Empty F-16 jet tested by Boeing and US Air Force

So from a friend that was a major in the USAF flying fixed and rotor wing aircraft: the current UCMJ / ROEs requires an officer present for each and every kill decision. Period. If that doesn't happen, it's get-a-lawyer-and-court-martial time. Probably main US military isn't the biggest threat if the video's fears in the near term, there are too many people watching: it's any force of any country that doesn't respect rules of war.

tlb3• 13 years ago

It's a serious coalition of NGOs. http://www.stopkillerrobots.org/. They call for a ban on "robotics weapons systems that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human".

Lots of weapons already meet that requirement.

state• 13 years ago

Could you give some examples?

moocowduckquack3• 13 years ago

I feel it should be headed by a girl called Yoshimi.

themstheones• 13 years ago

Now that's what I call upcycling.

narfquat2• 13 years ago

  The firm added that the flight attained 7Gs of acceleration but was capable 
  of carrying out manoeuvres at 9Gs - something that might cause physical problems 
  for a pilot.

Wow, I guess this means they can push the machines to their mechanical limit without worrying about blackouts/redouts/etc. I wonder what kind of crazy maneuvers they can pull off without the biological factor?

Also: I'm not sure how I feel about a $15-18 million target dummy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_...

pachydermic• 13 years ago

Without a pilot, you could design a pretty radically different jet... good point.

What if we put missiles on our missiles?

narfquat2• 13 years ago

I think you're on to something...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetab...

cobrausn• 13 years ago

Even better, how about laser-riding submunitions on our missiles? Sounds cooler, anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak_missile

graupel• 13 years ago

I got to fly back-seat in an F-16 once for 53 minutes and managed to handle a 9.2 G turn and I'm not a pilot or a drone. The first 10 minutes of the flight were amazing, the next 30 were incredible, the next 10 were meh, and the last 3 - well let's just say I was happy to be back on the ground and leave it at that.

cdjk• 13 years ago

How did you get to do that? That must have been an amazing experience.

ballard2• 13 years ago

Neat. 9.2 G for how long?

Usually requires massive abs and leg muscle involvement to keep from blacking out.

[ Too tall to fit in any fighter aircraft :*(, this will have to do: http://is.gd/Tu3E4e ]

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

Technically its a "free" target dummy. The plane was sitting in a idle state in the AZ mothball storage area. Generally planes from that space go either into alternate commercial service (several air tankers have come from there), the junk yard, or foreign spare parts buys. There was a great write up in Air & Space magazine on this storage facility.

Given that they were not designed for particularly long loiter times, they would make better cruise missiles than they would drones but as a crack suicide air to air squad they would be hard to beat (the F-16 seems much more capable as an air superiority fighter, not so much on ground attack, Iron Eagle not withstanding :-)

neurotech12• 13 years ago

The F-16C is a multirole strike fighter, although retaining the air-to-air capabilities of the earlier versions.

The F-22A is the USAFs Air Superiority fighter[1]. The F-14 and F-15 were the Air Superiority Fighter of the Navy and Air Force although they also became strike aircraft (F-14D and F-15E versions)

A single F-22 could down 4+ enemy fighters without even being seen, and the pilot coming back alive. The F-22 can also close for a gun kill. A Suicide squad of 4 F-16s would be hard pressed to beat that.

Just because a jet can dogfight does not make it an Air Superiority Fighter.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_superiority_fighter

twistedpair2• 13 years ago

That's nothing, the Sprint Missile was able to do 100G acceleration. That's 0-Mach 10 in 5s. So fast air friction made it glow white hot instantly. That what you can do with no human on board.

http://www.nuclearabms.info/Sprint.html

themodelplumber3• 13 years ago

Is there any imagery or video available that shows the white-hot glow happening?

serf• 13 years ago

I thought that was cool until I read about the hibex at the bottom of that same page.

"However, it was literally a last ditch missile and was designed to intercept an incoming RV at less than 6,100m (20,000ft) altitude. At that altitude, the incoming RV would be traveling at around 3,000m/sec (10,000ft/sec) so a very fast reaction time was essential to insure interception. In fact, HiBEX was designed to have exited from its silo within 1/4 second and it accelerated at over 400g."

ISL• 13 years ago

You can save a lot of weight, iterate faster, undertake missions without concern for return, make big wins in the aerodynamic department, get improved situational awareness with strategically sited cameras, and more.

Of course, if someone can interfere with or hack your link with the aircraft, you're hosed. If they can turn it around and attack you with it, it's even worse.

That, and the Blue Angels will be far less romantic when there's nobody at the helm of each finely-tuned airbreathing rocket.

Things change.

(Modern air-to-air missiles are $0.4-1.2M [1,2]. Modern war is expensive; we trade consuming lives at war for consuming economic output at home.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM

toomuchtodo4• 13 years ago

On the contrary, I think the Blue Angles shows will be even more awe-inspiring when the aircraft fly within inches of each other, and perform maneuvers that no human pilot could sustain.

hxc2• 13 years ago

While they don't go into detail on which type of data link which is responsible for controlling the aircraft I am going out on a limb saying that it's controlled via BLOS (Beyond Line of Site) instead of typical LOS, they did not state how far it flew away from that coast so I am just guessing here. I have worked on a lot of predators, reapers, and also inside their GCS'. No one has came close to "Hacking the data link" there has been attempts to jam the signal but no loss of aircraft due to it.

Source: I worked with the Reapers and Predators (deployed and at home) in the Air Force and as s contractor working for L-3 Communications as a Satellite Engineer (Responsible for the datalink).

agumonkey2• 13 years ago

And I believe a set of very fast computers can acquire data that aren't accessible to a human (merging multiple camera feed, cross corelate with radar, heat signature etc) and compute trajectories and strategies accordingly.

Gravityloss• 13 years ago

You can still use that data and present it to the pilot in a meaningful way. Not as gauges or numbers but with augmented vision, like seeing through the bottom of the aircraft.

That's also one of the reasons why JSF has taken so long...

moocowduckquack3• 13 years ago

You can pull way over 20g and still function, as long as you are immersed in water, have your lungs filled with water and get some of that injectable oxygen microparticle stuff to keep you from drowning, or have some liquid of the right density that you can breathe, which is also one of the many reasons why Neon Genesis Evangelion is awesome.

Moto7451• 13 years ago

I'd assume that target dummies are usually airframes that are either outdated (an A or B model when we're at D, E, F, G etc) or past their useful (human operated) life, i.e. too many hours, damaged, cracks are forming, etc.

neurotech12• 13 years ago

QF-16s are only certified for 300 hours in the air(after conversion) before they are blown up or time expired. An F-16C flies 400 hours between phase inspections in a fighter squadron with more than 3000 hours total airframe time.

Kallikrates• 13 years ago

I suppose they are running out of converted F-4 drones.

gwern2• 13 years ago

Boeing suggested that the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practise firing on.

They're not even trying, are they.

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

Dogfighting is supposedly becoming a lost skill in the air force, so maybe it's not as silly of a suggestion as you might think.

toomuchtodo4• 13 years ago

Dogfighting will be lost for the same reason the SR-71 was retired: New technologies came along that superseded them. Doesn't matter if you can dogfight if you disable the vehicle with a laser from the ground (future) or you can overwhelm it with surface-to-air missiles (now).

An aircraft is now just a mobile long-range weapons platform.

gwern2• 13 years ago

My point here is that whether or not they ever actually wind up sending some trainees up against a drone, the claim is so absurd that one wonders why they bothered saying it: of course this research is for making fighter drones which can be used in combat, a five-year old child (who reads the NYT and is a prodigy) could see this.

Still, it's interesting to see the progressive powerlessness of fighter pilots and open testing of fighter drones.

ZanyProgrammer2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure this is really breaking news-old planes recycled as drones have been around for a while.

ZanyProgrammer2• 13 years ago

Here's an example: http://www.f-106deltadart.com/drones.htm

stbullard• 13 years ago

This isn't as novel as this somewhat breathless article makes it out to be: same thing has been done with many retired Air Force planes, including the F-4 Phantom (drone/target version was redesignated QF-4). I do appreciate the Beeb's reaching out to the brilliantly-named Campaign to Stop Killer Robots for comment, however.

Edit: here's a video of some F-15s blowing up QF-4s http://youtu.be/xISpZYajveA

bri3d2• 13 years ago

Unless there's a new feature the story isn't letting on, they're not excessively robotic, either - more like an R/C F-16 where the pilot controls are replaced by a remote actuation system.

Since the F-16 was purely fly-by-wire and computer stabilized anyway, the difference is where the commands are coming from - there's no additional algorithmic "magic" or computer-controlled decisionmaking power.

swalsh• 13 years ago

Of course communicating a signal good enough to remotely fly a plane going mach is an impressive feat.

alepper• 13 years ago

Peculiar - an earlier revision of the article did mention this. Then again, it also lacked the Campaign's comment at that time.

rza• 13 years ago

If the military can use this technology cost-effectively, they will use it. While the "Campaign to Stop Killer Robots" is amusing, I doubt it will have any effect whatsoever. It's reminiscent of Pope Innocent II trying to ban the use of crossbows against fellow medieval Christians, yet here we are, two World Wars later.

sien• 13 years ago

To be fair, crossbows were not used in either World War so the papal edict can be seen as somewhat successful.

ckozlowski2• 13 years ago

It's already being used far more cost effectively with the MQ-9 Reaper.

This is getting attention because the F-16 is in the current inventory. But these aren't the Block 50/52s of today. They're the original versions, rolled off the line in the 80s. It's like an early BMW M3. Yes, it's an M3, but it'll get smoked by a 328 of today.

The worries of NGOs in this case are misplaced. Old target drone F-16s don't have the sensors or electronics to drop the current required ordinance, and the cost of refitting them isn't worth the expense when there are purpose-built platforms that can do this much more cost effectively.

touristtam• 13 years ago

Certainly, but one the main aircraft manufacturer announcing that they can re-purpose existing jet fighter as UAV as a reasonable cost (and possibly develop cheap dual maned/unmaned aircraft in the future) is likely to retain a certain number of customer and/or gain some other. Seeing as the US Mil likes to keep the better weapon inventory for themselves and/or their closest ally.

This and the fact that the USAF seems for their UAV to be 'flown' by a more restricted class of personel compared to the US Army. I don't see this as Boeing announcing they have a new toy militaries can blow up just for training.

downandout• 13 years ago

It seems logical to me that this would have occurred long ago....I'm sort of stunned that it's just happening now. There is simply no reason to have humans in fighter planes or bombers these days, and retrofitting the old equipment should be relatively inexpensive. We should be retrofitting tanks and helicopters for this as well.

wlesieutre• 13 years ago

Communications jamming maybe? If a remote pilot could get disconnected, having a local pilot would be more reliable.

TomGullen4• 13 years ago

What good is a remote control tank if you throw a bucket of paint over its cameras. Pretty cheap way to render it useless.

Jamiecon• 13 years ago

IMO, war is nowhere near as clinical as it would need to be for remote controlled tanks, helicopters and other vehicles to be effective.

I've just finished reading Generation Kill for the second time - I highly recommend it for an idea of what things are actually like.

LoganCale• 13 years ago

It has been occurring for a long time. F-4s have been in use as remote controlled target drones for live fire exercises for quite a while.

jotm2• 13 years ago

I think it's kind of useless even today without the controller very close by - flying a supersonic jet capable of 9G maneuvers remotely is way harder than a slow drone.

The only way to do it well right now would be to have one human piloted jet (preferably with 2 pilots) as the wing leader and the autopilot ones following it and executing commands issued by those pilots.

relic• 13 years ago

As mentioned above, these aircraft are actually less stable at slower speeds, and tend towards stable at higher speeds, so flying a jet capable of great speeds is much easier at those speeds as opposed to reduced speeds. With beyond-line-of-sight secure datalinks, there is really no reason to having manned aircraft in the vicinity. Live-fire exercises with modified, unmanned aircraft (which are not uncommon at present) as targets are not controlled from manned aircraft, but from the ground, and not necessarily from nearby.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

The reason humans should be involved directly in war, and be put at risk, its to make it harder for leaders to declare war in the first place. If they know their own people might come back in body bags or get captured, they might think twice. Its a harder decision. If the only loss is hardware and foreigners, the decision declare war is a lot easier. These drones and remote control hardware, war toys of a military of cowards, used to automatically slaughter less advanced population, with out any self risk. If there is not risk, the military are no longer noble and can no longer be lauded for this bravery. They become a push button murder machine. The ultimate politicians toy.

Pr0metheus• 13 years ago

I think Skynet maybe working on a similar project :)

zokier• 13 years ago

"I'm particularly worried about the high speed at which they can travel because they might not be able to distinguish their targets very clearly."

I really don't understand what he is trying to say here.

andrewcooke• 13 years ago

if something moves at high speed then there is less time to evaluate a target. that means less information and a higher chance of errors.

ars• 13 years ago

That's because he's not saying anything intelligent.

Reporters sometime pressure a source to give them a negative sentence so they can bring balance to an article. It means nothing except that the reporter didn't want to seem one sided.

geoffsanders• 13 years ago

This is hardly news. The Air Force recently ran out of the old F-4 Phantoms we used to use for target practice, so they've moved on to converting the aging (and plentiful) F-16 fleet. That's all.

ckozlowski2• 13 years ago

Precisely. These are what, Block 10s? They're the oldest in the fleet.

I think what's catching attention is that the F-16 is in the active inventory, but a modern Block 50/52 is not the same as the original A's that rolled off the line in the 70s.

These are not going to be used to bomb militants anytime soon. They don't have the capability to drop the weapons needed, and the costs to provide this capability (sensors and electronics upgrades) can be met with purpose-built drones at a fraction of the cost.

It's like the same model car, only 10 years apart. They're technically the same name and lineage, but wildly different in terms of performance and capability. That's why we're blasting them.

TomGullen4• 13 years ago

Just what modern warfare needs, even less proximity. Boeing like to say its for target practise but quite obviously its real life applications are far more violent.

Powerful nations will be able to conduct warfare even more secretly (less witnesses and potential whistleblowers) and reduction in home casualty will allow them to conduct their wars for even longer.

Can we really trust these countries to use this sort of technology responsibly? Clearly not. Interesting and clever technology but ultimately distasteful and sinister.

kcen• 13 years ago

It takes just as many people to fly a robo-F16 as it does to fly a manned F16. Only difference is that the pilot is on the ground instead of in the air.

Also the unmanned F16 provides 0 advantages over a purpose built UAV (plus is bigger, slower, and more expensive), I highly doubt anybody would seriously consider these for warfare applications.

It's cool tech, take it at face value.

DougWebb2• 13 years ago

I imagine it can carry a bigger payload, so there's that advantage. Apparently we have a bunch of them in storage too, so it might be cheaper to convert them than to build new UAVs. It must be, if they're cheap enough to use for live target practice. Better to turn them into UAVs than let them rust while we build new UAVs, or sell them to other countries.

DeadJim• 13 years ago

Beyond all the life support you can now remove, the unmanned can now pull G's that would be unsustainable for a manned plane.

unclebucknasty4• 13 years ago

Only difference is that the pilot is on the ground instead of in the air.

Seems that removing humans from harm's way on one side of the conflict would have pretty big implications wrt high level decision-making.

I highly doubt anybody would seriously consider these for warfare applications.

Are you saying that Iarger fighters no longer have utility as opposed to purpose-built UAVs?

jessriedel• 13 years ago

Are you making the general argument that automation is bad because it removes potential whistleblowers? Should all government tech have limitations on automation, or just ones involved with killing?

TomGullen4• 13 years ago

Well, tech is limited in polling booths which most people agree is a good thing.

Automation in warfare and one-sided removal of the human element for the richest side isn't necesserially bad, but it is bad when we can't trust the governments who have this technology and when they repeatedly act unethically.

javert3• 13 years ago

Governments can only spend money to conduct war when either (a) their citizens knowingly give them money; or (b) they can print money.

Bitcoin is a potential solution for (b), were it to truly become dominant and replace non-government demand for Federal Reserve notes.

I fully support the US defending itself, and in that regard, I'm not sure that "the citizenry" would make better decisions than the Bush/Obama war complex. So I'm not saying this is a perfect utopoan solution. Just something to think about.

jacques_chester2• 13 years ago

You forgot (c), wars financed with borrowed money. These have happened in conditions regardless of currency configuration (fiat, pegged, silver, gold, bimetallic, whatever).

jacquesm• 13 years ago

I fully support the US defending itself

So do I. The problem is that they are confusing attack and defense.

jfoster• 13 years ago

It seems warfare is moving in an interesting direction, though. Rather than people being the casualties, infrastructure and drones may be what is being destroyed.

It might turn out more like the picture you've painted, but I think it's too early to say for certain. It could be a good thing.

beloch• 13 years ago

Soldiers may be less at risk, but there are always going to be civilians in the infrastructure. Removing the constraint of attrition on military manpower may make future conflicts far more dangerous for civilians.

Drones can also be mostly automated, so one person can do a lot more. For example, the fire-bombing of Dresden took several hundred bombers crewed by thousands. With semi-automated drones, the crews are eliminated and you only need enough pilots to man a single wave at a time, with the following waves waiting on autopilot until ready to engage. In a campaign of sustained bombing where each bomber makes several trips, the return-trip to base for armaments/fuel can also be automated, allowing a single pilot to keep dozens of planes in the air. If they'd had drone-bombers, the allies could have razed Dresden with a dozen men or so.

Would the U.S. fire-bomb an entire city, civilians and all today? Probably not, but this technology will not be limited to the U.S. for long. With the reduced need for pilots, the real limiting factor on air power will be manufacturing capacity (not the U.S.'s forte these days). Also, with such a tiny number of pilots needed to run a massively destructive force, it's going to be easier to select "morally flexible" pilots.

Military drones are a Pandora's box. The U.S. opened it, but other nations are starting to use them now too. While drones may reduce military casualties, the negative concerns they raise are numerous and severe. As AI improves, the role of human pilots may also be further diminished to the point where one immoral leader (or potentially a hacker) could kill millions. Civilians are going to be able to build drones easily as well. In fact, this is already happening.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/german...

As the article says, just adding a grenade could have allowed them to assassinate the German chancellor. Drone-attacks are going to be a serious problem in the future.

code_duck• 13 years ago

Motivations for war vary; while sometimes they are an attempt to do a hostile takeover of a region and add it to the aggressor's economy, other times the aim is to eliminate the population of the foe. In wars such as that, motivated by ethnic hatred and long time rivalry, unfortunately destruction of another weapons wouldn't be the aim.

auctiontheory• 13 years ago

Rather than people being the casualties, infrastructure and drones may be what is being destroyed.

Fewer American casualties. More total casualties, since UAVs ease the task of attacking foreign people without risking the lives of American pilots.

TomGullen4• 13 years ago

Rather than people being the casualties, infrastructure and drones may be what is being destroyed.

When you say people, you mean the humans who are fortunate to be on the side of the richest team

jotm2• 13 years ago

Well it's about damn time - pretty much all of our planes are capable of faster maneuvers without the pilot inside.

This would make old planes useable on the battlefield again (recon, escort, decoys, you name it)... oh how useless the F35 program will be :-)...

phy6• 13 years ago

[peppy@starfox ~]$ ./barrel_roll.sh -dO -a

themodelplumber3• 13 years ago

China has a bunch of "UAV" versions of their J-6. Pretty cool looking without a cockpit. http://i.imgur.com/B9yXf.jpg

do-it-good• 13 years ago

Yeah, that system was beta-tested on 9/11.

SchizoDuckie• 13 years ago

So technically... The Netherlands could still decide not to buy the Joint Strike Fighter, Rip some stouf out of our 'old' F16's, retrofit it with a souped-up PS4 and it can still go for miles and miles?

That's going to get interesting in Dutch parliament...

Empty F-16 jet tested by Boeing and US Air Force

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