T
tigisfat
Guest
I've thought about this for some time, and I figured I'd run the editorial by you guys and see what you think. We have quite a few members here educated in research, engineering, flying and military ops; all of the listed in great variances. I made a point in the F-35 thread that reminded me to bring this up.
Why are we planning the world's next generation of fighters as manned? I for one wouldn't want to get into an aircraft flown by a remote pilot, but for single seat fighters we're denying the inevitable and spending too much money. Pilots require systems upon subsystems of life support and visual instrumentation, and have the weakness of being susceptible to g-forces. Imagine the weight savings of removing all that stuff!! Take that weight savings and the eliminated g-force threat, and imagine how our frontline fighters could maneuver, and the payloads they could carry. Now we'd only be limited by materials, which is a fighter engineer's wet dream.
Now that we have proven and fieldable awareness aids in every direction from the aircraft, it's really time to free up fighters. I'm conjuring up the ground control station for one of those fighters. Imagine our pilot sitting in a small chair in a large sphere with very little in the way of a cockpit around him, and he can look anywhere and see what he needs. His instrumentation could be all in his field of view with some sort of display device.
I will always want pilots in the cockpits of most planes, but I ask your opinions again: Why build future generations of fighters with sit-in pilots? It's my opinion that delaying the inevitable will cost us money and capability.
Why are we planning the world's next generation of fighters as manned? I for one wouldn't want to get into an aircraft flown by a remote pilot, but for single seat fighters we're denying the inevitable and spending too much money. Pilots require systems upon subsystems of life support and visual instrumentation, and have the weakness of being susceptible to g-forces. Imagine the weight savings of removing all that stuff!! Take that weight savings and the eliminated g-force threat, and imagine how our frontline fighters could maneuver, and the payloads they could carry. Now we'd only be limited by materials, which is a fighter engineer's wet dream.
Now that we have proven and fieldable awareness aids in every direction from the aircraft, it's really time to free up fighters. I'm conjuring up the ground control station for one of those fighters. Imagine our pilot sitting in a small chair in a large sphere with very little in the way of a cockpit around him, and he can look anywhere and see what he needs. His instrumentation could be all in his field of view with some sort of display device.
I will always want pilots in the cockpits of most planes, but I ask your opinions again: Why build future generations of fighters with sit-in pilots? It's my opinion that delaying the inevitable will cost us money and capability.