Generation Seven Fighterplane?

Originally posted by Seekerof
I would seriously speculate that a Gen 7 Fighter aircraft would be the embodiment of all type aircraft, being:
* a true all weather fighter

* capable of doing all combat missions (ie: bomber, ground attack, etc.)

* able to be flown, if necessary, by robotics or ground based-pilot.

* having 'jump' capability in that the aircraft can go into space on limited excursions.

My personal opinion is that the pilot will never truly be replaced.


seekerof

Although I respect seekerof, I believe these ideas are a little bit generic.
The strengths and weakeness of various technologies will generally make different designs better for different missions.

I get the impression that seekerof expects anti-grav to be the propulsion system of the future. I note that we will probably never have a truely all weather aircraft using any form of aspirated propulsion- combustion doesn't react well to cold, rain, or sand- thats just life.

One problem we may run into with antigrav is the power requirements to run it. What if anti-grav requires a small reactor to run. We could end up with "aircraft" the size of submarines. Although they would be formidable weapons platforms, they would require a complimentary aircraft (probably UCAV swarms) to defend them against ground-based laser threats. Here we see the error of generalizing that one design could be the master of all trades- most weapons work best with the compliment of different types of weapons.

My opinion is that antigrav, if developed, would be the dominant design, however it would have to be complimented by other technologies which fit the roll of a small, agile, relatively inexpensive UCAV to work in a swarm strategy against the threats of advanced technology.
These supporting aircraft could perhaps work on antigrav if there was an efficient means to remotely transmit power to them. (like the alien craft in ID4). If this is not possible, they could become any number of thigns- small jet aircraft, scramjet ordinance-delivery platforms, killer satellites designed to orbit over the taget and drop KE weapons, who knows.

The other consideration is what if antigrav never comes around at all. Without anti-grav jump capability is less likely. Without antigrav, we could see current jet technology continue to evolve and be applied to UCAVs for a couple more generations, and of course the scramjet would come into play, although I think it will take serious design leaps to make the scramjet manueverable enough, adaptable enough, and safe enough for human pilots. Until that happens, a scramjet is just a glorified cruise missile.

For close airsupport, I maintain that the men on the ground are going to need a helicopter-based UCAV. Cheap, adaptable, portable, and practical. No lasers, no space ships, just a little remote-control helicopter to shoot people with when shooting them youself isn't possible.

I feel as if my ideas are a little scattered in this post and I have said a few things twice now, but my point is simply that I do not believe a single platform can handle all missions, and I am not entirely convinced that an anti-grav drive will develop in the next 50 years which can take us into the space-warfare age.

By 2050 personal robots will begin to go main steam (IE - not just for the rich). Today more robots are entering our homes, like the Roomba vacuum, now you may not see that as "the future" but it has to start somewhere.

I see Roomba at the same level as I see the Space Ship 1, there just in different categories.

By the time normal people can go to orbit (not sub-orbit), will be the same time frame that robots will be the norm.

when you people are talking about ground based pilots, they must send the signal to UCAV's, wouldn't the signal be vulnerable to interceptions and disruptions?

With Computers that can think for themselves in 50 years, wouldn't that make all equipments with CPU chips a possible threat?

Originally posted by COWlan
when you people are talking about ground based pilots, they must send the signal to UCAV's, wouldn't the signal be vulnerable to interceptions and disruptions?

With Computers that can think for themselves in 50 years, wouldn't that make all equipments with CPU chips a possible threat?

A possible threat from what?

and there signals are encripted anti-jam.

Encrypted or not... if you can capture an encrypted command and re-send it at a later time you can jam a UCAV with proper commands that the controller didn't mean to send, unless of course they have the foresight to create an encryption which changes frequently on a schedule (and then of course you need to keep your UAVs from falling into enemy hands so that the incryption isn't broken.

Originally posted by Murcielago

A possible threat from what?

and there signals are encripted anti-jam.

No such thing. Im sorry, but im a little drunk at the moment, so my typing may be out.

Encryption and jamming are two entirely seperate things. If you encrypt something, I can tell that you are making a transmission but not what that transmission is. Regardless of whether it is encrypted or not, I can jam it.

The only possible method of anti jamming employable is frequency hopping, which only allows for really low bandwidth traffic, IE voice. You could not supervise or control a UCAV over a frequency hopping channel.

Encrypted or not... if you can capture an encrypted command and re-send it at a later time you can jam a UCAV with proper commands that the controller didn't mean to send, unless of course they have the foresight to create an encryption which changes frequently on a schedule (and then of course you need to keep your UAVs from falling into enemy hands so that the incryption isn't broken.

Hate to say it, but wrong on most acounts. All encryption currently employed by military hops keys at least once a second. This means that you would have to intercept hte command and resend it within the same timeframe the encryption key is valid, essentially resulting in the same action anyway, which will probably be dealt with the network stack as errors anyhow. Encryption between the UCAV and home base is not reliant on keys stored by the UCAV anyway, so if the enemy captures one UCAV it will not have command access to other UCAVs.

As someone who administrates systems using encrypted data streams (ssh) I can say safely that its easy to protect the datastream used by these UCAVs, much easier than it is protecting them from physical threats. The most worrying part of a datastream is the fact that you can conduct traffic analysis from them, IE 'there was a ucav in this transmission area for 3 hours, and it received X amount of updates from base'.

RichardPrice
Encryption and jamming are two entirely seperate things.

Sorry if that sounded combined, didn't think about it when I typed it, I know there 2 seperate things but i was trying to say that both could be used.

With planes equiped with chips that can think for themselves, won't they be a threat to humans? What if we want to deactivate them or replace them or scrape them? If they are truly smart then they will fend for themselves and attack us right?

By Gen seven we'll probably see some sort of fibre optic stealthing tech, not as good as a cloaking device (I still find that idea funny) but a sort of chameleon skin made up of tiles. The Russian plasma technology is another interesting idea however considering the large increase in visual signature this stuff makes it doesn’t really seem practical at this point in time, (As some of the ions neutralised they release light so you'd see a huge streak of colour across half the sky. And you couldn't have any exposed R.F. generators, (remember what happens to a flame in a microwave?) as the plane would stand out like a flare for several hundred miles.)

Speed wise there's not really much call to increase beyond mach 2, a good example of this is in the Vietnam war where the Soviet made jets could turn inside the turning circle of American ATA missiles, and thus had a decisive edge. Turning circle and manoeuvrability are more important than the ability to travel really fast. (Considering most engagements are expected to take place at extreme range anyway speed wont be much of a problem.) And a high manoeuvrability will help to avoid ground fire, which is proving to be a greater danger than anticipated (simply because of the sheer volume that can be put up by AA defences nowadays.)

We may see some sort of point defence laser in operation news.bbc.co.uk... but I imagine that the technology would require significant miniaturisation before that could happen (and personally I'd rather mount it on a helicopter.) Although the technology should soon exist for point defence kinetics, it remains to be seen whether that avenue of research will be pursued.

[edit on 3-10-2004 by Ged]

Originally posted by RichardPrice

Hate to say it, but wrong on most acounts. All encryption currently employed by military hops keys at least once a second. This means that you would have to intercept hte command and resend it within the same timeframe the encryption key is valid, essentially resulting in the same action anyway, which will probably be dealt with the network stack as errors anyhow. Encryption between the UCAV and home base is not reliant on keys stored by the UCAV anyway, so if the enemy captures one UCAV it will not have command access to other UCAVs.

Well, I suppose i ought to be glad that I was wrong, but I do have a question that you may or may not be allowed to answer.
If the key to interpereting the encrypted data is not on the UAV, how can the UAV respond correctly to encrypted commands?
Does the signal being sent to the UAV include the sollution to the next step in the encryption (this is the only way i can imagine it working), and if so, isn't it possible to create a program which can very rapidly put false commands into the next proper encryption, allowing you to counter-act commands immediately after they are executed?

I'm pretty sure your answer will be no, but I just can't get my head around the fact that the key to the encryption doesn't lie in the device that reads the encryption.

A few questions what is hypersonic? What does like generation 7 plane mean? I believe that there are alot of very advanced planes being developed without us knowing because if governments like the US government didn't want the public to know about a secret project the public probably wouldn't.

Hypersonic is any speed mach 5 and above.

Generation 7 is really just the 7th generation of a fighter plane. The F-22 is a 5th generation so two new models after that in Gen 7.

The Corvette is a easy way to think of it the C-5 Corvette is the 5th generation vette.

[edit on 3-10-2004 by ShadowXIX]

I believe that 6th gen aircraft will have high end supercruise - at least mach 2. They will also be a 'jack of all trades' type of fighter and will be able to perform air superiority, strike missions, recon - basically everything but CAS, where I believe a 21st century A-10 thunderbolt type of craft will be built. Stealth will be common place - a must if your aircraft is going to be able to compete.

Fighting will become much more to the BVR sector, with missles needing at least a 100 mile range. Lasers quite likely would replace chaffs and the like as the main defence system, though they most likely would not be powerful enough to use at the range that missles are used at. They most likely will have pilots.

As far as propulsion goes, I believe that conventional jet engines will be used, though they will reach their limitations at this point, while scram jets, PDEs and the like will be hitting their stride. Time frame is 2020-2025.

In the 7th gen, we will most likely see fewer larger aircraft operating at very high altitudes, acting as a flying missle cruiser. As someone else pointed out, at this point aircraft may become obsolete for anyone who can't win the ground war.

In any case, they will probably be in the Mach 10 range. Bombers and fighters will probably merge to a single aircraft, still leaving the CAS to a different airframe.

Weapons will include missles, bombs, lasers, KE weapons, and perhaps EMP.

Originally posted by The Vagabond

Well, I suppose i ought to be glad that I was wrong, but I do have a question that you may or may not be allowed to answer.
If the key to interpereting the encrypted data is not on the UAV, how can the UAV respond correctly to encrypted commands?
Does the signal being sent to the UAV include the sollution to the next step in the encryption (this is the only way i can imagine it working), and if so, isn't it possible to create a program which can very rapidly put false commands into the next proper encryption, allowing you to counter-act commands immediately after they are executed?

I'm pretty sure your answer will be no, but I just can't get my head around the fact that the key to the encryption doesn't lie in the device that reads the encryption.

Ahh, explaining complex encryption I hope you enjoy maths!

I cant say a definate 'no' to your post, because you are actually asking several things and some of them are extremely complex.

In this scenario, there are two separate entities: UCAV and Controller. The UCAV will contain a permanent key, but not one used for encryption, only one used for idenfication. This ID key will be signed (more on this later) by a known and secure key held by the Controller.

In order to setup a secure communications channel between the two entities, each generates its own key, probably of a large bit size, eg 2048bits in length. Then each entity generates a public key from this private key, and gives the other entity this public key. This is the only time when a key is exchanged and its perfectly OK to do this, because its IMPOSSIBLE to derive a private key from the public key, and a public key on its own is useless, unless you are going to do what we are goiung to do.

Each entity is now in possession of its own private key, its own public key and the other entities public key. Each entity then uses an algorithym called the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithym to generate a third 'shared' key that is exactly the same for both sides. How can they do this? Well, each entity processes their own private key with the other entities public key to generate what is called a shared secret.

Bang, now each side has a secure key which has never ever been sent across the network, so can be classed as secure.

In order to identify the UCAV, the controller entity sends the UCAV some data, and tells it to sign it with the identification key and its own private key and some other data such as flight path data. If this data comes back correct then the controller can trust the UCAV for the moment.

To ensure this is continually secure, keys are discarded on a regular basis, eg every second, and new ones generated. Because theres no key sequence in effect, then there can be no guessing of the next key, and because theres no telling the other end what key to use next, you cannot derive the next key from the current key.

Quick note here, but a key that is 2048 bits long is theoretically guessable, if you have the rest of eternity to guess. To put this into perspective, to guess a 128bit key size (a hell of a lot smaller than our 2048bit keys) you would have something like this sort of trouble:

If you built a key-search chip that tried 100 billion keys per second (doesnt exist, current chips allow for at most a few hundred thousand per second), and assembled a billion such chips into a gigantic key-searching machine, that machine would be able to search the entire key space in 100 billion years.

Oh, and keyspace (number of possible keys for a given key size) DOUBLES in size for each bit you add. So a 129bit key would double the above example.

So, its very easy to generate trustable keys, and its extremely hard to break them. Hop the keys every second, or 10 times a second, or hell, 1000 times a second just because we can, and you have a very secure and dependable communications method.

To make this more secure, have the UCAV talk to base on 3 or 4 different and independant radio frequencies, doing the above for each channel. Send the same data down each channel and have the UCAV check each channel to make sure the data is the same after decryption. If its not, then someones (somehow) broken one of the keys. Its pretty much improbable that someone will break one key, but for someone to break all 4 channels and thus have the false data match, I can safely say that Britney Spears will bear my children before that ever happens.

Oh, and usually, there are MANY more steps to setting up a secure channel than Ive mentioned above. Interested? Want to blow your mind? Check this page out:

www.netip.com...

Oh, and I hear you say 'Why cant I derive a private key from a public key'? Uhm, Im not going to answer that one because I dont understand it completely myself. Suffice to say that you cant. Also suffice to say that there are many minds more intelligent than anyone on this forum that have looked at this stuff and decided its secure Its a case of shutup and believe in what someone else has told you I could attempt to explain it to you, but Im not sure this forum would allow posts of that length.


Ok, I need a beer. Can I trust the beer tho......?