Comment les drones collaboratifs vont-ils bouleverser le marché des avions de combat ?
How will collaborative drones disrupt the fighter aircraft market?
29 July 2023
The new capabilities offered by collaborative combat drones will not only change strategies and doctrines, but also the fighter aircraft market in the years to come.
Since its arrival on the international fighter aircraft market some fifteen years ago, Lockheed-Martin's F-35 Lighting II has won the lion's share of international competitions, with firm orders from no fewer than 14 air forces outside the United States.
And the momentum shows no signs of slowing, with many other countries, including five European ones (Germany, Spain, Greece, the Czech Republic and Romania), having announced their intention to acquire one in the short or medium term.
In many cases, the American aircraft has won the competition against other American and European fighters, including the French Rafale, the Swedish Gripen, the European Typhoon and the Boeing Super Hornet.
In each case, the Lighting II was declared the winner, mainly because of its more recent design, but also because of its stealth, bearing in mind that the political and military weight of the United States came into play in many cases.
However, this well-established hierarchy could be called into question in a few years' time, 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 around the world, with the American and Australian Skyborg and Loyal Wingman programmes, and the European Remote Carrier.
These new aircraft, which will act as appendages to combat aircraft, multiplying their detection and action capabilities, will profoundly change the way air warfare operations are conducted, and with them the very role of combat aircraft in this future system.
In such a scenario, the key arguments that have made the F-35 such a success over the last 15 years may well no longer prove decisive when compared with the characteristics that other, sometimes older, aircraft, such as the Rafale from Dassault Aviation, are able to put forward.
Despite its qualities, the French Rafale has never beaten the American F-35A in past competitions. But the imminent arrival of collaborative drones could well change the game in this area.
Collaborative UAVs, whether Loyal Wingmen or Remote Carriers, represent a new generation of combat UAVs designed to be controlled by a combat aircraft, thereby extending its capabilities. Unlike current UAVs, such as MALE UAVs, these will not be remotely piloted, but simply controlled by the crew of the combat aircraft, with the piloting function being managed by artificial intelligence.
These new drones will be of variable size, shape and capability, depending on their mission, and will be able to carry sensors and effectors (missiles, bombs, jammers, etc.) so as to multiply the combat capabilities and tactical options of the aircraft being piloted, especially as a single fighter aircraft will be able to control several of these drones simultaneously.
It is therefore easy to understand the extent to which the arrival of these new systems will revolutionise the conduct of air warfare operations, this time bringing it into a truly new generation, much more surely than was the case with the arrival of the famous 5ᵉ generation of fighter aircraft.
This transformation will also radically change the role of fighter aircraft in this new environment, ultimately redistributing the cards as regards their high value-added capabilities, decisive criteria both in combat and when awarding contracts.
Indeed, the fighter aircraft will see its primary role evolve from that of vector to that of 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 first and foremost a delivery vehicle, 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 in increasing the survivability of the aircraft, and therefore its effectiveness in combat.
On the other hand, aeronautical qualities such as speed, range and load-carrying capacity are less critical in the face of these high value-added capabilities. This approach will change radically with the arrival of collaborative UAVs, since it will be these, and not the aircraft itself, that will play the role of vector and combat aircraft.
In other words, the qualities that are so popular with 5ᵉ generation aircraft will be easily and economically transposed to these drones, such as stealth, while the fighter 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 Remote Carriers, for example.
The second critical characteristic of a combat aircraft for effectively controlling collaborative UAVs will naturally be the size of its crew. For the American researchers, it currently seems very risky to rely on single-seat aircraft to effectively operate several of these UAVs around and for the benefit of a combat aircraft, as the additional cognitive load imposed on the pilot by the control of these UAVs is far too great for effective mission management.
In fact, while a single-seat fighter, such as the F-35A or Rafale C, will be able to control one or two of these future UAVs simultaneously, a two-seat fighter, such as the Rafale B, will be able to control more than twice as many, offering enhanced operational capabilities to both the crew and the air force deploying it.
The third characteristic, which is becoming essential for the deployment of these future drones, is the ability of the aircraft to evolve to incorporate this major development.
In addition to the fact that aircraft will have to undergo radical evolution to be able to communicate and interact effectively with these drones, the latter will have to evolve much more rapidly than combat aircraft themselves, probably at the same pace as fighter aircraft in the 50s and 60s, when a new fighter model entered service every 3 or 4 yea
To achieve this, piloted aircraft will have to demonstrate an extraordinary ability to evolve, both to integrate these new systems and to maintain the ergonomics and efficiency of the man-machine interface. This presupposes, in addition to technical design qualities, a high degree of stability in the system of systems at the heart of the aircraft.
Other qualities, such as availability and maintainability, will also be given greater weight in future analysis grids, with the arrival of combat UAVs, since it is likely that the operational intensity per aircraft will increase as the risk to the aircraft and its crew diminishes.
But the points raised here are enough to suggest the extent to which the F-35's superiority in the fighter aircraft market could be diminished in the years to come. Indeed, the aircraft's stealth, one of its main assets, will lose much of its aura in the face of the ability to effectively operate only one or two UAVs due to its single-seat nature.
Other aircraft, such as the F5 version of the Rafale B, will offer much better performance and capabilities than in the past because of changes in the air battlefield, as well as its two-seat and twin-engine configuration, its range and its speed.
Above all, the Rafale's ability to evolve, which has been amply demonstrated to date, and the stability of its system, will be invaluable 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 the extent to which Dassault Aviation and the Rafale team as a whole can be confident about the durability of their aircraft in the years to come, to the extent that in the future, once the first MBDA Remote Carriers have been integrated into the French aircraft, it may well be able to more than match the F-35 in future international competitions.
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 UAVs.
In this respect, it will be particularly interesting to observe the influence that the arrival of these drones, and the experience gained in particular in integrating them with older generation aircraft, will have on the design of 6ᵉ generation combat aircraft, such as the American NGAD, the British Tempest and the European SCAF.
In particular, we can question 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: it seems essential for France not only to maintain its efforts to upgrade its Rafale, but also to develop, at a sustained pace, the first Remote Carrier type solutions designed to evolve with the future F5 standard, in order to accumulate as quickly as possible not only technical but also operational expertise in this area, which is set to become critical, both for the conduct of air warfare and for promoting the aircraft and its techno-system on the international stage.
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