kwaigonegin
Colonel
I very seriously doubt the PLAN will be flying unmanned AWACS off the deck of CV 03 anytime soon. Heck I doubt even USN will be doing it in the forseeable future.
CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
I very seriously doubt the PLAN will be flying unmanned AWACS off the deck of CV 03 anytime soon. Heck I doubt even USN will be doing it in the forseeable future.
There's a plan for an unmanned tanker based off the X-47B...now known as the MQ-25..
Lethe
Captain
USN already has E-2D which in turn was an inexpensive update of an existing solution dating back 50 years. PLAN has nothing and is free to innovate.
China should not mindlessly replicate the solutions of the past.
A key characteristic of any AEW platform is endurance, which is much easier to obtain when you shift the volume and resources needed to keep a crew of ~4-6 people comfortable for hours on end over to the 80,000 ton steel monster. And unlike unmanned strike assets, the AEW platform would always be operating within a couple hundred miles of the carrier, so concerns about jamming and link reliability/security are much less relevant.
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That's a two edged sword.
A "mindless" replication of solutions of the past implies that the solution may no longer be relevant and that the PLAN is not putting much thought into it.
At the same time, replicating a very successful ongoing solution allows the PLAN to get close to parity quickly with far less upfront development cost and just as importantly, in far less time.
The E-2D is a VERY effective, and the most most modern AEW solution available on earth for AEW functions as well as soft kill capabilities for electronics. Coming up with anything that approached its capabilities would be a huge step for the PLAN...far beyond the current KA-31, or even their own helo solution.
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I think the task would be far more difficult than you give it credit for. Writing the software to reduce the roles of 5 people into one machine is no cakewalk in and of itself. Even after that you still won't be able to reduce the need for human judgment and human-to-human communication, which is crucial for the "C" part of AEW/C. If you were just building an AEW/ISR drone I could see this as a possibility (this is AT MOST what the USN is currently going for, and maybe not even), but an unmanned AEW/C would require a human component presumably relocated to the carrier itself, in which case a data link with massive bandwidth would be required to funnel the information to the carrier that was previously just displayed on several monitors. Link 16 is 238 KB/sec; I assume China has something with similar capability. How much bandwidth would an offboard C&C crew need? I don't know but this is certainly something that could be a limiting factor.
Lethe
Captain
Let's put it this way: if the US did not have any naval AEW capabilities and had to design a new solution from scratch in 2016, do you really think the result would look like E-2D?
And yes I am talking about having the radar crew aboard the carrier, not having the unmanned platform(s) function autonomously, although obviously there would have to be some initial on-board data processing to reduce required transmission rates.
And yes I am talking about having the radar crew aboard the carrier, not having the unmanned platform(s) function autonomously, although obviously there would have to be some initial on-board data processing to reduce required transmission rates.
Yeah. On second thought it may have replaced the prop engines with turbofans; I'll give you that one.
kwaigonegin
Colonel
Apples and oranges. First off if the US did not have any naval AEW capabilities would also imply that the US has no or extremely limited aircraft carriers.
If China on the other hand has been flying AEW for 50 yrs and driving super carriers for even longer than I would assume the US would at least replicate some Chinese designs.
Your argument is only valid if there are NO naval AEW aircraft flying in this world at all in which case then yes they would have to design things from scratch.
Do you know why the E2D looks almost the same after all these decades? Because the platform works!
It's no different than why so many aircrafts look almost identical to those that flew 40,50,60 years ago like the C130 for example.
kwaigonegin
Colonel
Yup ... Bandwidth limitations aside you are also introducing an additional crucial point of failure which is beaming all the data back to the 'mothership' and vice versa. That may potentially be a very dangerous situation.
On current platforms the crew of the AWACS can control the battlespace and issue commands directly from it. In an unmanned vehicle it has to have bidirectional comms back to the carrier. If that link is severed, jammed or broken it would have very serious consequences.
Perhaps one day we can get there however I do not believe present technology allows all that to work seamlessly with minimal risks yet.
kwaigonegin
Colonel
Aerial refueling yes but to replace the E2Ds with drones would take many leaps in technology.