Boeing has withdrawn from Skyborg, but has an MQ-28 in the US atm

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-is-in-the-u-s

Ghost Bat - titter.
A RAAF insider told me the Spams were warned what it meant but proceeded anyway.
Loyal Wingman sounds a lot more `murican.
Or Loyal Wingperson...

Can’t use wingperson as it has the word “son” in it… :cool:

I believe that closed compound words should be fine as per human and mankind. The issue is when they are not. So really airman, wingman and also woman should all be just fine!

What does it mean?

Post #16 refers

I am reminded of the old 8 Sqn Shackleton sticker…. ”8 Screws are better than 4 Blow-Jobs”

https://www.urbandictionary.com/defi...rm=Ghost%20bat

Pentagon is going to be buying for Research and Engineerng usage

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/...ost-bat-drone/

The Warzone linked an interesting tweet. It has CGI picture of an MQ-28 doing an arrested landing on a QNLZ 2 carrier


Exerpt from the article

how does loyal wingman with a pilot in a lead aircraft (F18/F35) controlling a drone swarm differ from a pilot in a portacabin at Creech controlling a drone swarm? I don't really see the advantage, in fact having somebody fly a plane and be cognizant of threats to their aircraft at the same time as executing a battle plan over the horizon seems a lot of work for not a lot of advantage. And all this relies on good comms links, are they assured against a decent opponent with EW/satellite shoot down capability? And comms bandwidth and versatility on a fighter aircraft (or even a widebody AWACS) is never going equal the comms available to a portacabin..

For starters all the F-18 in the RAAF have a second crewman so that crewman would be available to control them. Also its a strong rumor that the E-7's are more getting consoles from which these can be controlled. Also rumored the tankers will be getting a station as well. At least intitially I think these aircraft primary role will be a escort of larger assets (awac/tankers) or CAP over ground facilites like forward airfields freeing up manned fighters. later if/when the technology matures maybe they will be escorts for other fighters like the F-35 / NGAD

https://thehill.com/policy/technolog...ical-aircraft/

AI can fly a fast jet whilst the fast jet pilot manages the loyal wingmen, makes sure the UAV tanker is on the way to the rendevous point etc.

Years ago DERA or similar found that your average FJ pilot could manage 3 other aircraft at the same time.

Got to get your portacabin to talk to the drone... And that's pretty much only gunna happen one way, and that equals a serious vulnerability.

a controlling plane would use radio/satellite to communicate with the drones (giving away all their positions if radio) whilst the portacabin 10,000km away is satellite only. Radio can be jammed just as well as satellites, if not more so by decent EW., If the opposition can disable satellites they can certainly jam radio/spoof GPS over the ground targets. The difference is satellites can have multiple redundancies (starlink, there's a a lot to knock down....). This loyal wingman concept still strikes me as old Air Force trying to keep manned planes for the sake of it

Just to clarify. They already had UAV consoles and weren't happy. When Boeing PR released that information, years ago. When the E-7 was a POS and would never do what they wanted it to. How things have changed in that program.

The difference is between the broad beam transmissions required between a satellite and an aircraft which can be detected and the tight beam directional stealthy transmissions which link the aircraft in a swarm. e.g.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...0/1/012058/pdf

That may change with LEO constellations such as Starshield which use lasers for secure comms inside the constellation and directional beams to receivers with low latency - but that will be next generation.

There's a distinct radiated power Vs distance advantage to an airborne platform 50 miles behind a UCAV, plus the tight beam advantage mentioned by someone above. Don't get me wrong, a portacabin has it's place, but an EW heavy environment I'd say isn't one. As for GPS, pretty sure no one is building any UCAVs that are going to be dependent on it, the vulnerability there is pretty obvious!

Australian government is looking at expedited delivery of 'block 2' ghost bats

https://www.australiandefence.com.au...st-bat-program