More wisdom about the way that changing times reflect the need for a new course of action. *Can* you go out and design a hyper-stealth, mega-sonic, ultra wham-o-dyne Super Aurora starfighter that can occupy every conceivable point in the universe and focus the pilot's chakra into a ray that causes an adversary's electro-chemical bonds to disassociate? Yes of course.
*Should* you, in view of what the foregoing will cost in time, effort, human capital, e.g. building and sustaining the pilot corps, and (who's counting anyway) little old money? Maybe not if you're also achieving the effects you wish with new capabilities such as Collaborative Combat Aircraft. Spending less money on, yes, less cosmic individual new aircraft -- which you now can afford in bulk and still use to achieve and preserve air dominance -- changes some of the other inputs.
So it's probably not that you don't need a new human-piloted fighter, at least in the extended medium term. It's that your new aircraft might need endurance instead of speed, payload instead of maneuverability and so on.
Steve Jobs once observed that in the old days, every car sold in America was a truck. It had to be to carry farm loads and deal with unpaved roads, et cetera. Urbanization, the Interstate Highway System, new technologies and materials -- these made sedans, coupes and hatchbacks viable. Jobs used this metaphor to explain the rise of smartphones and tablets: not every American needed a "truck" desktop anymore if they could get done what they wished on a smaller and perhaps less powerful device.
Autonomous combat aircraft such as CCA are changing the airpower business too. That's good for the U.S. Air Force and its partners and allies and it'll be good for the United States and responsible world powers. Change is change, though and it makes a lot sense to take another look at the old practices too.
𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: USAF Rethinks Whether It Needs a Manned 6th-Gen Fighter for Air Superiority
(QUOTE: Acquisition boss Andrew P. Hunter)
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Mechanical Engineer
3moWould love to be a guardian civilian!