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Comment by zrail | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing new. The USAF has had unmanned F-4 phantoms for decades that are used for target practice and live fire weapons testing. The F-4 fleet is being replaced with surplus F-16s.

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You are right for sure. But they have never had a 4th gen (fly by wire / designed to be aerodynamically unstable;) fighter with this capability.

In my (potentially uninformed) opinion, It is definitely a big milestone because it opens the door to 5th gen fighters becoming UCAVs - almost like making the GPS guided JDAM weapon out of a 1960s dumb bomb by "bolting on" the JDAM module as a cheap aftermarket kit.

That's one of the current proposals for the A-10, since there are plenty of people in the armed forces that want to keep it for CAS, the air force doesn't like it as much since it's not "sexy" but the marines, infantry, and armor troops that are saved by CAS love the old ugly thing.

Likely A-10 replacement, imho.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion

Strait-winged, turbofan, six wing hardpoints and an internal bay, extended loiter time, only $20mil+$3k/hour operating costs ... this thing has serious potential.

Might as well go with an F-35 then, it can carry more stuff.

The A-10 can't be replaced by effectively a trainer with a light ground attack option.

The A-10 is a flying tank, it's main gun is very useful for CAS and it can carry a lot of armaments and more importantly take a lot of punishment.

The A-10 is simply not sexy, the air force doesn't want it, it might not even want to provide CAS roles in general.

The USAF offered the US army to take the A-10 fleet in house the Army doesn't want it since logistically it can't really support fixed wing aircraft at this point, maybe the marines would take it in.

The A-10 isn't expensive, it's probably the most cost efficient aircraft the US has produced since WW2, it's simply not a sexy Gen 5 FBW doodad.

Might as well go with an F-35 then, it can carry more stuff.

But is too expensive to ever risk danger-close. Whereas A-10's have had mortars fired over them in certain circumstances...

The USAF is going to have plenty of F-35's to spare, and it it can carry standoff munitions for CAS, not unlike light attack aircraft which you aren't going to be placing into direct line also.

The A-10 was designed to take a beating, it has redundancies on top of redundancies, and armored cabin and fuel tanks, you can blow half of it's tail and it will still land (tho an F-15 has landed with 1 wing ;)).

Light attack/trainers are OK but they aren't in the same league.

It's not clear to me how tough this plane would be (especially relative to the A-10).

Tough is open to debate. In some ways the A-10 is a very delicate plane. It's radar profile and low speed make it a bit of a sitting duck in certain situations. It can survive ground fire, but not from modern radar-guided AAA.

The scoprion is interesting, once you get past the new look. It's got roughly the same capacity, size and costs of the A-10. But it's a little faster, flies higher, and of course lacks the legendary 30mm. The second seat (either flown or removed for space) adds lots of EW potential that would make it more likely to not be shot down than the A-10. And there might be room for a fancy big gun in that internal bay. I;m most impressed by it's 5-hour loiter/CAS time. Like I said, the concept has potential.

Low speed is not a problem. Compared to missiles, all publicly known manned aircraft are really really slow. Even the SR-71 was kind of slow, and it no longer flies.

Radar profile is a minor issue. Normally, the A-10 would be facing unguided and perhaps IR-guided threats. The A-10 has flares and chaff.

I don't think modern radar-guided AAA is much of an issue given the use case. The radar gets taken out, either by the A-10 itself or by something high and stealthy or even by a cruise missile. The larger systems are not easy to move and hide. For the smaller systems, the A-10 can withstand 50mm shells hitting the cockpit armor.

>> the A-10 can withstand 50mm shells hitting the cockpit armor.

No. Wherever you read that is dead wrong. 0.50 caliber glancing rounds yes, the sort of thing from a machine gun. And it is meant to survive nearby air bursts from 37mm AA shells, their shrapnel, but not direct hits. A hit from a 50mm exploding shell would rip the plane into pieces no matter where it impacted.

0.50 caliber sounds more like the canopy.

Minor correction, from Wikipedia, with references: The armor has been tested to withstand strikes from 23 mm cannon fire and some strikes from 57 mm rounds.

References:

Donald and March 2004, p. 18

Jenkins 1998, pp. 47, 49

Note "strikes", not shrapnel. The armor thickness varies. From some angles, the cockpit can take a 57mm shell. From other angles, it's only good for 23mm.

I wouldn't describe it as delicate - these things are meant to make it home after taking multiple direct hits from 23mm+ or a hit from a man-portable AA missile - and they have tested that durability:

http://warthognews.blogspot.com/2011/07/from-archives-oif-st...

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s314/Lethal_014/EMLandv1a...

Nobody would debate that the A-10 is a beast. If you are going to be raked with ground fire it's where you want to be. But we have to look at the entire mission profile. The A-10 is slow, making it more susceptible to shoulder-fired missiles, causing it to have to fly higher on the way to and from the mission. Higher means greater exposure to radar-directed weapons, not the A-10's strong game. Or it can fly lower, reducing its range and requiring airfields closer to the fight, airfields which are more difficult to protect. Flying low also reduces tanker options. There are a hundred factors. The evaluation of weapon systems really does require a committee.

The speed of the A-10 wouldn't matter against MANPADs, sub/transonic light-attack/trainers wouldn't fare any better. A block-2 stinger missile travels at mach 2.5, the SA-18 Igla can do almost Mach 3, and the 9K333 "Pussy Willow" (no, I didn't made it up but GJ NATO) is presumed to be even faster, tho it's very new and still not a lot of operational information about it. If they get a lock on you within their interception range even a fighter aircraft would not outrun them.

Yes, but even a moderate increase in target speed dramatically reduces the range of the missile, along with increasing the time for the pilot to react. Small missiles do not travel at a constant speed. They hit top speed the moment their motor burns out and then coast. By the time they are near their effective range they may be moving slower than the target. If the missile has to chase the aircraft (all shoulder-fired/IR sams) a faster aircraft will be able to remain lower and still out of effective range despite being slower than the missile's max speed.

Yes and no, a lock-on within the visual range of the seeker is not going to give an aircraft too much time to outrun it, aircraft at low altitudes aren't going to be able to go supersonic very well anyhow, even if it's a fighter.

Also modern MANPADs have sustained supersonic speed which is why they are only good for 4-5KM, but within that they'll splash you at max speed. A SA-18 traveling at 800M/S+ has only a range of 5000M so there isn't any "coasting" this isn't a movie they fly for 5-6 seconds and either hit something or drop like a rock.

They don't like it because it isn't a ticket to a cushy lobbyist position in the industry since Fairchild is gone and isn't a source of new contracts to siphon of tax dollars.

They cook up all sorts of BS excuses about the costs of special support equipment for A-10 (already paid for) while blissfully ignoring the massive waste blown away on JSF and F=22.

fly by wire (necessary for aerodynamically unstable aircraft) shouldn't really make autonomous/unmanned flight harder, should it? the computer _already_ knows how to translate "pilot intent" into stable flight.

I was more trying to say that - to my knowledge - they had never done this with a fly-by-wire fighter. The QF-4 (previous aerial target system) was all hydraulic / analog systems.

"Where Have All the Phantoms Gone?" (2008) is a good personal story about the QF-4's:

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/where-have-all-...

I thought the aside in the article about unmanned "missile trucks" controlled by a latest gen manned fighter was interesting.

This article is where those quotes come from:

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/pentagon-touts-lo...

The hard part is developing a strong enough AI to do what they want. Current uncrewed vehicles all have a remote human pilot. Air Force brass wants to do away with that bit. Maybe it's six years out but I would be extremely surprised.

It's part of a rarely-discussed issue with beyond-visual range (BVR) missiles. For all the hype about technology, they have a horrifically low kill rate against live and aware target. If you look at stats against maneuvering opponents actually beyond visual range, ones with the senors to detect the radar-guided missile approaching, the kill rate is on the order of 15%. Doing the math, the fancy new fighters don't have the missile capacity to confidently down any BVR target, hence the need for a "truck".

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