Article

2020-07-28 Science & Technology

San Diego's General Atomics, Kratos Defense make cut for Air Force's Skyborg drone program

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Posted by Skidmark 2020-07-28 11:53|| || Front Page|| [11126 views ] Top

#1 Skyborg also aims to lower costs. Analysts estimate the base selling price for some of these combat drones could be as low as $3 million to $5 million per plane.

That’s markedly less than state-of-the-art piloted fighter jets such as the F-35, which can run up to $100 million per aircraft.

Posted by Frank G 2020-07-28 12:26|| 2020-07-28 12:26|| Front Page Top

#2 Hard to believe more targeting and avionic electronics with enhanced communication capability costs that much less than the pilot's environmental life support.

Posted by Skidmark 2020-07-28 12:39|| 2020-07-28 12:39|| Front Page Top

#3 Fighter mafia tipping point?

Posted by M. Murcek 2020-07-28 13:39|| 2020-07-28 13:39|| Front Page Top

#4 The Air Force has been bolloxing up UAV on it's turf for a while now, at least as far back as the X-47's.
Reason:The zoomie boys don't want them. It would lead to less need for pilots.
The punch line is the price of new aircraft threatens to put them out of business anyway.

Posted by ed in texas 2020-07-28 15:42|| 2020-07-28 15:42|| Front Page Top

#5 The zoomie boys don't want them. It would lead to less need for pilots.

Not because any remote communication can be disrupted?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-07-28 16:11|| 2020-07-28 16:11|| Front Page Top

#6 Remote comms as generally implemented in the 20th century have been 'pushed'. Technology challenges have required the transmission to be 'loud' enough and receivers to be 'sensitive' enough for reliable bidirectional information transfer in a denial scenario.

Should one review the original Two Generals problem, the remedy proposed was apriori information held by both parties, i.e. mission briefings and debrief.

With the development of min/max gaming of attack and defense scenarios, a collection of actions rendering engagement success can be pre-programmed (perhaps to FPGAs) as if in a pre-mission briefing so that communication 'challenges' do not impede swarm coordination.

Posted by Skidmark 2020-07-28 17:43|| 2020-07-28 17:43|| Front Page Top

#7 I'm sorry.
Sometimes he gets like this and it goes for days.

Posted by al aSha-med 2020-07-28 17:44|| 2020-07-28 17:44|| Front Page Top

#8 #7 - thanks for adding NOTHING to today's discourse

Posted by Frank G 2020-07-28 17:57|| 2020-07-28 17:57|| Front Page Top

#9 These aren't fighter aircraft. These are reusable cruise missiles and perform as such. The size of the engines tells you that (1-2000 pounds thrust vs 43,000 for F-35). They do pose a problem for the defenders since the cost of the anti-craft missile is similar to the cost of the drone, not counting the cost of any targets destroyed. Not a war winning strategy to fire two 9M96 missiles at it.

Pilots will likely welcome them, at least in this iteration, since attack aircraft are the ones that get shot down most often.

Posted by Cromoth Sheatch5463 2020-07-28 19:38|| 2020-07-28 19:38|| Front Page Top

#10 So kind of like in the game R-Type, that upgrade you can get which puts a shield of smaller craft around your ship?

Posted by swksvolFF 2020-07-28 21:35|| 2020-07-28 21:35|| Front Page Top

#11 And assuring some weapon platforms can stay on mission thru the AD retargeting cycle.

Posted by Skidmark 2020-07-28 21:41|| 2020-07-28 21:41|| Front Page Top

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