Boeing Turning Old F-16s Into Unmanned Drones 239
dryriver sends this news from the BBC:
"Boeing has revealed that it has retrofitted retired fighter jets to turn them into drones. It said that one of the Lockheed Martin F-16s made a first flight with an empty cockpit last week. Two U.S. Air Force pilots controlled the plane from the ground as it flew from a Florida base to the Gulf of Mexico (video). Boeing suggested that the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practise firing on. The jet — which had previously sat mothballed at an Arizona site for 15 years — flew at an altitude of 40,000ft (12.2km) and a speed of Mach 1.47 (1,119mph/1,800km/h). It carried out a series of maneuvers including a barrel roll and a 'split S' — a move in which the aircraft turns upside down before making a half loop so that it flies the right-way-up in the opposite direction. This can be used in combat to evade missile lock-ons. Boeing said the unmanned F-16 was followed by two chase planes to ensure it stayed in sight, and also contained equipment that would have allowed it to self-destruct if necessary. The firm added that the flight attained 7Gs of acceleration but was capable of carrying out maneuvers at 9Gs — something that might cause physical problems for a pilot. 'It flew great, everything worked great, [it] made a beautiful landing — probably one of the best landings I've ever seen,' said Paul Cejas, the project's chief engineer."
Sacrilege (Score:2)
Such a noble and iconic aircraft turned into a play toy.
50 years from now it will seem like the Air Force scrapping P-51s.
Re:Sacrilege (Score:5, Interesting)
If memory serves me correctly, there's nothing all that new here. Back around 1960, the USAF was flying radio controlled WWII bombers out over the Gulf of Mexico to use in interception tests. Same thing, today? Better technology.
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Put another way, in 50 years, at airshows, we will be seeing an F-16 flying and the announcer will say it's one of the last X flying examples in the world.
Sad.
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Such a noble and iconic aircraft turned into a play toy.
If I recall correctly the F16 was a Tier 2 fighter, specifically designed to be cheap to buy and cheap to run — quantity was a higher priority than capability, as least compared with its larger two-engined brethren. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but "noble and iconic" seems a bit much.
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The F16 was always the bargain bin little sister of the F15 (the "real" fighter jet).
Its main appeal was that it was _cheap_, not that it was good.
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that's nonsense.
a noble and iconic and RETIRED aircraft pioneering a new role as one of the highest performance modern weapon systems ever, capable of intricate maneuvers at higher mach and g than any ever before...
Exactly. Anyone thinking this is going to be a target drone is as naive as a 10 year old in a whore house.
Re:Sacrilege (Score:4, Funny)
Control signal jamming (Score:2)
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Physics.
the onboard jammer would have to be HUGE to affect anything outside of a short range, or the thing would have to be on top of it, so you might as well just use a heat seeking missile and blow it up.
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I think that's his thought... jam the plane when you get close to it. Just how close does it have to get? If the drone remote operator can't fire counter measures and take evasive action once the missile is within X meters due to jamming, the missile is going to have a much easier time hitting the target.
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Jamming is dangerous. Start jamming something and you are going to get an ALARM or a HARM right up your antenna.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile [wikipedia.org]
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From the evil dictator perspective...
If I knew jamming would make me a target, I'd put jammers out in remote locations, so they'd waste their ordinance on worthless targets.
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From the Countermeasures Department, Evil Dictator Removal Group:
We find your remote jammers, land some special ops troops and jack into your control systems.
Have a nice day. What's left of it, anyway.
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You realize we're speculating about a short range jammer right on a missile itself right? Not sure HARM etc really applies here.
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Imagine the jammers are less expensive than ALARMS or HARMS and there are dozens of them flying around.
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It doesn't have to be big at all. Within a few miles of the drone, around 100W would be enough to swamp a satellite link. Get the jammer high enough, it can radiate down and cause trouble, IF it can find a way to render the link unusable for a few moments. At the right time. Like when the drone is maneuvering towards the ground. Assuming the drone doesn't have a failsafe to survive loss of comm and avoid the ground. Of course then, if it's headless, it will need some intelligence to avoid the ground fi
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Yeah. go ahead and try to jam a directional satellite link with a general area jammer. there is 60db of attenuation alone if you are not above the aircraft.
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what would prevent an enemy missile from having an onboard jamming unit to jam the control signals coming from a remote pilot to the plane?
Anti-radiation missiles. Any source transmitting with enough power to jam the signal would be a very conspicuous and short lived target.
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My Serbian friends have told me that a $50 microwave with the door taken off can destroy a $200k HARM.
Sounds like urban legend to me, but, pretty comical if true. You'd think Raytheon would be out deploying microwaves if it were the case.
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You can count on it, both airborne jammers and ground-based.
And when 'they' figure out where the ground facilities are, and the uplinks, expect to see vans packed with goodies trying to jam there also.
For the drone wars, SAMs and AAMs are the secondary threats. Communications will be the primary weakness, and the effort is surely underway to degrade or defeat that. Obvious tactic.
And equally obvious to secure the command link, even if the video feeds aren't. At least until the little buggers become autono
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Whats the cost of a crash program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon [wikipedia.org] for a middle power in 2020?
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You don't look like a tool, you look like someone who had their formatting messed up. It's happened to all of us, once. No big deal.
Efficient for Risky Missions (Score:3)
& using near obsolete aircraft to boot at low cost. What is not to like?
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Near obsolete?
These are still very capable aircraft, with a wide variety of weapon systems [wikimedia.org].
They exceed the capabilities of all but two or three nations, and we have them in numbers, both on active duty and in reserve [google.com].
Don't right them off as obsolete yet.
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I don't think TFA said what version of F-16 this was. Might have been an A model, which for all practical purposes is obsolescent.
The pictured F-16 looks to have the old-style air intake for the F100 engine, fwiw.
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Well as one of the first reliable fly by wire planes, I could believe they would start with an old airframe for simplicity, one they can actually afford to lose. They may actually use one or two of these as targets, but not for any of the stated reasons. Training fighter pilots no longer requires actually shooting something down.
Trying new munitions, maybe laser weapons, maybe.
My money is still on heavy ordinance delivery, in highly contested territory.
Not really news (Score:2)
The U.S. military (Navy and Air Force, especially) has been repurposing obsolete aircraft as radio controlled target drones since not long after WWII. The only newsworthy part of this story is that they landed the F-16 after putting it through its paces. Previous target drones were intentionally one use only.
Cheers,
Dave
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Previous target drones were intentionally one use only.
Au contraire. The Air Force and the Navy both had F-86's modified so they could be flown either by a live pilot or by RC. The Navy had a squadron of them, called QF-86's, in California that provided drone services for all military users on the West Coast.
Pilots would make a number of unarmed sorties against live-pilot machines to practice the techniques, then take a few actual shots at unmanned ones. Live-fire missions were done out over the water, so if a drone was damaged and unsafe to land, they could s
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And F-100s, F-104s, F-4s. Probably others I won't bother to look up.
No, not new, not even a new purpose. Unless they shoot back. And a cheap way to develop the concept of unmanned fighters. Which are inevitable.
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If you believe this is to be uses as a target drone, I have a Bridge in San Francisco I'd like to sell you.
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Its hardly going to be secret. Neither were Predators.
Look at the variety of weapons you can carry on F16s. You can't get half that on a predator.
Can any of then carry HARM Missiles? No.
AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon? No.
Your numbers are simply wrong:
Predator C:
Empty weight: 1,130 lbs (512 kg)
Loaded weight: 2,250 lbs (1,020 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 2,250 lbs (1,020 kg)
Now tell me again how you are going to hang 6800 pounds on that airframe?
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That rather depends on whether you believe these are going to be used as 'target drones' or drones that take out 'targets'.
We literally have thousands of F-15 and F-16's either in mothballs now or scheduled to be decommissioned in the near future.
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That rather depends on whether you believe these are going to be used as 'target drones' or drones that take out 'targets'.
We literally have thousands of F-15 and F-16's either in mothballs now or scheduled to be decommissioned in the near future.
And if we've had the ability to fly these (or other similar obsolete fighters like F-4s and F-14s) on one way missions for decades, why haven't we turned them into attack drones already? We've used F-4s as target drones so the technology for remote control is there.
Simple answer: we don't need that capability any more than we need to bring back WWII era battleships.
What our current drones do that repurposed old fighter planes don't do is have fantastic, unrefueled loiter time. There are reasons why Predat
this is the future of aerial combat (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the future of aerial combat. No need to risk a pilot's life, no need for a $400,000,000 F-22 Raptor, if you can turn at 9G, you can outperform just about anything with a human being in it.
I'm all for it. Take them all out of mothballs and make them all into drones.
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Soon. Mothballed Spitfire drones above the Channel, to prevent the mothballed Messerschmitts drones of the EU from causing uproar in the parliament, lower house. "Ballsy move" was the statement received from the Buckingham Palace about the drone situation.
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Soon. Mothballed Spitfire drones above the Channel, to prevent the mothballed Messerschmitts drones of the EU from causing uproar in the parliament, lower house. "Ballsy move" was the statement received from the Buckingham Palace about the drone situation.
Look out for the Mistels!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkLvyXY1LV0 [youtube.com]
Strat
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Yeah, but the problem with aerial warfare has always been spotting the other pilots first. No amount of cameras is going to fix that problem. I don't remember the exact stat, but 80% or so of planes shot down in combat never saw the guy before he shot, and a large percentage of the rest were close to level (didn't have much time to react).
Maybe AWACS technology has leapfrogged but we'll never know until the next war. I'd hate to commit to drones then find out they're (F)ishbait under the fog of war.
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Don't be too sure about that, even now fighter pilots can bend the airframe while maneuvering.
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Modern aerospace engineering has been limited by the human pilot for a very long time. The design of larger aircraft themselves can be optimized without a cockpit to retain even more stress..
Automation, ain't it a bitch?
A split S? (Score:2)
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Gutsiest move I ever saw, man.
Fighters have low loiter time (Score:2)
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The drones as used by the US now a days are on very long loiter and patrol missions. More than six hours. Fighters have limited range, limited loiter time, and limited combat time. F16 drones might be very good research platforms, but not very useful operationally. Further drone pilots like the stable slow reacting planes. May be there are some training opportunities with a fast agile plane as drone. But still it operational use is not very clear.
Drone fighter aircraft would be perfect in a Wild Weasel type of role.
Been there, done that... (Score:5, Informative)
Um.. this is NOT new. I used to work at a Naval Aviation Depot where they where making F-4's into radio controlled target drones way back in the 80's. The radio controls where a bit more basic, but the Navy still used them for target practice with live ammo. I remember that after the controls where fitted, some lucky test pilot would get to sit in the aircraft and watch while the guys on the ground tested things.
So, been there, done that.... Have a T-Shirt.
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Yep. My dad was part of the group that converted F4s into target dummies.
People would sit on the ground with a grown-up RC remote control and pilot them around as targets for human-piloted planes to shoot down.
Wait until they start winning all the simulations. (Score:2)
Fighter pilots are done.
Somewhere, someone is running (or should be running) hundreds, thousands, and millions of simulations of air combat simulations training AI techniques. There's hundreds of billions of dollars at stake there.
The computer can monitor all the inputs, and make the best decision and best move, always. Computers can fight in formation perfectly synchronized in real time. Computers don't have egos.
It's taken a little longer, but ultimately - air combat is a exotic game of chess, and we know
QF-4 (Score:2)
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A good fit (Score:3, Interesting)
The F-16 is difficult to fly due to its natural instability. [wikipedia.org] It's a good candidate to be operated by a computer. (I mean, it can be told where to go by a human, but the second-to-second flying should be handled by a machine.)
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That was a deliberate design choice. The '16 is fly-by-wire, which needs computer control /anyway/, so they opted for the increased maneuverability that dynamic instability can give.
Next military invention (Score:2)
Waiting for the drone communications jammers to start coming out. Drone isn't very useful without a communications link.
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Back to the Future. (Score:2)
Welcome back to the future F-16 is the new DeLorean.
Manned fighter or Drone? U can't tell.
Neither drone nor manned fighter, https nor nsa and reporter or terrorist neither...armed and dangerous all
QF-4 target drones (Score:3)
They were flying these years ago. I am sure the F-16 drones are much improved... but it basically the same thing.
'unmanned drone' is redundant? (Score:2)
Drone: an unmanned aircraft or ship guided by remote control
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drone [merriam-webster.com]
we're jaded. That's pretty cool (Score:2)
It's sad that after NSA, IRS etc. we're all so jaded we can't just enjoy this as something cool. A remote control plane that's an F-16. That's pretty badass.
Now back to your regularly scheduled realism about the government.
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You've failed me for the last time, Starscream!
What? Success? Oh. Well good then.
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IIRC, wasn't StarScream an F-15/F-14-ish looking variant? The F-16 only has one engine.
(Man - I feel *old* - I remember working on the F-16 A/B models )
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I remember working on F-4Ds. Those (or were they -Gs?) were turned into both drones as targets. QF was the designation I think.
As were F-100s, F-104s, even F-86s, almost all as target drones.
Nothing new to see here, unless one of these shoots down something fast. That would be cool.
bah, B-52s (Score:3)
You think F-4 is old? What about B-52s! New in 1952, those haven't been used in combat since ... oh, never mind.
Re:bah, B-52s (Score:4, Insightful)
You think F-4 is old? What about B-52s! New in 1952, those haven't been used in combat since ... oh, never mind.
The requirements for fighter planes have shifted while the requirements for heavy bombers have not. A fighter plane needs to fly fast, turn fast, and climb fast, while carrying all the equipment needed to shoot down other planes which are trying to shoot down them, and be reliable. If you get technological advancements in materials, computer modeling, etc, you need to redesign the whole plane to be faster, more agile, and to carry new equipment.
In contrast, a heavy bomber needs to carry XXX weight over YYY distance in a reasonable amount of time, and be reliable enough to not worry about falling out of the sky. The B52 has received many upgrades over the years, but changing out the engines every now and then is basically good enough to keep up with the requirements.
honestly, no remote cutoff?! (Score:4, Funny)
These QF-16s, while older A/B models, will present a much more realistic target
since that's what we sold to our future adversaries in the first place...
Re:Still dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
True. However, the summary indicates testing was done over the Gulf of Mexico, although the article isn't clear. It does say they exceeded Mach 1, which is generally prohibited over populated areas except in emergencies, so that's another indicator they were over water.
And military pilots are expected to be able to handle 9G with a G-suit [wikipedia.org], but only briefly, and the structural limits for the F16 are beyond a human's limits for sustained G-forces, so there's a potentially great improvement in performance.
As an aside, I read that the Blue Angels (and presumably the Thunderbirds) pull sustained 7G during their maneuvers without a G-suit, which is impressive.
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The other interesting thing is, you will notice that all aircraft always only perform positive G maneuvers (ie, to turn left, you roll left, then pull up.) The human body can sustain far less negative G's.
It will be very interesting to watch these aircraft perform in a combat situation now that they are not limited by the physical issues with a human in the cockpit.
I imagine it would be very difficult to catch a fighter jet that has the capability to perform a 'split-s' maneuver without first inverting, or
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There's not enough spectrum to replace the entire fleet of manned craft with drones, not to mention the fact that any enemy beyond cave dwellers will figure out how to jam the drones (ARM missiles only go so far to helping with the problem).
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The spectrum problem is why you need to have them think for themselves to accomplish a mission objective. This is the only solution to the jamming problem, which IMO is a bigger issue than spectrum.
It's coming..
Re:Artificial Intelligence (Score:2)
Solves the ethical problems of pilot discretion. Which IMHO is the biggest problem of mission objective.
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While this could be a bad thing for aviators it is a good reuse of mothballed jets that cost millions of dollars. They have configured all types of jets as drones going back to the 60's. In WW2 the US tried to convert a B-29 to fly without any humans on board. They had some success but the war was near it's end and the project was dropped. One of the Kennedy's (not sure which one) was actually killed in an early test during this project.
Re:Still dangerous (Score:4, Interesting)
Ummm...while this is partially true (humans don't do negative G well) what is also true is airplanes don't do negative G well. It takes a lot of structure to make a 40-50,000lb airplane that can pull 9G's in one direction. Making one that can do it in two directions would also make it really heavy. Also, various liquids essential to operation (like fuel and oil) perform very poorly in the -G environment for more than about 30 seconds. Sure you could engineer your way out of that, but more weight and more cost.
Airplanes do best when all their G goes down, the way they spend 99% of their life. The G-limit on Predator/Reaper class UAVs is something like +2.5, no negative.
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I think we may be congratulating Captain Dunsail's within a decade.
Question: What happens if you jam GPS and all electronic signals to or from the planes?
Do they crash?
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Since they still know their speed, bearing, altitude and attitude, they wouldn't necessarily crash.
If I were programming the logic with very little on-board processing power, I would have them automatically ascend to a set altitude then fly straight and level until they regain consciousness.
If you had a fair-bit of on-board processing power, you might look at flying them up to a random high altitude, then execute a quasi-random set of evasive maneuvers while heading along a bearing that was set at the begin
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Re:Still dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it works out even better than that...
* human = 80 kg
* 7-G-resistant flight suit = 10 kg (estimate)
* oxygen tanks for pilot with several hours of oxygen weigh how much??
* no need for additional batteries/power, becaus the pilot would need power pump oxygen for breathing, plus illuminate instruments at night
Re:Still dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think about it critically, these aircraft have onboard radar (and other combat sensors), and a flight log.
So, it would know where it last was, how far and in which direction it has traveled since loosing GPS, and what the wind-speed was on the way to where it is.
It would likely also have contour maps of the terrain it is flying over, and ground sensors.
So, with a modest bit of on-board computer power you could have it hit a high altitude and head home via the least-risk path, execute a long list of pre-determined evasive makeovers, have it open fire at anything it has a 99% confidence is an enemy entity - or for some real fun, have it work out where it is on the map, then fly about 30 ft above the terrain at mach 1.6 in the general direction of home.
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Modern military autopilot systems can use camera-based navigation by recognising terrain features from satellite images. Once you have enough processing power, GPS becomes pretty irrelevant.
Re:Still dangerous (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, but it's better than having the whole thing land on someone's place. Not to mention that it flew from Tyndall AFB to the Gulf of Mexico according to the article (which is odd thing to say, considering Tyndall is on the Gulf Coast, but I assume it means that it flew out over deeper waters), which means that self-destructing would mean it wouldn't make it back to land to cause damage in the first place.
Also worth noting: if you think that would ruin your day, consider the fact that the space shuttles had self-destruct capabilities as well, in case they went out of control. Imagine that landing on your house. Actually, to get a bit grim (and not at all in the direction I originally planned for this comment), for some of us we don't really need to imagine, since we helped clean up the wreckage spread out across Texas following Columbia, most of which wouldn't have killed anyone from impact. In fact, related to that, the source for that fact about the self-destruct is a family friend who's now a retired astronaut that flew on four flights. They offhandedly mentioned the self-destruct (which earned me a well-deserved remark from them that made me feel like the ass I was after I said something along the lines of "that's so cool!") shortly before flying on STS-109.
For those of you not keeping score, STS-109 was the last successful flight that Columbia flew. STS-107 was its next and last one. And as you might guess from the numbering, 107 was originally scheduled to fly first, but due to delays, NASA swapped the two missions in the schedule. It's the sort of thing that really does get you thinking about what a person means to you and what life would be like if they were suddenly not a part of it any longer.
Anyway, I'm way off-topic. Suffice to say, self-destruct = a good thing to have in case something goes very wrong.
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Depending on Which Runway they used [google.com], this plane probably never crossed over civilian areas.
Re:great weapon to use in the middle east (Score:5, Informative)
An F-16 can carry 4 2,000-lb bombs at the absolute most (and anything after two is risky on the wings).
It has 9 hard-points to hang ordinance on, but two of those (1 and 9) are wingtip rails, which means AIM-9 missiles. It will usually have 1-3 "bags" (fuel pods) hanging off of stations 4, 5 (centerline, under the fuselage), and 6. You'll need them in some combination to get any kind of real combat range (otherwise you're stuck with ~900lbs of internally-stored fuel, which ain't jack.) The big bombs would hang off of stations 3 and 7.
Now anti-personnel and fragmentary bombs? You can pack a buttload of 'em on that, and add in two AIM-9 Air-Groung missles to do some damage (which is what most ground-attack configured F-16's carry).
I am curious if they can slave in a LANTIRN pod kit onto the things and use that to get all-weather capability... though I can't remember if they retrofitted any of the A/B model jets to carry those.
Re:great weapon to use in the middle east (Score:4, Funny)
You can stop jacking off now
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The Block 20 of the A/B model was fitted for LANTIRN, but I think those all went to Taiwan. I have no idea if the European Block 20 MLU program included it or not.
(I'll take useless '80's trivia for $600, Alex.)
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An F-16 can carry 4 2,000-lb bombs at the absolute most (and anything after two is risky on the wings).
It has 9 hard-points to hang ordinance on, but two of those (1 and 9) are wingtip rails, which means AIM-9 missiles. It will usually have 1-3 "bags" (fuel pods) hanging off of stations 4, 5 (centerline, under the fuselage), and 6. You'll need them in some combination to get any kind of real combat range (otherwise you're stuck with ~900lbs of internally-stored fuel, which ain't jack.) The big bombs would hang off of stations 3 and 7.
Now anti-personnel and fragmentary bombs? You can pack a buttload of 'em on that, and add in two AIM-9 Air-Groung missles to do some damage (which is what most ground-attack configured F-16's carry).
I am curious if they can slave in a LANTIRN pod kit onto the things and use that to get all-weather capability... though I can't remember if they retrofitted any of the A/B model jets to carry those.
You don't need as much fuel for a one-way trip. And a one-way trip is more acceptable if there is no pilot to lose.
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AIM-9X has a limited air-ground capability. OP was probably thinking of the AGM-65 Maverick, though.
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That used to be true. [flightglobal.com]
Re:great weapon to use in the middle east (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes, of course.
You didn't actually believe the line about:
the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practice firing on.
did you?
First, this isn't all that innovative, its been done to creating target drones for decades.
Second, this is still a front line aircraft, no matter how many we have in mothballs, because the usual target countries have nothing close. Its also fairly stealthy for its age, and its payload is in excess of 15,000 pounds of munitions even with a full load of fuel. You are not going to be using that quality of plane for a target drone.
Its meant as a delivery platform, piloted from afar, for very dangerous areas.
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Yes, I am being sarcastic, for those who are sarcasm impaired.
I fail to see any sarcasm. Your post is a simple statement of fact: Military planes exist to carry out military operations. Duh.
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They should let a private company buy a bunch of these things, connect them to a simulator, and rent out time on the system (with pre-programmed fail safes in place.) Wouldn't be quite the same as flying an F-16 yourself, but damn it would be fun.
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The aircraft was useless as a fighter. It cant carry anything and is just a lawn dart.
Seriously? Compared to what?
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The aircraft was useless as a fighter. It cant carry anything and is just a lawn dart.
Some Dart [googleusercontent.com].
Some Lawn. [wordpress.com]
How many Predator Equivalences is that.
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Go home. You're drunk.
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Then, enemy cracks comm links, cant maneuver the drones, control mother ship is helpless and gets shot down ( by it's own drones potentially ).
Enemy lands drones either where they like, or crash them into targets of their choosing.
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It's possible to operate drones from an AWACS loitering just outside the combat area.
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The summary suggests the F-16 was made by Lockheed Martin, but wasn't the F-16 a product of General Dynamics?
GD sold the F-16 business to Lockmart in 1993.
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I'd say that honor belongs to the Berkut [uludagsozluk.com].
for just $25 million, you can (Score:2)
If you have $25 million to spare, you can probably buy one that was previously exported.