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Tempest Manned Unmanned Fighter Concept

Why?

Typhoon has been a huge commercial success, the market for a 6th gen air superiority fighter is the UKs for the taking. After the Obey Ammendement shot down trusted allies attempts to buy the F-22, no ones likeky to be banging on the US door for their next generation air superiority fighter.
BAe
 
Not any more - BAE Systems, don't tell him the Eurofighter is an Airbus product mind, he'll have an aneurysm.

As already mentioned, Tempest has a remarkable resemblance to Replica, which was a vehicle to get us taken seriously for the F-35, I suspect that this model is the equivalent of meeting an ex from 1994 who just got back from a nip and tuck. she is now winking at the F-X. Time will tell, a credible alternative to the US would be good.
 
As already mentioned, Tempest has a remarkable resemblance to Replica, which was a vehicle to get us taken seriously for the F-35, I suspect that this model is the equivalent of meeting an ex from 1994 who just got back from a nip and tuck. she is now winking at the F-X. Time will tell, a credible alternative to the US would be good.

[Cough] Japan [Cough]
 
FARNBOROUGH, England (Reuters) - Britain will invest 2 billion pounds to 2025 to develop a fighter jet called Tempest that could be used with pilots or as a drone, its defence minister said on Monday, unveiling a life-sized model of the new stealthy warplane.

UK to invest 2 billion pounds in new fighter programme through 2025
U.K. to Unveil 'Tempest' Fighter Jet Model for Post-Brexit World

The Daily Star has a photo, if you don't mind them trawling through your computer.
BREAKING: Britain unveils new futuristic fighter jet TEMPEST – and it can fly UNMANNED


Laughingly I am on business here at FIAS2018 and didnt see the Tempest till the tuesday so here are my photos of the beast. I even sat inside it and had a go on the VR ..good luck to BAE on it.

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While your civil servant experience may have hinted at some of these issues, practical experience for those of us in the military suggests otherwise.



How many times has that fully autonomous capability been used operationally? Moreover, the maritime environment is in my experience a little less cluttered and therefore easier to interpret (from a C2 and RoE perspective) than the land environment.



For both sides; as I said, speed is relative.



We've had autonomous EA capabilities since WWII (research PIPERACK). Whether it's 'just a line of code' to add autonomous kinetic effects or not (which I would contest), is an enormous step change and one that can be both operationally constraining and certainly not necessarily advantageous. That's why many nations are adding 'man-in-the-loop' capabilities and in some cases even spending money to remove existing autonomy (eg legacy Brimstone) from weapons.

Incidentally, please may I ask for the third time @sunnoficarus/@SOI/@meerkatz/@PhotEx why you keep changing your name on ARRSE?



Not necessarily. We just have to find a counter.



As I've said a great many times, 'Drones' are merely another form of Air Power.

For the foreseeable future, they will remain hugely less capable at multiple levels to manned types and reliably replicating the intuition, sensory capabilities and decision making of a carbon based life form (whether that be in a GCS or a 'conventional' cockpit) would be enormously expensive and technologically prohibitive.

A human seeing a brief puff of exhaust smoke from an aircraft he's maneuvering against will instantly know his opponent has engaged the burners and may be about to take the fight into the vertical. How many lines of software code, how many hours of bench-testing, and how many hours of trials would it take to teach an autonomous drone to draw the same conclusion or to avoid mistaking the puff of smoke for mist, condensation from wings, a missile being launched, chaff and flares, or any number of other possibilities and vice versa?

How many lines of code would it take for a computer to consider that a recent drought may mean that the object being carried by a man on the ground is a length of irrigation pipe he wishes to move to keep the crops he relies on for his livelihood alive rather than an RPG?

How many lines of code would it take for an autonomous drone to recognise a slight discolouration on the surface of some riverine water as oil seeping from a hostile patrol boat hiding in a nearby mangrove swamp as opposed to effluent from a waste pipe, or an algae bloom?

No one with any experience of Air Power is predicting the demise of manned aircraft in the next 50 plus years. An unmanned Tempest will remain highly valuable, particularly as a wingman. But stop worrying about an autonomous dystopia that we can neither afford (operationally and financially) nor possess the technology for.

Regards,
MM

Just as a point of clarity on one specific line above: nobody has removed the original ‘autonomous’ RF capability from Brimstone. The newer dual-mode seeker simply gives us the option to deliver it in SAL mode with a man (or woman) in the loop all the way to the target, before the RF seeker wakes up and takes it the last few yards.

If we ever entered a really contested air defence environment against a more conventional enemy, we’d almost certainly be back to firing salvos into kill boxes, as I doubt anyone is going to want to hang around painting targets with a laser!

In such circumstances, it’s not a great leap of imagination to see an RPAS being dispatched to an area on a one-way ‘seek and destroy’ mission, when the targeting process allows for such a decision on the balance of risk.

That’s not to say of course that autonomy is a direct replacement for manned vehicles (air, land or maritime) - is just presents some additional options in some circumstances.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Just as a point of clarity on one specific line above: nobody has removed the original ‘autonomous’ RF capability from Brimstone. The newer dual-mode seeker simply gives us the option to deliver it in SAL mode with a man (or woman) in the loop all the way to the target, before the RF seeker wakes up and takes it the last few yards...

I understood that some functionality had been removed with the update but thanks for the correction.

...If we ever entered a really contested air defence environment against a more conventional enemy, we’d almost certainly be back to firing salvos into kill boxes, as I doubt anyone is going to want to hang around painting targets with a laser!...

Although it was far from being truly contested by the stage at which they were employed, ‘legacy’ Brimstone was employed with some success by GR4s against a Regime armour laager during ELLAMY.

...it’s not a great leap of imagination to see an RPAS being dispatched to an area on a one-way ‘seek and destroy’ mission, when the targeting process allows for such a decision on the balance of risk...

In an environment (certainly one where enemy fighters were a factor) where an RPAS was required to conduct a ‘one-way’ mission, I doubt whether it would last long enough to get the missiles away. That’s where SPEAR comes in with its greater stand-off.

Regards,
MM
 

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