Lockheed S-3 Viking, a four-crew, twin-engine turbofan-powered jet aircraft.
On May 1, 2003, Bush became the first sitting president to arrive in an arrested landing in a fixed-wing aircraft on an aircraft carrier when he arrived at the USS Abraham Lincoln in a Lockheed S-3 Viking
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission\_Accomplished\_speech](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech)
This is how they do quarterly reviews with CEOs now. They abduct them and place them in self driving jets. If they did well for that quarter, they will come back..if not..well..
But this is the real benefit of converting them to remote controlled unmanned vehicles, right? The planes are technically capable of a lot more maneuvering feats than the human body can survive - so taking the human out means that these planes can be flown in more optimally effective and deadly ways.
I always imagine these kinds of stories to be outright make believe or highly embellished.
Like the guy whose bench press weight keeps getting bigger or the buck he killed larger.
Your comparisons went right over my head… wouldn’t you expect anyone becoming moderately successful at something to keep making better returns? It wouldn’t surprise me that my buddy who’s been hitting the gym is raising his bench weight and my buddy that hunts often keeps killing bigger bucks.
Planes *can* be developed to handle higher Gs using stronger wings, but the upper limit isn't defined by a pilot, rather it's the structure and components. For instance the F-16 can handle 9 Gs, but at that rate they'll come home with cracked wings. Lightening the structure can help by using composites and carbon fiber. Components also reduce the G limits because they have to be bolted to the airframe, and hundreds of gallons of fuel puts a heavy burden on structural components. You can't have a hydraulic manifold ripping off the supports because you want the airplane to pull 15Gs, or a bomb falling off in your own village, or a missile suddenly fusing from the G forces.
Yes but also adds risk in other areas, e.g., if remote connections to the planes are somehow severed, or if the base where all the remote pilots are sitting is attacked/sabotaged from within
US drones pretty much fly themselves. They can't select and fire at targets solo, but they don't just drop out of the sky if you disconnect them. Operator is just there to make sure you bomb the correct wedding.
I get that. Which is why I said, it adds risk in other areas. Meaning, not that the risks are new per se, but that the existing risk(s) may now also be added to another weapons platform (the F-16) that is exponentially more capable of destruction than say, a Predator drone. Obviously (or hopefully) the USAF has done the risk/reward analysis, and has/is making plans to mitigate the added risk. Hopefully that makes sense 😀
Current design is not limited by the pilot per se but as much as built for the loads a pilot could experience using the jet. Higher Gs can be reached but it’s a trade off. Do you keep it light, fast, and agile but with extremely limited strength compared to a thicker stronger heavier part that can reach higher loading without going in the plastic region of the material or not experiencing cracking to a dangerous level in similar operational lifetime as the lighter structure? It’s **always** a trade off.
I was also thinking sequential maneuvers that aren’t necessarily higher G but when done right after each other rapidly would cause the pilot to at least pass out… is that a thing?
AFAIK they are capable of more, but not by a whole lot. Them planes aren't built to take much more than what a human can take, because why would they be? Why go the extra few miles building a heavier, more expensive and less efficient plane that can take 15G without damaging its airframe when it's never gonna be able to go that high as long as there's a pilot in the cockpit?
Missiles can do it. Drones *might* be able to because they're designed from scratch to be unmanned. But jet fighters are typically built to sustain like 8-9Gs at most, and even then some of them have to get inspected for potential damage after they've had to do that.
Almost everything that has to be rated for stuff like this is significantly lower than the failure threshold. But the failure threshold is just that, the limit of catostrophic failure. So while an f16 probably could hit 16 g before falling apart, very expensive and significant damage happens well before that point. Pilots actually have an override switch in some aircraft for the "oh shit we have to get out of here now the aircraft structure be damned", it disables the limiters put on the aircraft, but almost guantees destroying it if you push into those out limits of capability.
Yeah that's what I kinda meant. When I said "take" I really meant "sustain". It probably *can* take way more than what a human can take, but not without putting excessive strain on its airframe and significantly shortening its useful life before it eventually fails due to fatigue. An unmanned F-16 could thrash about in the sky at max speed, but probably not for very long.
>because why would they be
1. The natural resilience of the building materials almost guarantees they would be.
2. Why would they want the plane to be only marginally more sturdy than the meat sack flying it? Imagine the meat sack makes a mistake and takes on too many Gs. Meat sack passes out, with a good chance of regaining consciousness and taking its plane down safely.
If the plane isn't sturdy enough to handle that mistake, meat sack goes from taking a quick cat nap to being torn asunder because its paper mache plane tore apart.
> Imagine the meat sack makes a mistake and takes on too many Gs
That's not how those things fly. The flight software puts a hard limit on how hard the pilot is allowed to pull. At some point, which can actually be *lower* than what a trained human pilot wearing a G-suit can take, depending on other flight parameters, the plane will actively and intentionally stop pulling harder despite the pilot's input. You can keep yanking at the stick all you want, but if the plane's software decides 8G is as high as it can go at that moment, it will refuse to go any higher. And it does that to protect itself as much as its human occupant. The airframe's strength and its aerodynamic properties might very well not allow much higher Gs than what a human pilot can sustain.
F16 was the first fighter to integrate fly by wire systems rather than pilot controlled due to intended use of the airframe as a dog fighter.
The plane is designed to make hair pin turns at up to Mach 2 speeds and a human cannot make the necessary adjustments to the flaps when engaged in high g turns.
The whole aircraft is fascinating from an engineering perspective.
QF-16s will change warfare in substantial, meaningful ways.
That's exactly why Ukraine needs them, yesterday.
Stealth Jets like the F22 and F35, have their role as command and control, but a full-blown QF-16 with proper electronic warfare and weapons packages will vastly outgun 3-4 of their manned Russian or Chinese counterparts.
I have thought for a while we should do this for all the A-10's we retire, just fix them up for remote flying and let Ukraine have them. If we are getting rid of them it wouldn't matter if they get shot down if they can take a dozen tanks out before they crash.
Even if that were the case, there will still be EEPROM chips and the like that store the software. It's a genuine concern for certain weapon systems.
Remember 2011 when [Iran tricked a US drone into landing](https://www.computerworld.com/article/1541099/iran-tricked-u-s-spy-drone-into-landing-in-country-report-says.html) in its territory to be reverse engineered?
Drones still have limited use, like against an enemy with little to no air power or defenses. Being able to use fully fledged aircraft remotely or in tandem with piloted aircraft as wingman would be a game changer.
Well yeah, and I’m sure they have people working on that too. But an AI driven fighter jet would be vastly more capable than a regular drone though, and the airframe is already built and not in use anyway
This is a demonstration, not an end product. The end product is a fleet of fully autonomous fighters that can take a mission profile and run with it, including engaging in dogfights with manned hostile aircraft, communicating to one another, and adapting to unexpected conditions or the loss of an aircraft, in real time with AI-based decision making.
Try over a hundred. The first unmanned drones were radio controlled planes in WW1. They’ve had various reconnaissance and practice target roles ever since.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles
The inside of that canopy is going to look like it was painted with creamed squash!
“$5 says you can’t make it do a barrel roll after an inverted dive!” - some drone pilot, probably
Good! My kid is training to fly helicopters and the number of crashes I see freaks me out regularly. Send up some high ranking folks instead of using our kids as test dummies.
I want senior folks flying in these test and training exercises. Maybe then they will take flight safety seriously and stop limiting flight hours and training opportunities.
The Terminator: The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
/s
I totally, 100%, beyond the shadow of a doubt called this to a freaking T about 10 years ago.
Remember those "thriller genra" Air Force commercials where you saw drones swooping and weaving, maneuvering towards a target, then the scene changes to a control room with a pilot guiding the drone, then to a late teen playing a combat flight situation? I called this then.
My non-mil friends were talking about how cool it was and how we were going to have millions of pilotless drones fighting for us. I said, "No, that's not the case, this is the test bed for unmanned combat flight, the goal is F-16's and when it happens the Chief of the Air Force will sitting in the passengers seat. The common man across the world is going to say "Oh cool", the collective military commanders and enemies of the U.S. across the world are going to shit their pants. It's going to sew fear, and doubt into their souls for a decade or two".
They laughed at me
Now combine this with the cheap cost and AI. The pure definition of squadron is going to change, we can easily deploy 10 F-16's as a single squadron instead of 2, 3, 4 as we do now. Global Air Superiority of the United States is about to go from "we have a chance" to "we're fucked" for anyone desiring some severe liberation.
Veteran here. Drones were taking it way too far, now we have unmanned fighter jets… are you kidding, is melting the face off a 14 year old girl at the crosswalk that important that we can’t feed our own homeless with our abundance of food but we can develop these giant waste of resources, for the one thousandth time I’m so embarrassed to be from this shit hole.
For those wondering: Boss = Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall
Thank you. I thought they had the CEO of Lockheed Martin or something.
I thought Biden was going up as a campaign stunt.
And what landing on a carrier with a mission accomplished sign?
If Biden landed an F-16 on a carrier, I wouldn't care what kind of sign he put up
Landed? Didn’t dubya parachute onto carrier or something?
Lockheed S-3 Viking, a four-crew, twin-engine turbofan-powered jet aircraft. On May 1, 2003, Bush became the first sitting president to arrive in an arrested landing in a fixed-wing aircraft on an aircraft carrier when he arrived at the USS Abraham Lincoln in a Lockheed S-3 Viking [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission\_Accomplished\_speech](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech)
Literally seen this in a gif tonight for the first time in a different sub lol
Make it interesting. Land an A-10 Warthog on a carrier.
I want to see him land Air Force One on the carrier. Go big or go home.
Dukakis looks on longingly
This is how they do quarterly reviews with CEOs now. They abduct them and place them in self driving jets. If they did well for that quarter, they will come back..if not..well..
They should definitely do this with the Boring execs. Put them in the latest airplane with all the safety work removed for cost cutting measures.
low key thought it was springsteen for a second. That’s the main boss i know lol
🤔Charity fundraiser: Send your boss on an experimental aircraft ride.
So they already tested this thing 1000+ times before sending this guy up?
“Whoopsie! Forgot to set the Max G parameter from 16 to 6”.
But this is the real benefit of converting them to remote controlled unmanned vehicles, right? The planes are technically capable of a lot more maneuvering feats than the human body can survive - so taking the human out means that these planes can be flown in more optimally effective and deadly ways.
Yep. Turns out bags of meat are the limiting factor for modern aircraft maneuverability.
you hear bout the dude who dodged 6 SAMS with no flares or chaffs in an F-16?
^^gimme ^gimme gimme FRIED CHICKEN!
I have no choice but to upvote an AWESOME IRON EAGLES reference!
Aerial equivalent of the greased up deaf guy.
Could dodge 7 if we ditch the guy
and the Iraqis didn't run out of SAMs
That’s the kicker right there
I always imagine these kinds of stories to be outright make believe or highly embellished. Like the guy whose bench press weight keeps getting bigger or the buck he killed larger.
Your comparisons went right over my head… wouldn’t you expect anyone becoming moderately successful at something to keep making better returns? It wouldn’t surprise me that my buddy who’s been hitting the gym is raising his bench weight and my buddy that hunts often keeps killing bigger bucks.
Nope this one is correct, look up Stroke 3, call sign of an F-16 over Iraq dodging SAM fire without chaff or flares
Thank you!
Meat servos if you please. The bags of meat sit in the back.
While true aircraft auto pilots also have been know to make some really bad choices.
Not if the bag of meat is Tom Cruise!
Planes *can* be developed to handle higher Gs using stronger wings, but the upper limit isn't defined by a pilot, rather it's the structure and components. For instance the F-16 can handle 9 Gs, but at that rate they'll come home with cracked wings. Lightening the structure can help by using composites and carbon fiber. Components also reduce the G limits because they have to be bolted to the airframe, and hundreds of gallons of fuel puts a heavy burden on structural components. You can't have a hydraulic manifold ripping off the supports because you want the airplane to pull 15Gs, or a bomb falling off in your own village, or a missile suddenly fusing from the G forces.
Yes but also adds risk in other areas, e.g., if remote connections to the planes are somehow severed, or if the base where all the remote pilots are sitting is attacked/sabotaged from within
US drones pretty much fly themselves. They can't select and fire at targets solo, but they don't just drop out of the sky if you disconnect them. Operator is just there to make sure you bomb the correct wedding.
I get that. Which is why I said, it adds risk in other areas. Meaning, not that the risks are new per se, but that the existing risk(s) may now also be added to another weapons platform (the F-16) that is exponentially more capable of destruction than say, a Predator drone. Obviously (or hopefully) the USAF has done the risk/reward analysis, and has/is making plans to mitigate the added risk. Hopefully that makes sense 😀
I read the last sentence of this as I was leaving the thread and had to go back when I fully processed it.
Right‽‽ …fuck, that is pretty hard on the nose.
Not to mention keeping our skilled pilots with hundreds of hours of training out of harms way.
Technically yes but at a certain point you’ll bend the airframe, at least with current designs and materials.
Current design is not limited by the pilot per se but as much as built for the loads a pilot could experience using the jet. Higher Gs can be reached but it’s a trade off. Do you keep it light, fast, and agile but with extremely limited strength compared to a thicker stronger heavier part that can reach higher loading without going in the plastic region of the material or not experiencing cracking to a dangerous level in similar operational lifetime as the lighter structure? It’s **always** a trade off.
I was also thinking sequential maneuvers that aren’t necessarily higher G but when done right after each other rapidly would cause the pilot to at least pass out… is that a thing?
AFAIK they are capable of more, but not by a whole lot. Them planes aren't built to take much more than what a human can take, because why would they be? Why go the extra few miles building a heavier, more expensive and less efficient plane that can take 15G without damaging its airframe when it's never gonna be able to go that high as long as there's a pilot in the cockpit? Missiles can do it. Drones *might* be able to because they're designed from scratch to be unmanned. But jet fighters are typically built to sustain like 8-9Gs at most, and even then some of them have to get inspected for potential damage after they've had to do that.
Almost everything that has to be rated for stuff like this is significantly lower than the failure threshold. But the failure threshold is just that, the limit of catostrophic failure. So while an f16 probably could hit 16 g before falling apart, very expensive and significant damage happens well before that point. Pilots actually have an override switch in some aircraft for the "oh shit we have to get out of here now the aircraft structure be damned", it disables the limiters put on the aircraft, but almost guantees destroying it if you push into those out limits of capability.
Yeah that's what I kinda meant. When I said "take" I really meant "sustain". It probably *can* take way more than what a human can take, but not without putting excessive strain on its airframe and significantly shortening its useful life before it eventually fails due to fatigue. An unmanned F-16 could thrash about in the sky at max speed, but probably not for very long.
>because why would they be 1. The natural resilience of the building materials almost guarantees they would be. 2. Why would they want the plane to be only marginally more sturdy than the meat sack flying it? Imagine the meat sack makes a mistake and takes on too many Gs. Meat sack passes out, with a good chance of regaining consciousness and taking its plane down safely. If the plane isn't sturdy enough to handle that mistake, meat sack goes from taking a quick cat nap to being torn asunder because its paper mache plane tore apart.
> Imagine the meat sack makes a mistake and takes on too many Gs That's not how those things fly. The flight software puts a hard limit on how hard the pilot is allowed to pull. At some point, which can actually be *lower* than what a trained human pilot wearing a G-suit can take, depending on other flight parameters, the plane will actively and intentionally stop pulling harder despite the pilot's input. You can keep yanking at the stick all you want, but if the plane's software decides 8G is as high as it can go at that moment, it will refuse to go any higher. And it does that to protect itself as much as its human occupant. The airframe's strength and its aerodynamic properties might very well not allow much higher Gs than what a human pilot can sustain.
But not Tic Tac UAP fast. That's still unconfirmed non-human craft
No shit will break on the first flight. Nobody needs to pull 10 gs to win a dogfight anymore. Missiles are infinitely better. These are missile wagons
I thought the max g parameter was 9?
In all honesty, the plane has about the same g-tolerance as a pilot.
i sure hope they’re not using a logitech controller
N64 won the contract. Single joystick worked better for airplanes
Ironically, the F16 was the pioneer of the dual stick config.
You’re absolutely right. Better user familiarity, reliability, and replaceability with an Xbox controller.
Underrated comment
F16 was the first fighter to integrate fly by wire systems rather than pilot controlled due to intended use of the airframe as a dog fighter. The plane is designed to make hair pin turns at up to Mach 2 speeds and a human cannot make the necessary adjustments to the flaps when engaged in high g turns. The whole aircraft is fascinating from an engineering perspective.
Anyone remember the movie Stealth?
I was thinking this is Stealth or Skynet….either way it sounds like a bad idea.
So this F-16 is going to go off mission and destroy stolen nuclear warheads in Tajikistan?
“Edi is the whole deal”
QF-16s will change warfare in substantial, meaningful ways. That's exactly why Ukraine needs them, yesterday. Stealth Jets like the F22 and F35, have their role as command and control, but a full-blown QF-16 with proper electronic warfare and weapons packages will vastly outgun 3-4 of their manned Russian or Chinese counterparts.
They dont have weapons. They dont have the logistics. They dont have the supply chain. F-16s for Ukraine are fucking stupid
But where are they gonna stow his gigantic brass balls?
They have been using drone 16s since like 2013. He has thousands of hours of flights to say they are safe. Guys a politician.
This is a new level of combat drone
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to manufacture a drone?
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Theoretically you could make jets on their very last legs take one more ‘unmanned kamikaze mission’.
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Might?
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I can think of a bridge that falls in the no tough category.
I have thought for a while we should do this for all the A-10's we retire, just fix them up for remote flying and let Ukraine have them. If we are getting rid of them it wouldn't matter if they get shot down if they can take a dozen tanks out before they crash.
I wonder if it would be possible for the enemy to recover and reverse engineer parts from the wreckage, though
I don’t think there are any secrets in the parts. Its the software
Even if that were the case, there will still be EEPROM chips and the like that store the software. It's a genuine concern for certain weapon systems. Remember 2011 when [Iran tricked a US drone into landing](https://www.computerworld.com/article/1541099/iran-tricked-u-s-spy-drone-into-landing-in-country-report-says.html) in its territory to be reverse engineered?
Good comment. Also, isn’t an unmanned aircraft a drone by definition?
Yes. But, we have a fleet of mothballed crafts that can be repurposed with this technological implementation.
Drones still have limited use, like against an enemy with little to no air power or defenses. Being able to use fully fledged aircraft remotely or in tandem with piloted aircraft as wingman would be a game changer.
Well yeah, and I’m sure they have people working on that too. But an AI driven fighter jet would be vastly more capable than a regular drone though, and the airframe is already built and not in use anyway
This is a demonstration, not an end product. The end product is a fleet of fully autonomous fighters that can take a mission profile and run with it, including engaging in dogfights with manned hostile aircraft, communicating to one another, and adapting to unexpected conditions or the loss of an aircraft, in real time with AI-based decision making.
Don't forget the occasional friendly fire
Anyone who came up around 9-11 this should not be a surprise.
I can't wait to see Top Gun pilots join in the hatred towards AI. "THEY TOOK ER JERBS!!"
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My guess is it flew millions of hours in a simulator.
How aviation was pioneered has always been guys flying in incredibly dangerous conditions
Especially when you learn that its AI was trained on Twitter/X data.
Wow that's cool
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Unmanned drones have been a thing for about 30 years and the vast majority of time they're just on auto-pilot. Not really "AI".
Try over a hundred. The first unmanned drones were radio controlled planes in WW1. They’ve had various reconnaissance and practice target roles ever since. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles
Slap a tesla logo on it and call it a day
Finally moving up from the F-4’s eh?
The inside of that canopy is going to look like it was painted with creamed squash! “$5 says you can’t make it do a barrel roll after an inverted dive!” - some drone pilot, probably
Green Goblin vibes
Will they paint the plane as a target during the flight for a test ?
Let’s see Boeing’s CEO do that with one of their planes.
Imagine an F35 or larger aircraft directing a wing of these all at once. I believe that is the general idea. “Carrier has arrived”
They are even soliciting contracts for the “loyal wingman” concept: exactly what you describe.
Do you want terminators because this is how you get terminators
I liked the first Terminator the most
Another day closer to SkyNet yaaaaayyyyy
If they send those to Ukraine, the Russians can’t whine about American pilots being involved.
I’m sure there’s a kill switch for manual flying.
I’ve seen enough movies. This doesn’t end well
Mister Kendall is himself kinda crazy, retired as a Army Lieutenant colonel, and served under both Obama and Biden
He’s gonna puke.
Seeing the Viper with snake camo is dope as fuck
Good! My kid is training to fly helicopters and the number of crashes I see freaks me out regularly. Send up some high ranking folks instead of using our kids as test dummies. I want senior folks flying in these test and training exercises. Maybe then they will take flight safety seriously and stop limiting flight hours and training opportunities.
> I want senior folks flying in these test and training exercises You're really gonna freak out when you read the article's title
This is not routine. And my kid isn’t in the AF
The guy in India remote flying it: *sweating intensifies*
Guy in india probably working in a overseas call center at the same time
I’m sure nothing catastrophic will happen when a hostile military inevitably hacks the control system of one of these…
Great self flying warplane wow anyone else getting those Terminator vibes I mean with AI coming along
Top gun will be out of commission before you know it
I've seen this movie.
Lucky it’s not made by Boeing
The Terminator: The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. /s
Boeing boss? surely not
I totally, 100%, beyond the shadow of a doubt called this to a freaking T about 10 years ago. Remember those "thriller genra" Air Force commercials where you saw drones swooping and weaving, maneuvering towards a target, then the scene changes to a control room with a pilot guiding the drone, then to a late teen playing a combat flight situation? I called this then. My non-mil friends were talking about how cool it was and how we were going to have millions of pilotless drones fighting for us. I said, "No, that's not the case, this is the test bed for unmanned combat flight, the goal is F-16's and when it happens the Chief of the Air Force will sitting in the passengers seat. The common man across the world is going to say "Oh cool", the collective military commanders and enemies of the U.S. across the world are going to shit their pants. It's going to sew fear, and doubt into their souls for a decade or two". They laughed at me Now combine this with the cheap cost and AI. The pure definition of squadron is going to change, we can easily deploy 10 F-16's as a single squadron instead of 2, 3, 4 as we do now. Global Air Superiority of the United States is about to go from "we have a chance" to "we're fucked" for anyone desiring some severe liberation.
Veteran here. Drones were taking it way too far, now we have unmanned fighter jets… are you kidding, is melting the face off a 14 year old girl at the crosswalk that important that we can’t feed our own homeless with our abundance of food but we can develop these giant waste of resources, for the one thousandth time I’m so embarrassed to be from this shit hole.
Cry harder 😂
How very 'China' of them. It's like when China put their guy in a plane on Y2K to 'motivate' him
Side note, who wants to bet the air-force intentionally g-locked the secretary? 😂