The F-35 will be paired with an unmanned wingman, and a video released by Lockheed Martin shows that the U.S. Air Force fighter will be paired with a kamikaze suicide drone and a more advanced unmanned wingman.
According to Defense News and The EurAsian Times, on the 17th, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works revealed that the U.S. Air Force would be able to fly the Suicide drone, U.S. Air Force, as soon as three years.
Suicide drones are far more advanced, the prices are lower, and they also deliver faster. With top U.S. Air Force officials saying war between the U.S. and China could break out within ten years, Lockheed Martin hopes the suicide drones will come in handy in a conflict. Clark said about the ability to use the drones so that the U.S. forces in the Pacific will have the tools if needed.
More advanced drones could start appearing in the 2030s, Clark said. They are more powerful, including the ability to return to base each time they perform a mission for repeated use next time.
Lockheed Martin envisions the drones returning to bases established under the Air Force’s “Agile Combat Deployment” (ACE) concept, which includes simpler, more dispersed bases that use, in some cases, rudimentary runways.
The U.S. Air Force has long been working to increase drones’ autonomy and artificial intelligence (A.I.) capabilities.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has repeatedly emphasized that he would like to have as many as five drones paired with a manned fighter such as the F-35 or the Next Generation Air Superiority (NGAD). He said earlier this year that making the concept of a manned-unmanned combat aircraft partner a reality was one of his top priorities.
While Clarke said Skunk Works isn’t ready to release images of the drones, a concept video posted by Lockheed Martin shows how the distributed team concept might work. The animation shows the F-35 flying with various drone swarms, and one of them looks like a B-21 bomber.
Additionally, in the film, swarms of F-35s and drones fly into highly competitive airspace, with some drones acting as decoys, attracting other drones to engage in electronic warfare against enemy air defenses, Faced with an air-to-air missile attack.
As for other intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, drones identify the location of hidden surface-to-air batteries and relay this data back to the manned F-35. Another group of armed drones, commanded by F-35 pilots, moved forward and shot down enemy aircraft.
