Comment les drones collaboratifs vont-ils bouleverser le marché des avions de combat ?
How will collaborative drones disrupt the fighter aircraft market?
10 April 2023
Since its arrival on the international fighter aircraft market some 15 years ago, Lockheed-Martin's F-35 Lighting II has won the lion's share of international competitions, with firm orders from no less than 14 air forces outside the US. And the momentum shows no sign of abating, with many more countries, including five European countries (Germany, Spain, Greece, the Czech Republic and Romania), having announced their intention to acquire the aircraft in the short to medium term. In many cases, the American aircraft has won a competition with other American and European fighters, notably the French Rafale, the Swedish Gripen, the European Typhoon and the Boeing Super Hornet. In all of them, the Lighting II was declared the winner, in particular because of its more recent design, but also because of its stealthiness, knowing that the political and military weight of the United States played a full role in many cases.
However, this well-established hierarchy could be called into question in a few years, with the arrival of the new so-called collaborative combat drones, which will be capable of operating alongside and for the benefit of manned combat aircraft, and which are being actively developed throughout the world, with the American and Australian Skyborg and Loyal Wingman programmes, or the European Remote Carrier. Indeed, these new devices, which will act as appendages to combat aircraft, increasing their detection and action capabilities, will profoundly change the conduct of air warfare operations, and with them the very role of combat aircraft in this future system. However, in such a scenario, the key arguments that have made the F-35 a success over the past 15 years may no longer be decisive when compared to the characteristics that other, sometimes older, aircraft, such as the Dassault Aviation Rafale, can put forward.
Collaborative drones, whether Loyal Wingmen or Remote Carrier, represent a new generation of combat drones designed to be controlled by a combat aircraft, thus extending its capabilities. Unlike current UAVs, such as MALE UAVs, these will not be remotely piloted, but simply controlled by the crew of the fighter aircraft, with the piloting function being managed by artificial intelligence. These new UAVs will be of variable size, shape and capacity, depending on their missions, and will be able to carry sensors and effectors (missiles, bombs, jammers, etc.) so as to increase the combat capabilities and tactical options of the piloted aircraft, especially since a single fighter will be able to control several of these UAVs simultaneously. It is therefore easy to understand to what extent the arrival of these new systems will revolutionise the conduct of air warfare operations, bringing them into a genuine new generation much more surely than the arrival of the famous 5th generation of combat aircraft. This transformation will also radically change the role of the fighter aircraft in this new environment, with, in the end, a redistribution of the cards in terms of the high value-added capabilities of these aircraft, which are decisive criteria both in combat and in the awarding of contracts.
Indeed, the fighter aircraft will see its primary role evolve from that of a vector to that of a coordinator. Today, a fighter aircraft is above all a centralised platform capable of receiving, transporting and deploying detection systems and munitions, whether for air superiority, strike or intelligence missions. The fighter aircraft is therefore above all a vector, which must itself be in place and in the right position to carry out its mission, which naturally exposes it to numerous threats. In fact, qualities such as stealth are very important to increase the survivability of the aircraft, and therefore its combat effectiveness. On the other hand, aeronautical qualities, such as speed, autonomy or load-carrying capacity, are less critical in the face of these high value-added capabilities. This interpretation will change profoundly with the arrival of collaborative UAVs, since it will be the UAVs, and not the aircraft itself, that will play the role of vector, and the fighter aircraft will coordinate them. In other words, the qualities that are highly valued in 5th generation aircraft will be easily and economically transposed to these drones, such as stealth, whereas the combat aircraft will have to rely on other qualities, such as great autonomy, high speed, and even the ability to carry heavy loads in the case of the Remote Carrier for example.
The second critical characteristic of a fighter aircraft to effectively control collaborative drones will naturally be the size of its crew. For the American researchers, it seems very risky today to rely on single-seat aircraft to effectively operate several of these drones around and for the benefit of a combat aircraft, as the additional cognitive load imposed on the pilot by the control of these drones is largely excessive for effective mission control. In fact, if a single-seat fighter like the F-35A or the Rafale C will be able to control one or two of these future drones simultaneously, a two-seat fighter like the Rafale B will be able to control more than twice as many, offering increased operational capabilities to both the crew and the air force that deploys it.
The third characteristic that has become indispensable for the implementation of these future UAVs is none other than the capacity of the aircraft to evolve to integrate this major evolution. In addition to the fact that aircraft will have to undergo a radical evolution in order to be able to communicate and interact effectively with these drones, the latter will be called upon to evolve much more rapidly than the combat aircraft themselves, probably at the same pace as that of fighter aircraft in the 1950s and 1960s, when a new model of fighter aircraft entered service every three or four years. To achieve this, the aircraft flown will have to demonstrate an extraordinary capacity to evolve, both to integrate these new systems and to preserve the ergonomics and efficiency of the man-machine interface.
Other qualities, such as availability and maintainability, will also take on greater weight in future analysis grids, with the arrival of combat drones, as it is likely that the operational intensity per aircraft will increase due to the reduced risk to the aircraft and its crew. But the points made here are enough to imagine how the F-35's superiority in the fighter market could be diminished in the years to come. Indeed, the stealth of the aircraft, one of its main assets, will lose much of its aura in the face of the ability to effectively operate only one or two drones due to its single-seat nature. Other aircraft, such as the Rafale B in its F5 version, will have much more valuable performance and capabilities than in the past due to developments in the air battlefield, as well as its two-seat and twin-engine configuration, its range and its speed. Above all, the Rafale's scalability, which has been amply demonstrated to date, as well as the stability of its system, will be precious assets in the face of the F-35, which is still struggling to stabilise its on-board information system, and for which each evolution represents a critical challenge.
It is therefore easy to understand how confident Dassault Aviation and the Rafale team as a whole can be about the durability of its aircraft in the years to come, to the point where it could well be that in the future, once the first MBDA Remote Carriers have been integrated into the French aircraft, the latter will be able to more than match the F-35 in any future international competition. The same will naturally apply to other models, such as the European Typhoon, the Swedish Gripen E/F, and the Boeing F-15EX, which also seems particularly well suited to controlling cooperative drones. It will be particularly interesting to observe the influence that the arrival of these UAVs, and the experience acquired in integrating them with older generation aircraft, will have on the design of 6th generation combat aircraft, such as the American NGAD, the British Tempest and the European SCAF. One may wonder about the relevance of designing these aircraft in a single-seat version, while some experts warn against this configuration for interacting and controlling these drones. One thing is certain, however, and that is that it seems essential for France not only to maintain its efforts to develop its Rafale, but also to develop, at a sustained pace, the first Remote Carrier type solutions intended to evolve with the future F5 standard, in order to accumulate as quickly as possible technical and operational expertise in this field, which is destined to become critical, both for the conduct of air warfare and for promoting the aircraft and its techno-system on the international scene.
I have no issues calling the F-35 5th gen. You are way too sensitive to criticism.
