And that image is quite old not a recent one so you can guess the rest.
Indian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
CATS Warrior and Boeing are similar?.
I doubt India's loyal wingman shown here is going to be aircraft controlled within a few years. By integrating, it'll take many many years. This is about as difficult as Samsung developing and offering an autonomous vehicle within a few year even if they set themselves after that goal.
India has no experience modifying command aircraft. Who is controlling that drone? Su-30MKI is a viable candidate but the depth of changes that are required to make this happen is mind boggling, that development alone will take many years. Foreign sources AEWC aircraft in India isn't going to be easily modified. India does not have a H-6 or Y-20 equivalent they can redesign with new tasks in mind.
Does India have any remote control station self developed for any domestic drone? Okay it's possible to source plenty of control comm and drone components to make it work (from Israel and maybe France) but in this field the US and China are truly head and shoulders above the others. Turkey is actually a pretty impressive player in this field and I'd rank them with Israel Russia and France here overall.
Russia has Hunter drone flying. China showed GJ-11 and leaked Darksword as one loyal wingman with some variable geometry alternatives that have been studied. China has long had nearly a decade and plenty of Global Hawk and Reaper drone level MALE and HALE experience and control, comms. India has zero so far and developing that level of drone.
Even in operational experience, India has only played with much lower tier drones. The development of the highest order drone is much further off. They can do one with a lot of resources spent, where the wingman drone is controlled from a ground station but that drone also need remarkably advanced sensors to be an effective wingman level drone and not just typical MALE HALE strike/recon stuff.
This is another level. Most of the European flying wings have stuttered and development stopped or cancelled. A combat purposed wingman drone is another level above all that MALE higher speed strike drone. India here isn't even like Samsung developing an effective autonomous vehicle which no other major autonomous vehicle developer has even managed (and NO Tesla has not actually managed it yet although latest levels acquired are promising). It's more like a five man start up with two engineers promising to solve autonomous vehicles within the decade.
And that was an entiry privately funded project in initial stage.
Unless of course India is showing the initial development phase and have none of the critical control, autonomy, comms, subsystems and weapons suite even with set plans because there is no equivalent at the moment. Not even two steps behind that in India. Like a country that is about to field a third gen fighter (Rustom metaphoric equivalent) suddenly showing plans and a shell of a sixth gen fighter. This is why I'm very dubious about their claims.
Of course it's easy to build a flyable shell. No one will buy it and even India won't be using it until it receives the upgrades that make it effective. The subsystems that India has no experience in even designing and manufacturing for three generations behind.
Of course it's easy to build a flyable shell. No one will buy it and even India won't be using it until it receives the upgrades that make it effective. The subsystems that India has no experience in even designing and manufacturing for three generations behind.
The firm that is developing That drones which I posted has already started testing the most of the systems you are talking about. The scale of the test and its details i can't say. But its ongoing.
CATS Warrior and Boeing are similar?.
This is India's below.
and another model of the program from India.
This is Russia's program and model.
This is UK's program.
This is Boeing's for Australia and US.
If you go into details you will clearly see the differences. But always it's dependent's on the persons perspectives.
Both typical main layouts - with intake on top of fuselage and with intake on each side, are in that rendering in the Indian image. These things can barely carry one medium range air to air missile and probably carry nowhere near as much fuel as required to be as effective a wingman. If they want to carry more fuel, they need more powerful engines and a larger frame that will also slow their speeds down as if they aren't slow enough already.
The western powers are pursuing this class of "wingman" as a very low tier "wingman" that join in with swarms and directed by commanders close to the fighting. You can't have ground stations controlling them because they are stationary and those station positions limit where these "wingmen" can be operated and how far they can fly. Even at speed of light comms, there may be seconds worth of delay depending on the fight. Once sensors and processing speeds are accounted for, there could be 10 seconds of delay lol.
So either have airborne control or autonomous control. India has opportunities of course to develop both but there is no way that is done or even close to being developed. India has more chance of developing commercial fusion than it does with AI controlled. India has close to no AI industry. No supercomputing. No exascale computing. No quantum computing. No autonomous driving industry of merit. Not even airborne control experience let alone development and manufacturing.
All the core ingredients necessary for an effective loyal wingman, India not only doesn't have experience operating foreign ones, they have had zero experience even reverse engineering two generation old foreign ones in control, comms, autonomy (limited narrow AI), or the sensors necessary. And here the Jai Hind blind chest thump is full of merit simply because a garage assembling a drone (easy) is concluded to be a full blown true loyal wingman that can be introduced within 10 years? Yeah commerical nuclear fusion is more likely.
The western powers are pursuing this class of "wingman" as a very low tier "wingman" that join in with swarms and directed by commanders close to the fighting. You can't have ground stations controlling them because they are stationary and those station positions limit where these "wingmen" can be operated and how far they can fly. Even at speed of light comms, there may be seconds worth of delay depending on the fight. Once sensors and processing speeds are accounted for, there could be 10 seconds of delay lol.
So either have airborne control or autonomous control. India has opportunities of course to develop both but there is no way that is done or even close to being developed. India has more chance of developing commercial fusion than it does with AI controlled. India has close to no AI industry. No supercomputing. No exascale computing. No quantum computing. No autonomous driving industry of merit. Not even airborne control experience let alone development and manufacturing.
All the core ingredients necessary for an effective loyal wingman, India not only doesn't have experience operating foreign ones, they have had zero experience even reverse engineering two generation old foreign ones in control, comms, autonomy (limited narrow AI), or the sensors necessary. And here the Jai Hind blind chest thump is full of merit simply because a garage assembling a drone (easy) is concluded to be a full blown true loyal wingman that can be introduced within 10 years? Yeah commerical nuclear fusion is more likely.