Unmanned against conventional fighters. Which one will have the advantage?

Question

Europe is developing nEUROn, an unmanned fighter.
In an aerial combat with a conventional fighter who will have the advantage? How "instantly" can the unmanned fighter receive instructions (if it is around the globe) in order to compete the other pilot? Can the "joystick users" have the same knowledge of the combat environment as the real pilot?

Answer 1

Well if one UAV fighter goes down, at least they are not out of pilots....

Answer 2

Can answer:

There are two types of response to give:
Piloted unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have someone at a control stick. these controllers are usually somewhere not too far away from the UAV so the uplink time is short. Data is limited to the pilot, so that's a downside, but that will change over time.

There are also non-piloted UAVs in which coordinates and instructions are loaded to the UAV and then the UAV executes its programmed architecture to carry out those instructions. If the UAV is attacked along the way it will automatically evade and/or engage without needing any input from a pilot. This means all the information needed is readily available to the processor that makes decisions... the downside, in this case, is that processors can be predictable in their execution while pilots have a certain measure of flaws which produce instability into guessing what their reactions will be.

The advantage to UAVs is that they can be made lighter and smaller (for greater manueverability), they are cheaper (can have superior numbers for the same cost), and they lack human limitations (acceleration and cornering that humans can't survive).

Answer 3

Dogfight no longer exists, there is no such thing in modern air warfare.

You shoot down an airplane a couple miles before you even see it. There is absolutely no advantage of having pilots in fighters, none whatsoever; it is actually a limitation and liability.

Take worst case scenarios for example, the circumference of the equator is 24000 miles = 38.6 x 10^6 m. Divide that by speed of light = 1/10 of a second, this is the time needed for radio wave command to travel one way from the command center to the drone. But more realistically, unmanned planes are launched only at maximum a couple hundred miles away from command for logistical reason( saving fuel and maintainence). Taking that into consideration and the two-way nature of commucation, it would not take more than 2/1000 of a second of additional time, which is somewhat trivial.

To address in issue of combat environment experienced by unmanned plane vs human, you look at what does a pilot actually experience. The pilot sees its immediate surrounding, other than that, all the instrumentation is available to manned. For unmanned plane, they have equivalent cameras mounted all around the plane( depending on how sophisticated the system is.) In addition, other different sensors can easier surpass what a pilot actual is capable of.

To sum it up, there is no advantage of having a pilot in a war plane and this is actually a pretty accepted sentiment around in military.

Answer 4

Can't answer that, as I'm among the majority who have never piloted a fighter aircraft. I would imagine that the unmanned fight would have the psychological advantage in a direct confrontation. Also they would be able to pull more g-force thus allowing maneuvers that a human pilot could not withstand. It has very little to do with guts and determination; the Japanese had plenty of that and were wiped out in droves because of it. The computer could be programed to react instantly to different maneuvers of the opposing aircraft. Once perfected I don't believe their would be any competition.

Answer 5

Manned will have the advantage until the numbers are 7-1 (unmanned to manned) then the tide will be the other way.

Answer 6

Figure they've got equivalent tech at the joystick as in the cockpit..besides, only lose a few tens of thousands in equipment rather than a soldier's life.

Answer 7

The fly boy with the big signal jammer wins. All other considerations are irrelevant.