Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Sundowner on September 24, 2013, 03:13:52 PM
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First pilotless F-16 flight.
"Give my regards to Captain Dunsail."
Regards,
Sun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24231077
Video:
http://www.boeing.com/boeing/Features/2013/09/bds_qf16_09_23_13.page
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A years .... and years .... and years old practice.
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first i've heard of it. looks like it won't be too much longer before all the "aces" in ah could get jobs flying military jets for a living. i wonder if they are supporting the occulus rift in that setup... :lol
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http://sabre-pilots.org/classics/v61nolo.htm
THE NOLO SABRES
Civilian Operators and Army/Navy Drone Sabres
by Larry Davis
During the 1970s, the US government acquired large quantities of Sabre air frames, mostly Canadalr and Mitsubishi manufacture. Their use varied from that of target tug to unmanned drone. And more than a few were flown as aggressor aircraft, much to the chagrin of unknowing F-14 and F-4 pilots. Flight Systems Incorporated, based at Mojave, California, was one of the main civil contractors to use the Sabre. They acquired some 55 Canadair CL-13A Sabre Mk. S aircraft, 6 CL-13B Sabre Mk. 6s, and a number of Mitsubishi F-86F and RF-86F aircraft.
The Sabres were used as high altitude remote piloted vehicles, commonly called a Full Scale Aerial Target or FSAT. Most were modified using the Vega Precision Laboratories ground control system, or the IBM Drone Formation Control System (DFCS). Externally, the F-86 drones usually had no gun ports, and had a small antenna either atop or underneath the nose intake. There were large, black antenna panels midway down the fuselage sides, and a Vega System antenna cable on the left side of the aft fuselage. Some had large antenna panels in the fin tip.
The FSI aircraft were used to test new munitions, ECM pods, flares; and to test new air-to-air or surf ace-to-air missile systems. Except for 'live-fire' missile tests, the Sabres were flown with a human pilot aboard. On 'live-fire' missions, the Sabres were flown by a controller in the Vega Systems van on the ground. 'Live-Fire' missions used missiles without warheads. If the 'live-fire' mission resulted in a hit or near-miss that crippled the drone Sabre, the aircraft had a self-destruct panel so that the ground controller could destroy the Sabre.
The US Army utilized a number of these FSAT Sabres during tests of the Stinger shoulder-fired, heat seeking surface-to-air missile at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, and to monitor the 'live-fire' test flights of the new Pershing II missile. The US Navy had a similar operation utilizing FSAT Sabres, both F and H models, at the Naval Weapons Center, China take NAS. The US Air Force operated several FSAT Sabres for weapons tests at Edwards AFB.
Army drone Sabres were all designated QF-86E, as most owed their ancestry to Cariadair Sabres of some type. Air Force and Navy designated their FSAT Sabres based on the original type, i.e. QF-86F-40 and QRF-86F. The Navy had a number of ex-National Guard Hs, that were operated by VX-4 as aggressor aircraft in the TOP GUN program. The QF-86H looked and flew a similar flight envelope to the MiG-17, which US forces were still encountering in the skies over North Vietnam. The drone Sabre 'live-fire' missions are flown NOLO, or No Onboard Live Operator. Since no warheads were fitted to the 'live-fire' missiles attempting to shoot down the FSAT Sabres, the drone aircraft could be flown again and again, unless an unlucky hit resulted in catastrophic damage. It was then that the Vega ground controller would use the self-destruct mechanism. However, the Sabres were a tough breed, and one Army QF-86E survived 17 missile attacks.
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And there's:
(http://wrcb.images.worldnow.com/images/22865132_BG1.jpg)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/QF-100D_drone_near_Tyndall_AFB_1986.JPEG/800px-QF-100D_drone_near_Tyndall_AFB_1986.JPEG)
Even ....
(http://www.asisbiz.com/il2/F6F-5/F6F-5K-Chincoteague-NAS/images/Artwork-Grumman-F6F-5K-Hellcat-Chincoteague-NAS-radio-controlled-drone-Virginia-1949.jpg)
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This event may not be seen as a good thing for pilots. It will probably be a saying like "the day the F-16 dropped the pilot" or similar.
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Considering I was watching ramp fulls of QF-100s and 102s back in 1983, this revelation is
a great big bunch of big deal. Funny thing is, the F4es we were using back then are now probably
being replaced by the F-16s as drone platforms :D
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A years .... and years .... and years old practice.
Perhaps the OP was unclear...
First pilotless F-16 flight.
Sorry for any confusion. :)
Regards,
Sun
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Perhaps the OP was unclear...
Sorry for any confusion. :)
Regards,
Sun
It's not confusing at all. F-16s have made the rotation for drone duty. Retired fighter jet drones. Someday there may be F-22 orange-tailed drones (probably not in my lifetime).
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I never thought I see a day that my favorite jet becomes a drone. :(
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At the moment there is no tech that can transfer imagery with the quality and definiton of a Mk1 Eyeball at high speed and low latency too a remote operator.
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Ahhhhhh the good old days..walking the flight Line counting Rivets on our f16s tdy at Clark AB. :rolleyes:
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It'll wreck me to see a Tomcat drone. Then again, it may be too expensive an option.
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I was staying at DM AFB when the base paper announced the last of the QF4's being sent out. They did all the retrofitting and then test flights there at DM. Afterwards it was ferried to the location where it would find it's final fate depending on how mant times it took to get a hit on it. From what I read some time ago, the F86 sabres gave F14 pilots fits trying to gun it down. Seems it could make a nice break turn.
Sad to see the old planes go that way but being scrapped for the metal is hardly more dignified.
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Perhaps there's a bright side to this. Now that they have a system that works for the Falcon who's to say it couldn't be used as a force multiplier/diversion on a strike? They carry plenty of ord and you're not real concerned about bringing them home, so they could take on high risk/heavily defended targets to soften them for the manned attack without risking higher value aircraft.
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At the moment there is no tech that can transfer imagery with the quality and definiton of a Mk1 Eyeball at high speed and low latency too a remote operator.
actually its alot closer than you think...... I see it at work, and we are just about there.
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At the moment there is no tech that can transfer imagery with the quality and definiton of a Mk1 Eyeball at high speed and low latency too a remote operator.
I was talking to a drone operator a while back and he said the drones can give the manned aircraft
fits because they are able to pull many more Gs without a pilot onboard. I guess you have pluses and
minuses for both types.
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Just to clarify for those that are confused. These F-16s are to be target and testing drones, not operationally used in a pilot-less fashion. That said, we probably aren't too far from the day of a pilot-less fighter in combat. There are many of us in the USAF that think the F-35 will be the last manned fighter. The next one will be at least optionally manned.
One of the biggest obstacles we have right now is solving the problem of what we do if they are able to break the link between the aircraft and operator. This is a problem as our current systems are not truly unmanned aircraft, its just that the man is on the ground somewhere. Once we get AI to the point of being able to autonomously conduct a mission, then we will be able to cut the link, and not have to worry about it. We are close to that point, but there are obvious ethical, moral, practical, and public opinion considerations involved in this.
Also, as an aside, it is a pet peeve of mine when people call Predators and other RPA's "drones". The F-16 being talked about in this thread is a true drone. Predators/Reapers/Gray Eagles/etc are considered remotely piloted aircraft or RPAs and are technically NOT drones. The media irritates me intensely when they call those platforms drones.
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Once we get AI to the point of being able to autonomously conduct a mission, then we will be able to cut the link, and not have to worry about it.
However, your next sentence illustrates why we should never 'not have to worry about it.'
We are close to that point, but there are obvious ethical, moral, practical, and public opinion considerations involved in this.
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The problem with AI is that it is hard to make it as much of a devious bastard as humans can be. If we have any serious chess enthusiasts in here they can probably tell this story better than I can, but early in the period when they were trying to make a computer that could beat the best human champions, they had a computer that looked like it was going to be able to do the trick. The chess master that was playing recognized that the computer would probably outplay him if he employed a conventional strategy, so he ended up using tactics that were extremely unconventional, and which would have never worked against a human, since another chess master would have simply adapted quickly and continued on. The computer was unable to react to this, and was summarily beaten as I recall.
We could have the same problem with a fully autonomous setup. Here is a case in point. We have long had the ability to detect incoming indirect fire, triangulate on the POO (point of origin), and return fire quickly. In fact, a counter battery fire mission can theoretically be fired before the incoming shells/rockets even impact! However, once when I was in Iraq, at a certain large FOB, we found that the insurgents were trying to exploit this capability against us by setting up mortar tubes and rocket rails in places like school yards and such, hoping to generate a swift counter battery mission directly onto the school or whatever. Needless to say, this would have been a huge PR disaster, aside from the human tragedy of dead school kids. It had to become standard policy to check out the POO site with some type of visual sensor prior to returning fire if it was located in certain urban areas. There were still rural areas nearby where we would return fire instantly since we knew there was nothing in that area to worry about.
You could see a similar problem with AI controlled aircraft. They could be sent to strike a certain target, but once they arrive there is a school bus of kids next to it. A human pilot is going to be able to make the decision of whether or not that target is important enough to continue with the strike. The AI may not be able to distinguish that there is even an issue. Moral and ethical considerations are a huge challenge when it comes to computers.
You are right though, I overstated when I said "not have to worry about it". We are always going to have to worry about it, and it will probably always be a challenge, in fact an ever-increasing one as we are just now starting to see a lot of AI applications reach fruition in many different fields, not just warfare.
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Your posts are a delight to read. I think I may even look forward to disagreeing with you from time to time. If that happens. :)
:cheers:
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Thank you sir. Someone just accused me of being a sock puppet in the post about WW2 facts due to my post count being low, but I just returned to this forum as a poster recently. I used to post under a different name back in the day (was just plain old Durr).
I had been getting most of my online posting kicks by posting in the Amazon history and politics forums, and will continue to do so some, but I am getting tired of the mentality of most of the people that post there, as compared to most of the people that post here.
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I hope you fly with the rest of us online, should you choose. :)