Public opinion encompasses a blend of intrigue and skepticism towards drone technology in military aviation. While many express admiration for unmanned systems and their potential benefits, there is significant criticism about misleading video content and ethical concerns surrounding drone warfare, emphasizing anxieties about increased militarization and collateral damage.

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Included in this article is a MQ-20 landing at General Atomics El Mirage base. 


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https://www.airandspaceforces.com/f-22-pilot-control-cca-surrogate-drone/

An F-22 pilot controlled an MQ-20 drone from the fighter’s cockpit last month, General Atomics announced Nov. 17—a preview of the Air Force’s vision for Collaborative Combat Aircraft. 

General Atomics partnered with F-22 maker Lockheed Martin and L3Harris, which provided radios and data links, for the self-funded demonstration, which took place Oct. 17 at the Nevada Test and Training Range. 

During the flight, the F-22 communicated with the MQ-20 via L3Harris’ software-defined radios and BANSHEE data link. The pilot controlled the drone via a tablet and open architecture software called GRACE, and the MQ-20 flew using General Atomics’ own mission autonomy software. 

The companies did not release any imagery of the flight or further details on the mission. The Air Force did not immediately respond to queries, but it did establish an Experimental Operations Unit at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., earlier this year to work on concepts and details for manned-unmanned teaming. 

In a release, General Atomics suggested the flight will be part of a “series of flight demonstrations performed using internal research and development funding to showcase ‘the art of the possible’ between manned and unmanned teaming.” 

General Atomics is competing with Anduril Industries for the first increment of the Air Force’s CCA program, which will produce semi-autonomous drones that fly alongside manned fighters as “loyal wingmen” under the fighter pilots’ command and control. 

Both GA and Anduril have flown their drones, the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, and the Air Force anticipates making a production decision in 2026. But in the interim, General Atomics saw the opportunity to jump ahead and start testing how Air Force fighters will interact with the unmanned systems, a company spokesperson said. 

“We don’t want to wait for the CCA fleet to be fielded to begin leaning in on F-22 teaming. We already know the F-22 will play a critical role in crewed-uncrewed teaming operations, and General Atomics is in a unique position to get started now,” the spokesperson said. 

In its “Long Term Fighter Force Structure” report to Congress earlier this year, the Air Force noted that the “F-22 remains the threshold platform for CCA,” meaning it is the primary fighter with which the service is looking to pair CCA drones. 

And while General Atomics is still testing how its YFQ-42A drone flies on its own, “the MQ-20 Avenger, tricked out with mature mission autonomy software, is a perfect CCA surrogate and allows us to move fast and move first,” the spokesperson said. 

General Atomics has used the MQ-20 as a testbed before, partnering with Shield AI to use that firm’s “Hivemind” mission autonomy software to fly the drone. 

The flight test with the F-22 is just the latest in a back-and-forth between GA and Anduril as the firms tout their progress on CCA. 

“There are companies all over the world making big promises while they figure all of this out for the first time: how to build an airplane, how to incorporate autonomy, how to team that with manned aircraft,” the General Atomics spokesperson said. “We’ve been putting our own money into uncrewed jets for 17 years. This is just one more milestone in a long history of leaning forward.”

therealgariac

That's got to be the most watered down overwritten statement regarding someone pushing a button. I'd have thought it's more of a question why hasn't this feature been a thing from the get go? Surely front line jets have had the capability to command drone flight profiles for years?  We're downwind of Boscombe Down here in the UK and have had autonomous flights like this over us all Summer. 

[https://aerospace-innovations.com/qinetiq-achieves-uks-first-jet-to-jet-teaming-between-aircraft-and-autonomous-drone/](https://aerospace-innovations.com/qinetiq-achieves-uks-first-jet-to-jet-teaming-between-aircraft-and-autonomous-drone/)

Study_Realistic

So now both US 5th Gen fighters have demonstrated UAS control capability.

consciousaiguy

[deleted]

I wouldn’t stand in front of that thing. I’ve seen tail hooks drop with nobody in the cockpit before.

USNWoodWork

JustAnotherDude1990

Unmanned "Loyal Wingman" type systems offer a couple of clear benefits.

\#1) Due to the increased lethality of modern warfare, in many cases it is impossible to send a manned aircraft into a combat area with sufficient probability of coming home alive. That obviously makes sending lower cost unmanned systems preferable. Unmanned systems however have flaws. AI is not currently capable of making strategic and tactical decisions at the level of a human pilot and getting around that requires fragile communication links that can be jammed of hijacked. Therefore a great work around is a hybrid approach. You send a main manned aircraft as close to the enemy as you can and use the manned aircraft as a sort of forward command post. Then that pilot can direct and orchestrate the behaviors of drones using very robust shorter ranged line of sight communication methods that are almost impossible to jam or intercept. 

\#2) In modern war, the amount of different sensors and weapons an aircraft might want to have in a combat situation is exploding. Its no longer the WW2 days where you just want a gun and some unguided bombs. There are so many useful weapons a plane could carry that you need to pick and choose. Obviously this is not ideal cause you cant always know what you will need. A good workaround is once again loyal wingman drones. Instead of forcing a single plane to carry everything, you can just pair it up with whatever mix of drones you need for the mission. Doing mostly air to air? great add an extra wingman drone with a rack of 6 aim-120s. Doing a super long range strike? great just add a tanker wingman.

valewolf

So the pilot in the jet is like the point guard directing the offense. He directs the drones to penetrate dangerous airspace and launch first strikes. If they get shot down, not nearly as big a deal. But like a a good PG, the pilot needs to he able to score too. Although it may be ultimately that an AWAC or something like that is directing drones. I think it's still WIP.

MaterialCarrot

In the extreme longterm, it's hard to imagine much of a role for manned aircraft. There certainly won't need to be as many pilots in-theatre as we have today. Remember, pilots are expensive, take years to train, take up space and weight in the cockpit (and necessitate systems that also take up space and weight like controls, displays, oxygen, ejector seats, etc.), and are biologically limited when it comes to pulling Gs and making split-second control inputs. Commanders also have a harder time taking risks when a human life is on the line. Eventually, unmanned aircraft will dominate the battlefield.

That's a long way off, however. Right now, "unmanned" is something of a misnomer—almost all such aircraft are instead **remotely piloted**. A pilot and sensor operator control the aircraft through a network of satellites from anywhere across the globe. If an adversary can find a way to compromise their connection to the aircraft, whether by jamming the signal or destroying the satellite itself, then suddenly you don't have control over your multimillion dollar toy. Militaries don't like that. That satellite connection also generates a significant amount of latency (the delay between what the aircraft sees and when the operators see it, and also between the operators' control inputs and the aircraft's execution of them). That delay is fine if you're striking relatively static ground targets, but that delay isn't acceptable when you're in a highly dynamic dogfight with another aircraft.

For this reason, unmanned aircraft designed for air-to-air combat will likely have to cut people out of the equation altogether and rely on artificial intelligence. And while there is significant progress being made in this area, there are no (unclassified) operational aircraft that are capable of fully autonomous dogfighting. It is probably a ways off, just like self-driving cars have been promised for years now but are still not fully viable. And I have no idea if democratic populations will be willing to accept something that looks (to them) like a "killer robot."

So instead, militaries like ours are fusing the two concepts until unmanned aircraft can operate more independently. They will treat manned fighters and their pilots as quarterbacks  of multiple small, unmanned aircraft performing a variety of missions. These UAVs will likely be low-observable (stealthy) and have configurations that carry weapons, sensors, defensive platforms, and more. They can even move to physically intercept a threat if the pilot is in danger and traditional defense systems (like chaff, flares, and electronic countermeasures) fail.

These UAVs will act as force multipliers, enabling one pilot to perform a much wider variety of missions and utilize a much wider variety of platforms than they would be able to with only their fighter jet. All planes (and particularly small, fast, maneuverable fighter jets) are limited in their ability to carry payloads and fuel.

To offer a concrete example, I can imagine a situation in which a fifth-generation fighter like an F-35 is sent on a mission to destroy a particular building. The pilot takes off and is joined by four UAVs. 

1. One UAV carries a jamming suite and flies ahead of and well below the F-35 and its pack, attempting to hide their radar signatures from enemy radar. 
2. Another UAV carries a towed decoy, chaff, flares, and an electronic countermeasures suite in case enemy aircraft or SAM systems lock onto the F-35 or its escorts and attempt to engage. 
3. Another UAV may carry a targeting pod. As the F-35 nears the target, the targeting UAV arrives just ahead of it, confirms the target is clear of civilians, and marks the building with an infrared laser beam, allowing the pilot to release the payload from farther away without marking it himself. 
4. The F-35 and most of its escorts return to base while a fourth UAV remains in area after the attack to ensure there are no survivors, equipped with smaller Hellfire missiles. This UAV can afford to stay behind even after alerting the adversary to their presence because there's no human risk involved.

Similar examples could be offered for air-to-air combat, with UAVs carrying countermeasures and additional air-to-air missiles.

**These UAVs are significantly cheaper than fighter jets—ideally one-quarter to one-third the cost—and essentially offer a way to multiply the abilities of a single aircraft by carrying a variety of interchangeable packages of weapons and systems.**

Turbulent__Reveal

Theres a few concepts,  there the loyal wingman (loyal wingman is the RAAF program name) or the more specific Adanced team systems.  Of which US skyborg, AUS loyal wingman and the UK Mosquito program are 3 of.  Russia has a program as well whose name I forget    These would fly around with the parent fighter,  they could fly ahead and be a scout,  they fly behind and carry long range munitions that the parent target. You could use it fly in close to a target to distract it or find out its radar defences

&amp;#x200B;

It means you could have a cheap relatively expendable aircraft,  that you could use to defend high value targets.  You could have half a dozen escorting an AWAC or a tanker plane.  You could just some effectively permanently flying above a high value target,  as long as you can keep em fuel the pilots wont get tired and hungry

&amp;#x200B;

They are looking at being quite revolutionary,  the term defence people is asset multipliers

ratt_man

Not knowing anything about these projects, perhaps the main advantage of drone aircraft getting commands from a local aircraft would be in an area with heavy electronic warfare. Shorter range communications are harder to jam.

It could also give a pilot a larger arsenal, with missiles being spread across a small flock of drone aircraft, without giving him a bigger, heavier and/or less manoeuvrable aircraft. If you are firing missiles from beyond visual range, it doesn't really matter if it comes from your airframe or from a nearby drone airframe.

I don't know if there's a certain single fixed goal or application. I think this area is still a bit in the 'throw expensive shit at the wall and see if it sticks', and you won't find out if it really works in a real combat scenario until it ends up in one.

dj__jg

Apart from the really good explanations given earlier, one of the huge factors is cost. There's a reason Australia is way further out in front on this tech than we usually are: making one of these our first indigenous aircraft in over half a century. Our long term air force plan is three squadrons of F-35As and half a squadron of Growlers. I personally expect we'll keep our current super hornets in service a few more decades and stand up a fourth squadron temporarily, but even so we're not talking about deep reserves.

Small numbers of exquisite assets are typical of Australia's defence policy historically because we have neither the cash (or at least, the willingness to spend it) nor the population base to stand up a regionally competitive force any other way, and because until China came along as a serious threat, we didn't need to. Now we have the threat, but dollars and population from which to recruit pilots hasn't changed. Enter the loyal wingman.

We can buy ten of these things for the cost of an F-35, maybe more if you account for relative operating costs. In a long conflict, that gives us a depth to the airforce that we otherwise wouldn't have. Moreover, they're road transportable in sea containers and will almost certainly be highway takeoff capable, so we can distribute them quietly across the country, even to outlying islands. They're not exquisite assets by any means, but they complicate an adversary's calculus considerably. 30 of these things could be hidden on Cocos or Christmas Island, so a potential invader needs to come with sufficient air support to account for that even if the actual number of drones out there is nowhere near that high.

TL:DR They're extremely valuable force multipliers and they massively extend the depth of small air forces, and complicate enemy planning considerably.

MacchuWA

Just a little contribution but nobody said anything about it so far: Data. According to Space Force, these little fellas are also relays and literal computers flying, offloading processing and testing algorithms for a myriad of systems/protocols that fall under the EW umbrella.

fuck_your_diploma

Conceptually, it has been happening for a while now. Pilots of WWII fighter and early generation I jetfighters had to manually maneuver their aircraft to align their  machine guns or autocannons with the target and then manually fire to destroy the target. What guided missiles meant was that the missiles can maneuver itself to the target, aim its charge at the target, then explode to spray a shrapnel pattern at the target. You detach the "gun" from the fighter itself, and let the gun flies itself to the target. There are different ways to guide the missiles: they can have their own trackers or use the aircrafts' tracker.

Think of autonomous fighters as the next "removal step". After we detach the "gun" from the fighter, how about we detach the pilot? The missiles already have a rudimentary tracking and guidance system, how about with improving technology and automation, we give this artificial "brain" to the whole fighter and let the human instead of having to "pilot" the fighter, just point it in the general direction?

SmirkingImperialist

A lot of people have mentioned some valid points, I would like to add on a few. 

• The loyal wingman and similar drones can be used as decoys to fool the enemy Air defense systems into identifying them as actually manned aircrafts and test the Air defense capability without risking the pilots. In India's CATS Warriors program, there are plans for UAVs that will act as decoys or primary reconnaissance purposes while the pilots stay out of detection range.

• They can also be used with strike packages of stealth fighters as units with higher RCS that lure attention of enemy fighter aircrafts while the stealth aircrafts can keep their radar system offline and use the radar inputs of the drones to engage the enemies. (Having radar and electronics signature to a minimum can improve stealth.)

• The UAVs can simply act as missiles trucks that tow additional missiles that can't fit in the internal weapons bay of stealth aircrafts and also as additional firepower multipliers. They also act as a extension of the aircraft's sensor and identify and track more threats.

Captain_DJ_7348

Recent flight tests have demonstrated the integration of manned and unmanned systems in military aviation.

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