Pentagon Touts “Loyal Wingman” for Combat Jets
April 15th, 2016If your trillion dollar F-35 boondoggle can’t fight, why not throw a magic-8 ball brain into older fighters that can?
Via: Flightglobal:
US Air Force plans to insert a “brain” into current-generation fighter jets to create autonomous flying wingmen paired with the Lockheed Martin F-35 were given a bump today, with the Pentagon’s second-in-charge saying he expects to see “unmanned wingmen in the air” before convoys of driverless Humvees.
Deputy defence secretary Robert Work touted the long-considered “loyal wingman” concept at a forum hosted by the Washington Post in Washington DC on 30 March, where he explained that the air force will pair unmanned Lockheed F-16s with F-35s in future battles.
“You take an F-16 and make it totally unmanned,” Work says. “The F-16 is a fourth-generation fighter, and pair it with an F-35, a fifth-generation battle network node, and have those two operating together.”
Work says he expects “unmanned wingman, unmanned undersea vehicles and surface vessels” as well as pilotless cargo helicopters for delivering supplies to troops on the battlefield to be introduced operationally before robotic military vehicles.
Work says the spread of autonomous technology and platforms “is inexorable”. “It is going to happen,” he says.
