The prediction that there would be
no more new manned combat aircraft
development programmes has thus
already been proved to be unfounded.
New fighter development projects have
begun, or are being defined and drawn up
in the US, the UK, Germany, France and
Sweden, as well as in Russia and China.
Meanwhile Japan, Indonesia, South Korea
and Turkey are also embarking on their own
indigenous advanced fighter initiatives, while
existing (generation 4.5 and 5th-generation)
combat aircraft programmes are planned
to continue well into the 2020s.
Decisive drones
Despite all this activity on manned warplanes,
UAVs and UCAVs will still have a vital, and
indeed a growing role to play in tomorrow’s
military air operations. There’s a train of thought
that the single thing that will differentiate
tomorrow’s manned combat aircraft from
the fighters in service today will be the way
in which they will operate with unmanned
assets in a carefully co-ordinated manner.
While some forward-looking air arms
have explored the idea of manned/
unmanned teaming, tomorrow’s fighters
will embrace this as a core part of their
concept of operations (CONOPS).
Unmanned platforms will augment and support
manned platforms as part of an air combat
‘cloud’. They will be used to ‘scout’ ahead,
providing targeting and intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance (ISR), or as sensor
platforms, extending the area of battlespace
that can be reconnoitred. Equally, they could
be used as weapons platforms, going further
into harm’s way than manned aircraft, especially
in the kind of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD)
environment that might force manned aircraft
to operate at a greater standoff distance.
Unmanned aircraft might serve as flying
arsenals, augmenting the payload of
accompanying fighters. Sometimes unmanned
aircraft could be used for communications
relay, and others may operate entirely
autonomously. A manned fighter could team
up with one or two unmanned ‘loyal wingmen’
or with larger numbers of ‘swarming’ UAVs
or ‘mules’. Some unmanned aircraft will
incorporate a high level of autonomy, employing
artificial intelligence and machine learning.
It would be tempting to assume that
tomorrow’s manned fighters will mark a
significant advance over today’s in each
and every respect – that they will be more
capable, stealthier, faster, more agile, more
heavily armed, with longer-range sensors and
more effective defensive systems, and with
a superior human-machine interface (HMI).
But this may not always be the case.
Ambitious initial requirements are often scaled
back in the face of cost or technological
problems. When the ‘fifth-generation’
designation was first used as a marketing tool
Future
The market for manned fighter aircraft has been estimated
to be larger than at any time since the end of the Cold War.
Jon Lake looks at some of these programmes and explains
why the long-predicted ‘rise of the machines’ has not
materialised in quite the way many had expected, and how
tomorrow’s fighters might differ from today’s combat aircraft.
fighters
http://www.airforcesmonthly.com #369 DECEMBER 2018 // 63
Above: This Boeing artist’s impression of a single-seat sixth-generation fi ghter emerged in late 2016
as part of the fi rm’s Penetrating Counter Air (PCA) studies. The tailless fi ghter has thin swept wings
and conformal shaping that suggests a stealthy, penetrating aircraft with the potential to fl y at
supersonic speeds. Boeing
