Originally Posted by
BFMthisA10
If anyone here is familiar with the operation:
Wondering if that jet might swap roles from day to day, manned and unmanned. The reason that I ask is that I see the seat still in place. I would think that if there were a likelihood that the jet isn't coming back, that all of the high value and/or non essential items would be stripped. I'm guessing that on a "shoot" day that there is some prep, removing items that can be removed, especially if the item in question would be bad sitting on the bottom of the gulf (like an ACES II rocket, for instance).
Anyone familiar?
I tried to get hired into the QF-4 program a couple of years back. There are jets that are dual-role...they still have the seats in them.
Then, there are the jets on "Death Row." They have no seats.
They also have no radar or gun. Not sure, but they might remove the air conditioner too (never was that good, though).
Typical QF-pilots might fly in the jet once to three times a month. One of those for their own proficiency; the other one or two to let another guy control it from the ground station. One sortie might be a functional check flight to see if everything is working. Some of those sorties might be from the ground-control station.
The Death Row jets had some other limitations on them, I was told, such as limited "g" due to them getting limited phase maintenance. IE, they couldn't insure that the planes didn't have serious fatigue cracks or systems problems, and they weren't willing to risk a manned pilot aboard. They only takeoff and land from Tyndall's Drone runway; the manned jets use 13L/R and 31L/R. You can see Phantoms in the pattern with F-22s (hint: only one type has actually shot down enemy combatants).
I agree wholeheartedly with Forever FO...unmanned fighters are possible (in theory) on paper. But throw in real-world ROE (VID; etc) and systems problems (Global Hawk, anyone?), and you'll realize that while a manned aircraft has its limitations, it also has inherent strengths that no machine can have due to the ability to adapt to the scenario.
Computers and software don't read von Clausewitz or Sun Tzu. (But they fly nice coupled approaches).