...would a drone a10 make sense? not in the sense that it would violate the principle of distribution (so as to present minimal target profiles). modern precision weapons lethal to any platform and many subterranean structures motivates the principle of distribution of larger platforms into smaller ones. so a battlecruiser becomes a few destroyers, which may themselves become a few frigates, corvettes and so on. because these smaller boats can carry the modern equivalent of the Yamato's 18 inch rounds; at the same time, the cost of a hit (and destruction of vessel) can be ameliorated by distribution of those rounds to multiple vessels (targets). Submariners perhaps apocryphally referred to all surface ships as "targets". John Keegan agreed, in a book I read as a teenager, atm I forget the name. It's the one with four battles and analyses of these four: Trafalgar, Jutland, Battle of the Atlantic, and maybe Midway. It's kind of arbitrary and I don't hold Keegan or Kennedy (Paul, "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers") on a pedestal, they just formed my own dumb mind on the subject, so I work around some of their ideas. Now at the end of that book Keegan allowed himself some Nostradamus activites, and said: Their will be no surface ships in the future, they will get killed. There will be aircraft, and submarines. Land-based hypersonic aircraft that can orbit or hover was what I was thinking. Submarines of course, but even then we knew about sono-buoys, and SOSUS. I was obsessed with radio controlled planes, rockets, etc. It wasn't difficult to put 2 and 2 together. The word "drone" was not in our vocabulary, but when I saw something like BAT weapons in Aviation Week at the library, I knew what they were on about. Network-centric host of toys. "Toys" by the way are words used to describe the new drone warfare tools and techniques in the Russian military during its adaptation, evolution, and intelligent desigen of operations in the West. For a fan of Guattari & Deleuze's nomadology/war-machine ideas it has an acute resonance. This interplay of the amateur (the latin root) and its normalization in appropriation.
So anyways.. Yeah, if I was given responsibility and budget to handle close support first I'd be thinking anti-tank drones. That would be just the best heavy ATGM you have and the optimum platform to carry just exactly one of those, and then mass produce it to swarm. Probably fiber-optic command channel with autonomous backups. A lot of thought would go into the hot-reprogramming facility, and it's reproduction, ; because after distribution another principle probably a special case of more general systems principles, is redundancy, so reproducing facility. Because war is edge cases, engineered edge cases, edge cases actively and intensively generated, from a coding paradigm of war, reprogramming facility is key.
Drones all the way. However, just like my other paper about why the MiG-35, does all this drone nirvana mean the cool fighter jet age is over? There never was a cool fighter jet age. By the time the entertainment industry dreamed it up, it was obsolete; same could be said of any romanticisation of any aspect of warfare really. It's always just some pale reflection of what in every case was emergency exigency. Vulkan has no glory in his workshop.
However, trying to be rational and scientific about the question of whether a war planner might envision a need for such a platform; it reminds me of the conversation or debate about tanks vs drones. It comes down to the same issue I outlined previously -- how much do you value human cognition? If you don't need it remove the humans from the machine and you got a brand-new drone.
Here I can say: If I were in some position of budget and authority on the issue, I would maintain the A-10 program by venturing a new variant, to be fielded in a provisional and experimental but very real way: Basic Concept:
- In a drone-dominated fight that is high-intensity enough to shut down satellite and most airborne ISR, human operators in C4-ISR capable platforms will be crucial in situ. Close in. Back-seater is a sys-admin, EW operator. Drone swarms may be operating, they may be degraded heavily.
- The only advantage this platform may have over friendly drones is the human cognition onboard, and the aircrafts armor, which we will discuss now. It needs to be hardened for nuclear and extreme forms of energy warfare. These electronic warfare means used to take out drones can probably in many cases destroy manned combat aircraft. Something the size of an A-10, with its already existing high degree of systems hardening and rendundancy should be feasible to harden significantly.
- Is it survivable? It's been described as slow and squeaky. However, it's faster than any helicopter, and better armored, so...
- Radar: Tons of radar equipment install. Millimeter wave and AESA. For all kinds of things. Terrain mapping in zero visibility. 360 degree coverage. Like the F-35 claims but better, and optimized for low level flying.
- Optronics. Full internal suite.
- Geometry. I'm against the stealth marketing label, but if canted stabilizers will improve things, then why not.
- Hard-kill defenses. We are fast approaching the point of the absurdity of missile on missile duels, and the capability is presently fruitful to cultivate involves decoy size seek and destroy munitions, for actively merging with and defeating incoming missiles.
- You may say this is a laughably hard proposition, and why try. The most obvious response is that's just what your enemy wants you thinking while he goes and develops just that. It's just work, after all. You can do it. One step at a time. Anyways, having a program like this as a testbed and motivation to produce this thing is worthwhile. And knock-on effects, etc.
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greentext>Is it survivable on the modern battlefield? Nothing is survivable on the modern battlefield. If you see a modern battlefield, chances are globo-thermo-shart is going down and you won't be seeing much. However, for some reason, we keep speculating about the modern battlefield. I don't know. In theory you could have a full bore conventional conflict between superpowers, and there may be scenarios where planning considered post-nuclear exchange conflicts. So nuclear hardened, manned, SIGINT C4-ISR distribution among platforms down to granularity of A-10 size would make sense. The main thing is the second seat, sensor-commms suite, hardening, etc.
greentext>Would you keep the gun (lolz)? and isn't it just an obsolete design? So slow, so squeaky.
- If all your AliBaba swarms and complicated drone nirvana was literally nuke EMP from the board, maybe you would send a 30mm shell instead of a another missile? You don't know what's out there, something analog and heavy duty is good asset.
- There is nothing obsolete about this design. It's an amazing design. But get stronger engines. Beef up the airframe, add composite armor, etc. It's faster than a helo, it's faster than most of the drones out there.
- Design for independent rough-field operations.
- No depleted uranium. No. You might be able to do an explosive penetrator munition, which in serial detonation would easily overcome reactive armor. Tungsten, etc. Also just basic fragmentation explosion.
- It's not like this in conceptualized as a pivotal platform; in all but the most extreme scenarios it is a fifth wheel. It only justifies its existence apart from an unmanned drone version due to the figured importance of said human cognition during a high-intensity, high-technology conflict.
- The chief value of the program morever, is not even in the expected deterrance/combat utility of the deployed platform, for example as a motivating locus of attention on 360 degree three-axis multiband radar and optronic coverage, sensor fusion. Hard-kill aerial defense hardware development, etc.
- The air-defense platform is no more survivable against the A-10, than the A-10 is against the air-defense platform. Nothing is intrinsically survivable in extremus. Survival in such an extreme of high-intensity warfare is something like grace or genius, sought after but achieved by only a fraction of the participants. This aformentioned emergency of exigency, improvisation of means, tooling, techniques. The amateur and the professional, the innovator and the normalizer / systematizer.
- This thing is thought of as a mobile C4ISR thing (platform) above all. It's a fifth wheel in all but the most extreme scenarios because notice even in Ukraine no one has gone and blasted all the satellites and AWACS out of the sky. When things get to that level the drone swarms will have to be highly hardened and autonomous, or nearby connected by fiber-optics. Aerial platforms with high-power programmable radars may be able to burn through wireless communications by proximity in contested environments.
- Dear dear, I hope no one thinks this is to offer some kind of magic fix. No. Rather this is intended as an example of the kind of thing I would invest in, for health of industry and society, via the engagement with the technical problems presented by the program.
- But the final justification can only be first order, that is, brass tacks. In extreme cases of high-intensity conflict, this type of platform can be considered essential kit, for reasons stated above. Principles of distribution and redundancy indicate replicating C4ISR capabilities (contempororily now also include tasks of reprogramming drone swarm orchestration with in-situ improvised proxity dependent communication with said drone swarms.). This is precisely what the MiG-35 represented in the previous article, though they occupy distinct though closely related positions in the ecosystemic hierarchy of the battlefield, and sorry for the clumsy verbiage, that's the language of it all. You get the idea I trust.
brainstorm errata debris---- it started down here...
you could take the pilot out of any of these platforms and you got a drone. do you have the control software is not automatic but is generally realizable. the key question then becomes one of the utility of the human cognition over and above the 'ai' / programmatic routines; interpolated with statistics oriented around reliability of communications in various scenarios and mission profiles.
it's better armored than a bronco. (ov-10)
it's got worse visibility than a bronco.
it's faster than a bronco.
it's faster than a helicopter.
quote we must respond to =: "it's a slow squeaky target for modern advanceod air defences."
well now then let us discuss the a10.
well now then let us discuss the a10.
well now then let us discuss the a-10
now then let us discuss the A-10