>At an estimated two-to-three million dollars each, these unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) cost about the same as a single Patriot missile–which, it pays to note, isn’t exactly reusable. Compare that price to the anticipated cost of newF-15X fightersor the F-35 after the next anticipated price drop, both at $80 million per airframe, and you begin to see how the Valkyrie could change the way America fights its wars. >The Valkyrie is also designed to use rockets forshort-distancetakeoffs without the need for full airstrips, making it seem possible that we may eventually see a similar design on U.S. Navy carriers. The range offered by these platforms would actually be close enough tolaunch from carriersoutside of Chinese anti-ship missile range, engage targets on Chinese soil, and return — somethingno carrier-based platformcan currently do.
Ironically the drone is the bait and/or expendable launch system for missiles that target AA launchers.
China/Russia developed around american tech of 2003 and forward.
Now USA is developing around their tech, which is mostly long range anti-something technology.
Instead of making expensive superweapons, they just figured out that spamming (if necessary, AI-controlled) recon drones and new long range missiles at launchers/radars is the cheapest way to go. This situation is just developing, a lot is going to happen in the next 10 years.
After that the air force flies in to fuck shit up!
>LRASMs clearing the way for Tomahawks clearing the way for MALDS clearing the way for Gremlins clearing the way for Valkyries clearing the way for F35s clearing the way for F18s
I like it
Caleb Barnes
That's what I immediately thought of when I first saw this.
And no you butt hurt EU fags, this thing is not a Barracuda knockoff, it's far better than what EADS ever made.
The hebrews are busy countering Russian memes with the mini-Harpy.
Jaxson Hughes
So, if spamming the enemy is the answer, will we see a comeback of rocket artillery?
Noah Walker
No. The new meta is spamming smart weapons, not dumb weapons.
Asher Gray
user, rocket artillery never left.
America just went the German way in the cold war of using big as fuck fancy rockets, while the Soviets stayed with the tried & true basic unguided rocket spam.
Isaiah Morales
Kind of odd to compare it to a Patriot instead of something like a Tomahawk.
Logan Thomas
Video game overlord logic at work.
Lucas Gomez
the russians never stopped using them, this is the result of thermobaric shells used on ukranians
Yes, they are bringing back a lot of long range artillery/rocket capability for army, that, in a big war, would need to work without air support and even help the air force by hitting enemy launchers. New tech with longer range, on many levels.
Only in the world's hour of need will he return to us.
Jaxson Campbell
>At an estimated two-to-three million dollars each, these unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) cost about the same as a single Patriot missile >How will chinks ever recover? They don't need to, it's a vaporware. Two-to-three million dollars is what you need to spend for the radar and communication array only.
They’ve had that wingman system around for a while though haven’t they? They’ll probably just pair up pilots and drones for one big fuck you sandwich if everything is coordinated and executed well
Sadly, probably all the electronics and cabling were made by the chinks.
Adam Gutierrez
Does it need its own radar? I figured it uses data from everyone elses sensors.
Noah Cox
I think you are grossly overestimating how large these are.
Isaiah Turner
Can you hear me? Pilot with the three strikes?
Aaron Richardson
This either boils down to a reusable MIRV or an unmanned stealth bomber. Not that revolutionary, even if it is applying drone tech to high-profile roles. Also lol at expecting to re-use a bomber sent against China.
Chaff could beat a system built around countering high-tech elites, with the expectation that the countermeasures can't increase coverage to defeat the chaff. But that relies on the defences not being able to keep up with the chaff, which is gambling your entire war machine on this expectation. It's also fairly irrelevant in a "real" war with China, which will not happen so long as "the bomber always gets through" thanks to MAD. This is an arms-race dickwaving contest whose only useful function is keeping the participant nations at the cutting edge of countermeasures and counter-counter-measures in case the balance ever swings back to prevent MAD from being a possibility. Or alternately, the technologies at the cutting edge now will be useful for neutralising guerrillas and piddly militaries who have acquired this stuff. Because being able to destroy X number of isolated Chinese bases isn't going to win an actual war against China.
Elijah Clark
>Instead of making expensive superweapons, they just figured out that spamming (if necessary, AI-controlled) recon drones and new long range missiles at launchers/radars is the cheapest way to go. This situation is just developing, a lot is going to happen in the next 10 years.
Do these drones actually do anything besides spam? Like is there any shred of offensive capabilities or do they just block out the sun? Doesn't this tech work only under the assumption that their SAMs can't differentiate between drone and bomber plane signatures?
Hudson Clark
Boeings Loyal Wingman is supposed to have internal munition bay that can carry a few SDBs
Jack Stewart
I'd assume at that cost there are few sensors. Just data links.
Leo Ortiz
According to its wiki page: >Hardpoints: 8 - 2 weapon bays with 4 in each with a capacity of 550 lb (250 kg) each,
David Phillips
>Do these drones actually do anything besides spam? Render pilots obsolete.
Joshua Mitchell
>How will chinks ever recover?
By outpopulating you, buying all your land and businesses and generally undercutting your economy (like they’ve been doing)
Chase Carter
>By outpopulating you I've read that their population is rapidly declining to half a billion. Also human population means less every decade. >buying all your land A sovereign country can buy their land back at any time. >and businesses Chinese investments in American companies are mostly beneficial depending on how you view intellectual property.
Brayden Torres
I think the idea is to highlight the cost of what it takes us to down an enemy plane and then say we would be spending this money anyway in a fight so why not be more proactive about things
Jose Martinez
Which means the Chinese can sabotage them without even trying to.
Charles Anderson
good plan except you don't know where chinese asms are ;)
>this thing is 1/3 the cost of a fucking super tucano >over 10,000 patriot missiles have been built for reference to how drop in the bucket a similar number would be to pump out. >YFW Ace combat players get actively recruited to pilot these things against the chinks
Chang BTFO for all time. US drone spam becomes the worlds largest airforce with the Arny and navy rocking 2 and 3 of with thousands of 5th gen fighters. What a time to be alive.
>implying we have MAD with china China barely has nuclear parity with India
Levi Brown
But, the US stuff is actually working.
Michael Robinson
>two-to-three million dollars each I strongly doubt thats even the shelf price unless we are talking about a dumb shitty generic drone with "stealthy characteristics"
>le outranges ASBM missiles this is one of the dumbest recuring layman marketing plots I keep seeing not just because at this point the same or similar platform can be used to deliver conventional as well as balistic ASM but these platform dont just magically teleport to their target like in your average Jow Forums armchair scenario long range means you need more space or slower meaning larger RCS or time and opportunity to detect and engage or even deploy dedicated counters
I mean yes everyone knows the age of drone spam is coming, but these salespoints seem like trying to convince seniors just short off their retirement
>suicide drone >isn’t exactly reusable >engage targets and return Something does not compute here
Joshua Nelson
People say suicide drone because it can be sent on suicide missions that it can hopefully return from, but not terrible if it doesn't. It's a suicide drone in the same way that a predator is a suicide drone. Nobody really gives a fuck when a predator gets shot down but losing an aircrew is a big fucking deal. Valkyrie is to F-35 as Predator is to Apache.
William Hill
>this is what Pajeets with their off the shelf soviet micro penis hardly double digit yield warheads they can hardly even get across the Himalaya,leave alone the Tibetian plateau, if they dont already blow up on the launch site or break apart over Delhi actually want to believe Stick with flinging shit over the border with Pakistan, Ranshit.
>b-but muh Agneeee veeeeee voooon teeeest That's not how it works, Pajeet.
Ian Parker
>COPE about your 40 liquid fueled ICBMs india has the same amount of active nukes as you. Your saber rattling only fuels America's complete dominance of the asian sphere.
Anthony Perez
Watching chinks and streetshitters fling crap at each other about how incompetent they both are is almost as entertaining as watching yankees and southerners fling shit about a 200 year old war.
Imagine what they could do if they build a version big enough to hold a proper fighter/multirole's weapons payload. Give it at least the F-35's capability to carry 4x AIM-120's or two AIM's and two big boy JDAMs, or a shitload of SDBs. Slap a gun in it, and have it running on some form of Genetic Fuzzy Logic AI which has already proven itself capable of winning scenarios against human pilots while being given inferior planes and weapons all running on nothing more than a generic desktop computer. Double the price to six million and you've got a smart weapons platform that can carry the same payload as an F-35 while simultaneously being able to outfight humans even if it's overmatched and autonomously carry out missions without needing a constant connection that risks being compromised by EWAR. A 5th generation fighter that comes at only a fraction the cost of it's manned counterparts.
Anyone has the pdf of airwarfare development from ww2 to today. In the end it predicts swarms of sensor drones connected to a b21. Forgot the name
Jackson Miller
>estimated two-to-three million dollars each
so it'll cost $480,000,000.99 to $864,000,000.99 in real life, gotcha.
Daniel King
You also got to pay the pilot-trainers, the pilots and the monkeys to code it and maintain it. If shit never sees combat, then it will be just like the F-35, An expensive paperweight.
Zachary Long
They have told get their first prototype to reach 200 miles first, last reported was something like 120 miles-ish.
Justin Lee
China has the tech to built MIRV'd H bombs. They could build 10k with launch vehicles in a year if they feel threatened enough
Eli Johnson
but Putin said russia wasn't involved in ukrain at all... you believe the lies of the west over Putin? even Trump believes when Putin speaks because he knows he speaks the truth.
Jonathan Thomas
Which pdf's are these from?
James Nelson
What are we going to do if the enemy sends a single ace pilot on an unbelievably daring, do or die raid to bring it down though?
Matthew Jenkins
>I've read that their population is rapidly declining to half a billion You are correct, but your numbers are off. China has finally advanced enough to find itself in the same situation as the west where their birthrate is plummeting for no adequately explainable reason. The population is expected to peak at 1.5 billion and then steadily decline from there, but there is no accurate modelling to provide an estimate as to where it actually ends up. The potential social, political and economic effects of this change are massive, as china now faces the unenviable task of maintaining economic growth in face of a simultaniously shrinking tax and labour base and growing expenditure for things like pensions. Unlike the west, China does not have millions upon millions of migrants desperately clamoring for entry into their society and therefore cannot prop its economy up with the demand they produce like we can, which means one way or another china is going to have to find an internal solution to the problem. I for one am waiting with a sort of horrified anticipation to see what they come up with
Justin Johnson
I disagree with you on both points.
Jaxson Stewart
>We Ace Combat soon. >Imagine what they could do if they build a version big enough to hold a proper fighter/multirole's weapons payload. Give it at least the F-35's capability to carry 4x AIM-120's or two AIM's and two big boy JDAMs, or a shitload of SDBs. Screw that noise, imagine combining this with SACM for a mishmash of Ace Combat drone spam with Macross missile spam.
Luke Hughes
>estimated two-to-three million dollars each Yea, nah. More like $10 million at least.
What happens if China or Russia launches a nuke in space for emp effect?
Parker Carter
>3 million I would think the engine and stealth coating costs more alone. Is it subsonic or something?
Jason Cooper
>you need nuclear parity to have MAD That's not how MAD works
Liam Ramirez
:(
Joseph Roberts
Seconded
Christopher Taylor
Same here.
I do hope they go for automated wingmen rather than fully autonomous drones. As both a student of military history and a programmer I'm saying that too much of war comes down to judgement calls to put in the hands of a machine alone.
Liam Reyes
Yes, mach .85.
As a programmer, I think air combat could be automated today but ground combat can't be automated for another 40 years.
Noah Walker
While America hypes up every single of their developments, and then proceeds to quietly discard it due to cost overruns and impracticability (as well as shit quality e.g LCS aluminum hull), China is quietly building, flying and introducing their's.
Oh you certainly can try to automate air power today but I wouldn't. A program is nothing but instructions for a plan and as Moltke the Greater said, "No plan survives contact with the enemy".
You want a human on hand to play sysadmin when the enemy does something you don't expect. A WSO in back of an F-22 would be enough. Just close enough to overpower jamming and trained enough to know what tactic each program does.
Connor Gray
This. Americans are literally like a richer Russia. Both flaunt super-giga-mega designs which are then dropped or introduced in small numbers due to massive costs. Chinese actually build their shit, or at least most of it.
Adam Miller
The problem is that China doesn't do force projection. As such, it's armed forces are still very green.
Lucas Morales
How many UAVs have been introduced to the PLA?
Camden Ross
How many UAVs does the PLA have in service?
Julian Bailey
At least 500+ of all variants, like GJ-1/2 UCAVs, ASN-series recond drones, divisional artillery observee drones, BZK-005 series naval surveillance drones, shipborne helicopter drones etc.
I wonder if the PLAAf decided upon the Dark Sword UAV at least, seeing how the US is now also moving towards the direction of air-to-air drones. The Dark Sword would have the advantage of supersonic flight too.
Mandatory state provided cute gfs If a girl refuses, her social credit score goes into the shitter and she'll end up homeless or an involuntary organ donor.
Aaron Richardson
You've never worked for a defense contractor, have you?
Zachary Price
Doomer here. I remember playing the very first Ace Combat back when it came out on the PS over 20 years ago. Was literally my first game. It was a very plain game (frankly boring) with essentially no lore whatsoever and, technically speaking, wasn't even called Ace Combat but Air Combat.
Pretty crazy to see into what the original Ace Combat it has evolved and how quickly time has passed, almost feels like yesterday.
The US always gets their technology from others. They are like China.
Nathaniel Torres
if any of you niggers believe this is gonna 3 million a piece, I got a bridge I'd like to sell you
Anthony Robinson
all it has to be is significantly cheaper than a manned fighter jet.
Brandon Foster
>for no adequately explainable reason. The one child policy and culture of "used up/left over women" is what's causing it, it's as simple as that. There's tons more dudes than women, and theres a number of women who have a kid from whatever circumstance with no husband and are now seen as untouchables as far as relationships by retarded chink culture. There's also a number of women who won't just settle for any bugman, and after so long become "too old" for any type of meaningful relationship, again according to chink culture.
