Its in the skunkworks with an additional one for NGFA.
@HRK
FBO
Dear Madam, Thanks for the info. If it is OK to answer this, when will the thunder AESA be ready/operational? Or will it take time?
You can ignore my question if it is not suitable to answer at this point. No hurries
That's cool. I was worried about AI/ML because the US was making a deal out of it with its own loyal wingman work, but I could tell that 99% of the stuff they were describing wasn't going to be there on Gen 1 models.
That said, loyal wingmen are but one way to apply low-cost drones. There are other concepts out there too -- e.g., swarming, saturating air defences, etc -- that could come into form much earlier than a Valkyrie counterpart.
I don't think a loyal wingman should be too far out if we work with China. I expect a lot of the subsystems can be bought there off-the-shelf (e.g., engine), the challenge, as you said, is designing and testing a bigger airframe to boot. It's an aircraft project in its own right, albeit more modest in scale than the FGFA-proper.
You are right. Not even the US can put AI on aircraft right now. The place where AI fits in for a lot of these systems is misunderstood by a lot of people (and scientists) in my opinion. It's currently useful for some low-level and specific stuff.
Yes that is something that must be looked at. Not sure if swarms would be an AWC thing or an AvRID thing. Perhaps a collab would be needed.
I am not sure if it's just my feeling but I feel there's a certain wariness about going to China for everything (Shahpar vs Burraq, IREK vs REK, Azm vs FC-31). So AvRID might not be too keen on going to China for too many things. There seems to be a certain protectionism of our defense products happening.
I think when you said software development I misunderstood what you meant. The actual writing of code will be easy (is what I meant). The hard part will be figuring out the decision making algorithms and testing them (which is probably what you meant by AI/ML software development). This will take a lot of smart people with expertise in game-theory, swarms, control systems and a lot of time. On the bright side these things can be developed/tested in simulations and on the small target drone that we already have.
Thank you both for your generosity on bringing the topic of AI and ML here.
Now, World is tilting towards india for software development industry due to cheap labor and considerable skills.
Ask me why?
Our local Software development niche is very outdated, at bachelors level, at masters as well as PHD. A whole 4 years degree, you get only 1 course on AI, with least focus on ML. AI is the future, be it as a revenue generating industry or a daily used tech, it will grow on in the next 7 years rapidly.
We are not bothered to even research and study this field, just our “han ye course karlo, fiverr pe kam miljaega” “basic desktop software banakar khush hona”, this is our level. Those who go abroad for further studies at Doctorate level, seldom return as they get settled with good pay there. Pay for software engineers is less than a freelancer plumber in Pak.
PAC and Aviation City must focus on training batches of teams, who are based on contracts with PAF to serve them for at least a given amount of period post studies. This is what emirates does with it’s fresh engineers, they are bound to work for a year or two at emirates engineering, maintenace and overhaul.
If steps like these are taken, we might eventually extract the motivated, innovation loving people who will be the best tool to work specifically for combat required AI.
UAV swarms, and wingman UAV have been teased by many countries in the past few years in many ways. These are really high potential things, will open up a whole new book of possible strategies for aerial combat. We must focus heavily on that as well
