What is the Future of Aviation?

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What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Doggeh1 »

There has been a lot of talk about this in the past few months, what with the F-35 being tested and A-10 being scrapped, and it got me thinking, [glow=red]what is the realistic future of aviation[/glow] in say, the next sixty years?
What I specifically mean by that is, will there still be manned fighter jets, or will all the air combat be fought with drones. Are drones a better idea, or are there some advantages with having a human being at the controls? I can't any modern fighter jets, like the F-35 or Eurofighter being scrapped within the next few decades.

[glow=blue]Please tell me what you think :D [/glow]
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by decaff_42 »

The future of aviation is always changing and largely a function of the available technology. It's a pretty even split between design power and then electronics onboard. A good airframe can be made great with a good set of computers.

Personally, I do not see aircraft being replaced without a human inside for at least another generation. Civil aviation will maybe never see that, simply because people feel a lot more comfortable with a person driving, rather than a computer. Fighters, you might start to see it, but letting a computer determine weapons releases is not a comfortable thought to a lot of people.

Theoretically a remotely piloted aircraft could work, but in a dogfight situation, the lag between missile launch -> pilot reaction -> plane action, is too long to risk a 150 million dollar aircraft. There is a limit to how fast information can be processed and transmitted.

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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Doggeh1 »

Would it be possible to produce a cheap drone or unmanned aircraft? If you could maybe produce a large number of aircraft and send them out onto a battlefield you would have a large upper-hand. In combat, size does matter, if you have 30 unmanned aircraft VS 5 jets, 90% of the time the unmanned aircraft are going to win.
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Margatroid »

Doggeh1 wrote:if you have 30 unmanned aircraft VS 5 jets, 90% of the time the unmanned aircraft are going to win.
nah

human brains > computers
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Barr »

Doggeh1 wrote:Would it be possible to produce a cheap drone or unmanned aircraft? If you could maybe produce a large number of aircraft and send them out onto a battlefield you would have a large upper-hand. In combat, size does matter, if you have 30 unmanned aircraft VS 5 jets, 90% of the time the unmanned aircraft are going to win.
That sounds stupid. 30 unmanned aircraft vs. 5 manned aircraft.

For unmanned aircraft to dominate the skies will take another I dunno 100yrs maybe?

Just like decaff said
It all depends on demand, current technology, and if the public is will to let the govt increase budgets for R&D.
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Stingx »

BARRACUZ wrote:For unmanned aircraft to dominate the skies will take another I dunno 100yrs maybe?
I doubt. With today's technology and demand, we can achieve that in less than half that span.
Remember, it took it only 30 years for us to convert from prop. to jet warfare. One Century though -- that gave us enough time to go from the first wooden plane to todays' advanced fighter jets. We can already produce drones; would it seriously take that long for us to put them into use? :|
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Barr »

Stingx wrote:
BARRACUZ wrote:For unmanned aircraft to dominate the skies will take another I dunno 100yrs maybe?
I doubt. With today's technology and demand, we can achieve that in less than half that span.
Remember, it took it only 30 years for us to convert from prop. to jet warfare. One Century though -- that gave us enough time to go from the first wooden plane to todays' advanced fighter jets. We can already produce drones; would it seriously take that long for us to put them into use? :|


Yes but the world was at war back then.

Demand? What demand? The only demand I see is the united states trying to see what type of toilets does north Korea use and Amazon trying to use quadcopters to deliver products.

There's no demand for the military either. Why spend the money to send a pricey remote control plane to take pictures when you could send a spec ops team or mercenaries or a regular military plane to do the same job for less? It's just something to toy with just like those robot soldiers.

Also the a10 won't be scrapped all at once. It's going to be a process to ground or transfer them to the national guard or sell them off to other countries. Just like the sabres and phantoms after the Korean and Vietnam wars.

And the f35 is at it's initial stage. America isn't going to start asking Quaker oatmeal factories to produce bombs again. Just look at the f22 and how it was supposed to replace the f18s (I believe?).

All I see evolving in the future is probably FREE WIFI on commercial jets and military using vegetable oil bombs, pudding cup bullets and iPhone controlled fighters. That is of course if there's no war or activists asking the govt for unmanned aircraft for the safety of pilots. But hey, what do I know?
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Stingx »

I have to agree with you there. :lol:
BARRACUZ wrote: Why spend the money to send a pricey remote control plane to take pictures when you could send a spec ops team or mercenaries or a regular military plane to do the same job for less?
But I'm not too sure about that.
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Nodoka Hanamura »

I'd have to say we're nearing a AC3 Style future in Aviation. With Tech like Oculus Rift becoming real, i wouldn't be suprised that in the next 40-50 years, a ENSI/COFFIN-style system would be in the prototype stages.

-- Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:04 pm --
Margatroid wrote:
Doggeh1 wrote:if you have 30 unmanned aircraft VS 5 jets, 90% of the time the unmanned aircraft are going to win.
nah

human brains > computers
At least until 2090 or so, Alisent.
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by CalvT »

I would think we are going to see a join venture with unmanned and manned aircraft. Unmanned aircraft have the very attractive features of costing a lot less - ie: the video I posted a link to awhile back, while also not putting in danger a human life. But human presence is always going to be needed for a long time yet. I think the close future see unmanned aircraft attacking ground targets, while manned aircraft provide air cover for them. Because for all the technology, nothing can yet beat being there.
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by iqmal_97 »

BARRACUZ wrote:Just look at the f22 and how it was supposed to replace the f18s (I believe?).
I thought the F-22 was going to replace the F-15 in the Air Superiority role? Particularly the C and D models.

So, erm, when are we going to get the missile spamming B-1R (B-OneR?)
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Nodoka Hanamura »

Be thankful they don't fire backwards, Iqmal, or we'd all be screwed.
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Dragon029 »

Alright, as someone that's been able to meet some rather knowledgeable people; here's my personal beliefs (note thought that I've slept ~7 hours in the past 48):
  • The F-35 will be the 5th gen fighter of choice, particularly because of addon systems that provide it unique edges. Basically by around 2030 we'll see aircraft or newer blocks of the F-35 advertised as 5+ Gen aircraft or 5.5 Gen, etc.
  • Because it's also going to be so common, we'll see more projects like the SDB2, CUDA, Griffin developed to enhance it's capabilities - this will mean stealthy external fuel tanks, stealthy external weapon pods, stealthy external electronic warfare systems, etc.
  • We'll see the fighter duopoly of the US vs Russia vs [kinda] Europe split. This is already very evident in the number of 5th gen fighter programs in development, in nations like Turkey, Indonesia / South Korea, Japan, China, [Russia, the US], India, etc.
  • The 6th gen will be developed, beginning with the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter program in ~2030-2040 (although I won't be surprised if it's renamed / merged into a new program). The 6th gen will have directed energy weapons for self defence and in some / most cases, offensive capabilities.
  • The line between fighter and bomber will blur more, as the B-3 aka NGB aka LRS-B has self-defence capabilities added to it such as air-to-air missiles and directed energy weapons.
  • Electronic warfare will become ever more prominent and will merge into the field of cyber warfare as aircraft try to induce glitches or inject viruses (you read that correctly) into other aircraft / ground radar systems.
  • UAVs will continue to proliferate, from things like cyborg / cybernetic insects, all the way up to unmanned bombers, due to advances in batteries (for small aircraft) and intelligent flight controls (unmanned fighters, animal-like UAVs, etc). Fighters will remain manned, and so will other aircraft, but their primary role will be as insurance; F-35s and NGAD (6th gen) fighters will fly in harm's way, but only to provide local command to UCAVs and to act as a back-up communications / control hub if the UCAVs comms link fails and it's meant to be requesting permission to release weapons. Manned bombers will also be the only ones that fly nuclear missions. The manned fighter will probably become extinct in the US military by 2050 by which time NGAD will be nearing the end of it's life.
  • Hypersonic weapons (scramjets) will finally be worked into missile systems, with cruise missiles becoming devastating alternatives. They will primarily be used as long-range cruise missiles that act somewhat like ballistic missiles, with a reduced package volume and less chance of making nuclear nations jump the gun.
  • Virtual reality will be a powerful tool for UAV and fighter pilots (as well as tanker boom operators, etc); preliminary systems should be 10-15 years away from being proposed, as based off the technologies developed for the F-35 HMDS as well as stereoscopic vision systems for newer refuelling aircraft.
  • Brain-reading systems won't be used to control fighters (not for quite a while, by which time either fighters will be slowly getting phased out and/or UCAVs will be smarter / quicker to react than humans anyway), but they could within the next 10+ years be used as a form of health monitoring for pilots, changing how the plane flies depending on how the pilot's mental state is (for example, if the plane's input isn't matching the expected performance [the pilot is making fundamentally poor decisions in how he flies] and the brain-reader is noting that he's panicking, the plane can further augment the autopilot into the flying of the aircraft).
I'll probably add more later when there are replies / I think about it more.
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Barr »

Dragon029 wrote:Alright, as someone that's been able to meet some rather knowledgeable people; here's my personal beliefs (note thought that I've slept ~7 hours in the past 48):
  • The F-35 will be the 5th gen fighter of choice, particularly because of addon systems that provide it unique edges. Basically by around 2030 we'll see aircraft or newer blocks of the F-35 advertised as 5+ Gen aircraft or 5.5 Gen, etc.
  • Because it's also going to be so common, we'll see more projects like the SDB2, CUDA, Griffin developed to enhance it's capabilities - this will mean stealthy external fuel tanks, stealthy external weapon pods, stealthy external electronic warfare systems, etc.
  • We'll see the fighter duopoly of the US vs Russia vs [kinda] Europe split. This is already very evident in the number of 5th gen fighter programs in development, in nations like Turkey, Indonesia / South Korea, Japan, China, [Russia, the US], India, etc.
  • The 6th gen will be developed, beginning with the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter program in ~2030-2040 (although I won't be surprised if it's renamed / merged into a new program). The 6th gen will have directed energy weapons for self defence and in some / most cases, offensive capabilities.
  • The line between fighter and bomber will blur more, as the B-3 aka NGB aka LRS-B has self-defence capabilities added to it such as air-to-air missiles and directed energy weapons.
  • Electronic warfare will become ever more prominent and will merge into the field of cyber warfare as aircraft try to induce glitches or inject viruses (you read that correctly) into other aircraft / ground radar systems.
  • UAVs will continue to proliferate, from things like cyborg / cybernetic insects, all the way up to unmanned bombers, due to advances in batteries (for small aircraft) and intelligent flight controls (unmanned fighters, animal-like UAVs, etc). Fighters will remain manned, and so will other aircraft, but their primary role will be as insurance; F-35s and NGAD (6th gen) fighters will fly in harm's way, but only to provide local command to UCAVs and to act as a back-up communications / control hub if the UCAVs comms link fails and it's meant to be requesting permission to release weapons. Manned bombers will also be the only ones that fly nuclear missions. The manned fighter will probably become extinct in the US military by 2050 by which time NGAD will be nearing the end of it's life.
  • Hypersonic weapons (scramjets) will finally be worked into missile systems, with cruise missiles becoming devastating alternatives. They will primarily be used as long-range cruise missiles that act somewhat like ballistic missiles, with a reduced package volume and less chance of making nuclear nations jump the gun.
  • Virtual reality will be a powerful tool for UAV and fighter pilots (as well as tanker boom operators, etc); preliminary systems should be 10-15 years away from being proposed, as based off the technologies developed for the F-35 HMDS as well as stereoscopic vision systems for newer refuelling aircraft.
  • Brain-reading systems won't be used to control fighters (not for quite a while, by which time either fighters will be slowly getting phased out and/or UCAVs will be smarter / quicker to react than humans anyway), but they could within the next 10+ years be used as a form of health monitoring for pilots, changing how the plane flies depending on how the pilot's mental state is (for example, if the plane's input isn't matching the expected performance [the pilot is making fundamentally poor decisions in how he flies] and the brain-reader is noting that he's panicking, the plane can further augment the autopilot into the flying of the aircraft).
I'll probably add more later when there are replies / I think about it more.
So am I supposed to wait for the NSA, FBI, or CIA to come to my house and wipe my memory out after reading that?
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Re: What is the Future of Aviation?

Post by Dragon029 »

If you see any Men In Black, just let tell them the secret code words [spoil]▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓▓[/spoil] and they should leave you alone.

But in all seriousness; it's quite astonishing when you look into the fine text and hidden implications on various system specs. Just the other week I was writing a brief (for a public speaking assessment) about the MQ-4C Triton (a new version of the Global Hawk). There were few specs about it's sensors, especially it's electro-optical turret, but with Google and some calculations on the little info they provided, you can find out some pretty neat things.
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