I’m not an aerospace engineer, but I would guess that lots of compromises are built into today’s crewed fighter aircraft as compromises for the human body inside it. This can be as simple as extra armor around the fuselage to protect the pilot from flak, but this armor is heavy subtracting from the range and agility of the aircraft.
I’m also betting that lots of limits are placed upon the design of the aircraft around the 9Gs-10Gs a human body could take for a very short amount of time. Think of the agility and turn radius of an aircraft that could take 12G to 18G maneuvers in the course of a regular day when the design of the aircraft removes the limits of a human body needs to survive.
Vulnerable electronics such as electronics warfare and surveillance equipment can be placed to exploit that protection around the cockpit. You could potentially place high value electronics equipment critical for a mission in the seat of the aircraft and eject it as you would a pilot as well. This kind of capability could also be useful for gaining intel on what caused a crash/the fighter-bomber to be shot down in the event it was.
I am not suggesting waves of AI Ukrainian F-16s and Mirages dogfighting in complex engagements, and even in that case at this point most of what accounts for success in aerial combat is operational planning, intelligence, and missiles. So what if an aerial platform isn’t designed to turn at the absolute limit because it was only designed for the measly capabilities of humans? The mission parameters I am suggesting are aerial patrols in friendly territory as part of a pack hunting down flying bombs either as an additional missile launch platform for a nearby manned fighter or as simply a mobile radar and targeting assistant to said manned fighter.
Lastly the airframe itself is larger than needed for uncrewed if you’re able to subtract the cockpit, canopy, ejection seat systems, environmental system that keep a pilot able to breath and from freezing to death or roasting alive. All of that removed weight means either more weight for weapons payload, longer range from more available fuel, or a smaller aircraft that is cheaper to build, store, and deploy.
I understand this perspective, but something that is really easy to forget about modern day fighter aircraft is that they are often called fighter-bombers because they truly are bombers. These aircraft can carry thousands of pounds of munitions and equipment, any equivalent unmanned platform is going to still be quite a large, complex heavy aircraft and if anything stripping all of that stuff out of an unmanned adaption of a manned fighter-bomber would only increase the performance of the aircraft. People make the same mistake with utility and attack helicopters, independent of whether they are manned or not, you have to see them from the context of how much payload they can lift, how far and how fast and what that can do for you that a smaller aircraft unmanned or not simply can’t do because of physics.
You are definitely right, there will be types of smaller air superiority highly maneuverable unmanned fighter aircraft designed to do things that a human could never survive, but this isn’t what Ukraine needs. Ukraine needs flying radar, targeting and missile launch platforms with high speed and range and the solution I am proposing also helps protect Ukraine’s living breathing fighter-bomber pilots better because it is far more difficult to identify who is a robot and who is the master controlling the robots when they are all the same kind of airplane.
Vulnerable electronics such as electronics warfare and surveillance equipment can be placed to exploit that protection around the cockpit. You could potentially place high value electronics equipment critical for a mission in the seat of the aircraft and eject it as you would a pilot as well. This kind of capability could also be useful for gaining intel on what caused a crash/the fighter-bomber to be shot down in the event it was.
I am not suggesting waves of AI Ukrainian F-16s and Mirages dogfighting in complex engagements, and even in that case at this point most of what accounts for success in aerial combat is operational planning, intelligence, and missiles. So what if an aerial platform isn’t designed to turn at the absolute limit because it was only designed for the measly capabilities of humans? The mission parameters I am suggesting are aerial patrols in friendly territory as part of a pack hunting down flying bombs either as an additional missile launch platform for a nearby manned fighter or as simply a mobile radar and targeting assistant to said manned fighter.
I understand this perspective, but something that is really easy to forget about modern day fighter aircraft is that they are often called fighter-bombers because they truly are bombers. These aircraft can carry thousands of pounds of munitions and equipment, any equivalent unmanned platform is going to still be quite a large, complex heavy aircraft and if anything stripping all of that stuff out of an unmanned adaption of a manned fighter-bomber would only increase the performance of the aircraft. People make the same mistake with utility and attack helicopters, independent of whether they are manned or not, you have to see them from the context of how much payload they can lift, how far and how fast and what that can do for you that a smaller aircraft unmanned or not simply can’t do because of physics.
You are definitely right, there will be types of smaller air superiority highly maneuverable unmanned fighter aircraft designed to do things that a human could never survive, but this isn’t what Ukraine needs. Ukraine needs flying radar, targeting and missile launch platforms with high speed and range and the solution I am proposing also helps protect Ukraine’s living breathing fighter-bomber pilots better because it is far more difficult to identify who is a robot and who is the master controlling the robots when they are all the same kind of airplane.