PAFAce
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Yep, UAS are definitely the future, I couldn't agree with you more. It's not just the Europeans, even the Americans are spending lots of their R&D resources (this includes valuable finances and invaluable expertise) on UAS development. Almost half of all aviation/space system media nowadays is covered with featured reports on UAV/UCAV systems and the Robotics industry. The benefits of these, as you explained, are quite obvious. As one US Navy Chief Petty Officer put it When a robot dies, you dont have to write a letter to its mother. That's profound, in that it would save lives. People would go to war like they go to office jobs, drive to the pilot-station, fly the aircraft, and drive home at night to be with the family. Of course, that's an exaggerated view, but that's possible with UAS.PAF ace
My friend this is what I meant. Technological advancements aside the human in the aircraft is the biggest impediment to making the fighter perform better. Plus they are expensive to train and only last 20-30yrs at best. I think in many ways 5th generation is a tech demonstrator for things to come. I am still intrigued by how EU has letitself fall behind quite intentionlly in the race to get 5th gen fighters. However they are all going great guns for UAVs. It seems that they too foresee it as a temporary measure and therefore not worth persuing.
In PAfs scenario instead of going after 5th gen, I would concentrate on a very small cheap yet strong UCAV carrying 1-2 SRAAM/MRAAms. Imagine your sky full of a hundred or so UCAVS with no radars but getting updates from a plane flying 150-200KMs behind. Small and lethal.
What do you think
Araz
However, we must not get carried away. The fights of the near future will still (largely) be between manned aircraft, and next-gen tech gives you an unfair advantage over your adversary. Europe did not permit itself to fall behind, but rather fell behind purely due to their threat perception. In Europe, it is much more difficult for governments to justify spending billions on technology that won't serve any useful purpose for almost 50 years. In other words, there is a reason why there is no European DARPA. The same can be said about the respective Space programs of Europe and the USA.
Like I said, in any hypothetical future war with a theoretically well-matched enemy (say, Russia or China), the American pilots will still have an unfair leg-up on their enemies. And that, for the Americans, justifies the push into fifth-generation.
Lastly, you may consider the F-117 a tech demonstrator, even the B-2 or the SR-71, but the F-22 is very much an operationally inclined aircraft. It was built to be that way, from the day the program started 20 years ago. Of course, since it is so new, it has had problems that were unprecedented. Therefore, we will learn from it, but that's not its primary goal. It's primary goal is to destroy hi-tech enemy forces.