters.  So, this new drone is just a tad bigger.

 

The load out of Reaper already does electronic intel gathering and precise strikes with different types of munitions.  The folks that control those are not even in the war zone but stationed in the States.  So, this new drone is actually nothing fairly new in that realm.  Also, command centers are hundreds of miles away or even in another country sending commands to down range fighters.  Its called an operations command center.  There other names as well depending on service branch and if a joint or not.

 

Heck, I made the comment once to a command officer that the screen looked like I was watching a RTS.

 

5 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

dammit why don't movies have this O_O

Want some fun, go to a movie with military forces shown in said movie and bring actual military folks with ya.

We will then proceed to rip said movie apart and laugh at it.

 

Heck, we where having a hoot at the Transformers ones.   All that messed up rank and ribbons.

To give ya an idea:

Spoiler

Note, at that time frame, rolling up sleeves was a huge no, no.  They actually allow it now per uniform reg guidance.

Even still, that is not a proper rolled up sleeve.  Yes, there is correct way per the guidlines to roll up sleeves, referred to as a Delta Roll or SF Roll.

 

[dtaflorida]

17 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I'm gonna make a fighter jet toaster.

Shouldn't be too hard to arm this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i00thtWgvDs

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah. I had already said that... it's right after the bit you quoted of my text

 

I just really wanted to mention the servers with bombs in them 

[Jito463]

4 hours ago, Ithanul said:

The load out of Reaper already does electronic intel gathering and precise strikes with different types of munitions.  The folks that control those are not even in the war zone but stationed in the States.  So, this new drone is actually nothing fairly new in that realm.

Oh, I'm aware.  That's part of what prompted my little soapbox speech.  I hope my concerns are unfounded, but I can easily see how they might not be.  Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

This seems like the same situation with the Fire Scout (unmanned) and the Seahawk (manned). https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=81065

The Fire Scout is sent into theater to recon the area and if the situation is safe, the Seahawk will go and to do their mission. That said, the Fire Scout, according to the wiki, is able to be outfitted with weaponry.

 

22 hours ago, Jito463 said:

-snip-

There are a couple of movies that address this issue: Good Kill, Eye in the Sky, and Drone. I personally haven't seen them so I can't comment on their quality.