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The Staff of SOH
F-16 Drone Being Tested
- Thread starter Milton Shupe
- Start date
brad kaste
Charter Member
I always wondered how cost effective is it to take a 'retired' fighter and convert it into a drone? Sure,...the F-4s or F-16s have been sitting around out in the desert for a number of years doing nothing,....but gosh,...the cost to convert them into unmanned drone aircraft must run into the millions. That's millions of dollars. And for what? To have them shot down by a rocket or two and then that's it...bye bye millions of dollars. I can't imagine all that much learning goes on through a shot down or two. More money up the flue-pipe for the US taxpayers. I would think there would be/should be a cheaper way in finding out the effectiveness of an air to air or ground to air missiles.
If someone could point out why I might be missing the whole point please do. I'm open for a change of attitude.
If someone could point out why I might be missing the whole point please do. I'm open for a change of attitude.
I agree Brad. However, I suspect the technology being tested is for more clandestine purposes, IMO. Really tired of the whole military industrial complex multi-billion dollar wasteful spending programs.
Some QF-16 clips:
Alan
Alan
I've wondered the same, but maybe it is the concept of practicing and testing against a highly realistic target versus using a tiny drone. Then again, if you can hit the tiny drone, you should have no problem hitting a full size target.
bearcat241
SOH-CM-2023
“It’s a replication of current, real world situations and aircraft platforms they can shoot as a target. Now we have a 9G capable, highly sustainable aerial target."
The latest fifth gen and proposed sixth gen fighters have or will have tech advances that allow maneuvering in the range of 9+ G's, even in manned configurations (thrust vectoring is a big component in this development). Just imagine the G's that a 6th gen UCAV fighter will do in a knife fight! And you can bet, they ARE on the drawing board...
Currently, there are no drones in our arsenal capable of such performance envelopes. I suspect that the older F-4 was useless in this performance range as a practice drone for testing the latest high G, short range, infrared missile tech such as the AIM9X and others, which in some cases have their own form of thrust vectoring for extreme performance. These are NOT your father's heat-seekers. They are nasty little daggers that can turn on a dime, some at 90+ degrees at insane mach numbers from any aspect. Its this capability that makes short range, "look and shoot" helmet tech work. In order to advance this tech even further and improve the hits-to-firings ratio, you need a "life-sized" aerial target capable of countering these missiles with extreme maneuvering without high G stalling. They noted in the article that the F-4 drones were prone to crashing, probably due to the kind of low speed, high G stalls encountered in close aerial knife fights. It wasn't designed for dogfighting in this envelope anyway. Conversely, the F-16 was designed from the ground up for this envelope and up until now the only thing holding it back was the G limitations on its human pilots, somewhere in the range of 6-7 G's in exceptional pilots (the average pilot will black out at a sustained 4G-5G range). In an unmanned config, the F-16 can better mimic the higher performance capabilities of 5th and 6th gen fighters and provide the type of test situations needed to eval 6th gen missile tech. Like it or not, we will always have an arms race to answer to, so you're gonna have these missiles or lose a lot of precious pilots and expensive aircraft.
So, you only have two choices and one will definitely happen: fund and build a 9G drone from scratch (very expensive high tech gamble) or take a proven 40+ year old, fly-by-wire, 9+ G platform near the end of its service life and convert it to target drone (just a low tech brain box, some cockpit controls hardware and some additional wiring needed). Which do you think is more cost effective?
The latest fifth gen and proposed sixth gen fighters have or will have tech advances that allow maneuvering in the range of 9+ G's, even in manned configurations (thrust vectoring is a big component in this development). Just imagine the G's that a 6th gen UCAV fighter will do in a knife fight! And you can bet, they ARE on the drawing board...
Currently, there are no drones in our arsenal capable of such performance envelopes. I suspect that the older F-4 was useless in this performance range as a practice drone for testing the latest high G, short range, infrared missile tech such as the AIM9X and others, which in some cases have their own form of thrust vectoring for extreme performance. These are NOT your father's heat-seekers. They are nasty little daggers that can turn on a dime, some at 90+ degrees at insane mach numbers from any aspect. Its this capability that makes short range, "look and shoot" helmet tech work. In order to advance this tech even further and improve the hits-to-firings ratio, you need a "life-sized" aerial target capable of countering these missiles with extreme maneuvering without high G stalling. They noted in the article that the F-4 drones were prone to crashing, probably due to the kind of low speed, high G stalls encountered in close aerial knife fights. It wasn't designed for dogfighting in this envelope anyway. Conversely, the F-16 was designed from the ground up for this envelope and up until now the only thing holding it back was the G limitations on its human pilots, somewhere in the range of 6-7 G's in exceptional pilots (the average pilot will black out at a sustained 4G-5G range). In an unmanned config, the F-16 can better mimic the higher performance capabilities of 5th and 6th gen fighters and provide the type of test situations needed to eval 6th gen missile tech. Like it or not, we will always have an arms race to answer to, so you're gonna have these missiles or lose a lot of precious pilots and expensive aircraft.
So, you only have two choices and one will definitely happen: fund and build a 9G drone from scratch (very expensive high tech gamble) or take a proven 40+ year old, fly-by-wire, 9+ G platform near the end of its service life and convert it to target drone (just a low tech brain box, some cockpit controls hardware and some additional wiring needed). Which do you think is more cost effective?
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Interesting and very well articulated Bearcat.
Would it not be easier and less expensive to find a way to fry/confuse/inable/or otherwise disable the onboard computer of the enemy aircraft? Or hit it with a disabling lazer? Just trying to think of simpler, less expensive, out-of-the-box-thinking way or means of neutralizing the aircraft, either in the air or before it ever gets off the ground with intent. Certainly intervention/prevention is preferred over having to take the fight to the air.
Would it not be easier and less expensive to find a way to fry/confuse/inable/or otherwise disable the onboard computer of the enemy aircraft? Or hit it with a disabling lazer? Just trying to think of simpler, less expensive, out-of-the-box-thinking way or means of neutralizing the aircraft, either in the air or before it ever gets off the ground with intent. Certainly intervention/prevention is preferred over having to take the fight to the air.
I would think that the only drawback to using an EMP as an offensive weapon would be making sure that the 'sending' aircraft would be shielded adequately from the effects of the EMP.
Bearcat makes some very good points; by taking the human out of the equation (physiologically, that is), the only limitations the QF-16 would have in an ACM environment would be the airframe and the ability of the FCS to sustain the maneuver. What better way to test an all aspect missile by subjecting it to extreme, high G maneuvering... and since the Viper can pull 9 g's, it would make the ideal platform, at minimal cost to us taxpayers. In a way, they're already paid for, right?
Alan
It is true that we have already paid for the older F-16's, the new ones are bought with loan money, but the old ones are fully paid for and have been well used. The F-16's being converted to QF-16's are coming out of Davis-Monthan, where over 200 are currently in storage. I expect these example are pretty tired and perhaps converting them for drone use might be less expensive than building dedicated target drones.
Does anyone know how much it costs to store these aircraft in the bone yard?
Dumonceau
Banned
Quite a few years ago there was an article about that in Air International magazine. If I remember correctly it was about 40000 USD to prep them for storage. (F-4's and A-10's) and a several thousand cost annually to keep them that way.
But the cost to put them back to flying was HUGE.
You have to remember though that civilian contractors are anything BUT cheaper than having it done by the armed forces themselves. Contractors are there to make a profit, the servicemen are not.