Now that 6th Gen is around the corner relatively speaking, what capabilities could a 7th generation fighter have?
7th generation fighter jets
Now that 6th Gen is around the corner relatively speaking, what capabilities could a 7th generation fighter have?
No pilot, AI more effective at making decisions than pilots of 6th gen.
You don't have time to THINK in a dogfight anon. You think, you die!
Given how deadly proper 5th generation fighters like the F-35 already are, I imagine 7th would just be an Excalibur tier god weapon designed by an AI that humans can't even properly comprehend. It's weaponry would appear as magic to our eyes.
This.
>Ramiel's beam isn't actually visible until it starts ablating the building and dragging it away as plasma
How was this show so based and military otaku?
The director/producer/writer was a depressed otaku with a half-hateboner to unrealistic shonen mecha anime where some 16 year old kid pilots a building sized robot only he can drive, through an invading army, saves the world, and gets a harem.
His friend in a producing company managed to get him a chance to basically write his own show, completely free to do whatever the fuck.
So we got NGE.
That's not what happened at all.
anno got his big break in the industry animating beams. if there's one thing the guy has always loved its special effects of that style
One of his first known credits is the final battle of Episode 27 in Macross. Take that for what you will.
Is that the episode they first fire the macross cannon?
Oh it's the big invasion fight over Earth.
1.1 is just so beautiful bros. The scream just makes that shit
<< "We've got a situation here. The enemy is capable of long-range attacks!" >>
- Laser Systems
- Railguns
- Orbital Flight Capable
- Cloaking
- Advanced and Independent A.I. Operator
- Mach 10+ Speed
Yes
gay
yes
unnecessary and gay
yes
unnecessary and gay
the irony of this answer is mach 10+ speed is pretty necessary (and maybe even heterosexual) for orbital flight capability
>- Laser Systems
Yes. Great for defence from incoming missiles and drones and other aircraft.
>- Railguns
Yes if bigger caliber used for kinnetic bombardment.
>- Orbital Flight Capable
Yes and No. Satelites can pick those up and predict their course but great when retreating and trying to stay beyong effective range of missiles or when intercepting ballistic missiles.
>- Cloaking
Useless when most weapons are capable of destroying targets beyond visual range.
>- Advanced and Independent A.I. Operator
Mixed. Better if it was co pilot handling EW and operating drones etc.
>- Mach 10+ Speed
Useless, putting unnecessary strain on a frame, buf fuel usage, very complex engines and air frinction would be so big it would heat up aicraft destroying stealth coating and lighting it up like Christmas tree amd you can't dodge faster missiles without ability to quickly maneuver, not under G forces that turn pilot into paste.
Lasers
> amd you can't dodge faster missiles without ability to quickly maneuver, not under G forces that turn pilot into paste.
Unless I missed something, there are no air to air or ground to air missiles that can hit Mach 10… and if they can, they will have the same problem maneuvering at that speed to track a vehicle going at that speed. The Doppler shift alone at those speed fucks the capability of radar guided missiles…
Even before that a mach 10 missile will lose all sight of the outside world as it gets enveloped in a plasma sheath. Meaning it would need to slow down to reaquire lock. A missile that fast is only good for stationary or much slower targets.
Some way to make the exhaust plume cold so they're IR invisible too
That is going to he one hell of an aircraft in the 2070s
can't wait to see what sort of boondoggle ends up making F-35 look like child's play, we better be promised multi-dimensional time travel or something
>still seething I see Chang
Here's your total GDP next gen airplane
based ace combat enjoyers.
Ability to fly up to Mesosphere.
Judging by OP pic, whatever the Vic Viper can do.
16 more gigs of storage another camera and slightly longer battery life
zozzle
They wouldn't be a fighter. But swarm of fighter drone carried by a large airborne carrier.
>Now that 6th Gen is around the corner relatively speaking
No it's not.
To be next generation plane must fully dominate previous generation. ATM no planes were anounced that can deliver overmatch over 5th gen.
Maybe NGAD but it's capabilities are not revealed yet, it's to early to tell about 6th gen
What defines each generation of fighters?
De-facto when America makes a new fighter that utterly wrecks the competition and forces everybody to buy new shit.
Fighter generations are loosely defined at best, but typically involve some sort of feature or improvement over previous designs.
>First Generation
A sub-sonic jet with guns. Me-262, Gloster Meteor, P-80.
>Second Generation
A supersonic jet with with air-to-air missiles. F-100 Super Sabre, English Electric Lightning, MiG-19
>Third Generation
Increased multi-role ability. F-4 Phantom, MiG-23, Saab Viggen
>Fourth Generation
More multi-role, a refinement over the third generation. F-15, MiG-29, Gripen
>Fifth Generation
Low-observability (stealth) design. F-22, F-35, J-20
Most companies will try to bill their 4th gen designs as 4.5 or 4++. For example, I know the Rafale is pitched as having a lower radar cross section.
Sixth generation would probably have features such as hyper sonic speed, optionally manned, and/or ultra high altitude (pseudo-spaceplane).
Seventh generation would be some real sci-fi stuff like fusion powerplants with theoretically unlimited range in atmosphere
lel, the chink shit is not gen 5
4th gen is overwhelmingly defined by ease of maintenance. Your jets can be much more effective if a part going bad only puts it down for 2 hours as opposed to 2 days.
Nothing. Boeing made up ‘fighter generations’ to sell planes.
Nothing, it's a meme to get you to consoom like every new iPhone
When USA replaces the full inventory.
Such as jump from F-4 to F-15/16/18 to F-35.
It is not a hard science.
>implying humanity will survive long enough to create 7th gen jets
Keep in mind that for the next 40 years 5th gen +++ upgrades will be introduced.
We will witness the first Human Mars landing before 6th gen jets
>the year is 2060
>the saudis found oil on mars and now the supreme emirate of olympus mons is fighting the UCBA (United Celestial Bodies of America) with 3rd gen Mars atmosphere skimmers while you spend your nights shitposting about the 6th gen earth atmosphere superiority fighters coming soon(tm)
Diminishing returns unless weaponry advances at the same rate
>Single stage to orbit and reentry capability
>Lasers main weapon
>Drone defense networking
>EW suite capable of taking enemy planes and adding to its own forces
>EW suite capable of taking enemy planes and adding to its own forces
The F420-Wololo
drone swarms, each relatively cheap and disposable
Bydo force orb.
7th Generation will be able to intercept orbital targets.
>Source: my mind
>7th/8th gen will be aerospace capable
i want to believe
SSTO / suborbtial jumps
Infinite range nuclear engines
True hypersonic capabillity
Nuclear armaments, a2a casaba howitzer type shit or really advanced DEWS
>SSTO
Lemme just whip out my nuclear fusion drive that produces terawatts of power and stick it in the back of my F22, surely nothing will go wrong here.
we wont need to even worry about atmosphere anymore, at least the US wont.
AI that control the airplane
Just like Yukikaze
The pilot is just there to give orders
>what capabilities could a 7th generation fighter have?
Cis-Lunar NTR spacecraft with 10+km/s Delta-V capable of delivering dozens of missiles along with supporting a laser in the 10's of MW range to facilitate safe transport to and from Earth and Lunar infrastructure and to ensure American dominance of Earth-Lunar space.
Active flow control
7th generation fighter jets will never exist because AI piloted missiles will just be better and are the ultimate final form of weapons when you take limitations of physics into account. Intelligent missiles are the ultimate weapon and probably nothing will ever be designed to be better than them.
>implying CIWS and EW wouldn't be huge features for future fighters forcing air combat back into dogfighting with Human pilots and not AI that can be duped and tricked
Planes are weapons platform, not weapons do-do. They exist to launch rockets, not be them.
That anon makes a semi-cogent point. If the stand-off distance of missiles continues to increase, air combat is going to transform into stealthy flying wing with giant missile bay spam. The fighter won't really have a point if you can put a network of bombers in the air that hold a ton of missiles and autonomously deny airspace.
Which is what 6th gen is shaping up to be. 7th will probably have some counter to that
Snuck a shot of a 7th gen prototype under testing.
>Marpat
>OCP
>:(
The only thing that can really be an advantage over 6th gen is transoceanic combat mission capability, flying really fucking high, and better missiles. 5th gen is exceptionally deadly already, and 6th gen will be a better version of 5th gen + drone spam. Seems like flying higher and further are the only real ways to improve aside from improved sensors/computers which is a given.
Laser tech is advancing as well so those will get rolled into the package eventually. EW capabilities will rise too. We have hacking to disable outdated ground systems, imagine hacking to get them on your side.
I don't see how a jet with good power to weight ratios is going to have energy to spare for lazers. Makes sense to put lazers on high flying but slow missile trucks as a defensive weapon. Regarding EW, yes I think hacking is important but I don't see how hacking originating from a fighter jet makes sense.
As computer strength advances it will be one more job that can be handled with spare resources on the jet instead of requiring a specialized vehicle. As for lasers they could feed off a capacitor bank that charges in flight outside combat time.
>they could feed off a capacitor bank
Heavy
This makes more sense to me. I think that giant flying wing missile trucks are inevitable. Lasers maybe.
How would a human pilot receive mission updates if radio silence is necessary? You can't really do much in the way of air combat without communication.
>How would a human pilot receive mission updates if radio silence is necessary?
Fucking neural link obviously dude. Radios are boomer tech. We have satellites and Internet my guy. Software updates mid flight.
>We have satellites and Internet my guy
My dude. Brother. How do you think wireless digital communication works?
It's TLS encrypted until they can figure out how to use quantum computing.
The point the other anon was making is that the RF emissivity of any sort of coms with radio as the underlying mechanism could give away the plane's position. That's why we were talking about radio silence. Encryption isn't the issue. Detection of any sort is.
>Heavy
That could be balanced to the weapons required for the missions and the advancement of tech. Combat tier lasers have already shrunk massively from the original models.
>How would a human pilot receive mission updates if radio silence is necessary?
Switch to direct laser comms probably.
You have to know where your fighter jet is to shine a laser at it for communication. This is hard enough with satellites that have predictable orbits.
Why wouldn't the people running the mission know where their jets are? Establish laser comm lock in friendly airspace pre-mission, keep it for mission duration.
laser comms would be LOS only and are not useful in the operational or strategic sense, only tactically.
what is more likely is one way radio communications. these would likely need to require an unbreakable unhackable encryption system like a one time pad.
> That's quite a job that pilot has then.
Thankfully for the pilot, at this point actually piloting the aircraft is not as critical.
I should note that I actually hate this whole idea but it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Luckily there’s a chance none of this comes to pass because of some unexpected technological breakthrough that thrashes my expectations or the US pulls so far ahead of everyone else that further development against a peer state is a purely academuc exercise.
I guess something like starlink could enable laser communication with fighters since there's always a satellite that's LOS. That's a very ambitious project though...
>what is more likely is one way radio communications.
My proposed laser comms were one way only. I guess I didn't specifically state that.
direct laser communications would still require line of sight.
an AWACS plane giving the fighter one way radio updates would still be possible as the goal is to reduce emissions from the plane, so as long as it’s not transmitting - or transmitting in a way that could be used for target cueing - it would be doable without too much work.
the butt in the seat is less a pilot at that point and more a mission planner.
That's quite a job that pilot has then.
That's like giving yourself a backdoor into a software system. If the objective of the plane is absolute stealth, it wouldn't be prudent to design a way to defeat your own stealth. EW and hacking were discussed earlier in the thread. What you're describing is a vulnerability. If you can know the exact location of your own stealth fighter to the degree that you can shine a laser at it, somebody else probably can too.
>it wouldn't be prudent to design a way to defeat your own stealth.
What if we can already defeat our own stealth?
7th gen will probably be designed to operate along side a laser/missile truck, small sensor craft, ect as part of a web rather than an all in one package and rather than an optional feature on top like the current proposals
the defining feature set for sixth gen is still undefined, but is shaping up to include:
optional manning
UCAV teaming
extended range
as means of force multiplication, seventh gen will need to explore ither avenues to continue to do so.
i propose the defining features of seventh gen would include:
parasitic or opportunistic multi-spectrum detection - using radio signals from environmental emmiters such as cellphone towers or radio stations, with the onboard compute power to detect the source and any potential reflections to cue their onboard sensors towards a target. this would require a radical redesign and sensors embedded along the span of the fighter’s wings or fuselage.
ai assistance - the above will require ai or machine learning in order to be possible, much less effective, and this will likely be an evolution of the ai assistance of sixth gen fighter aircraft, and likely would require quantum computing to make certain elements of the opportunistic sensor suite possible - this itself requires a revolution in the architecture of quantum computing in order to make them miniaturized, energy efficient, and vibration and thermally resiliance at room temperature
compliant structure control surfaces - the paradigm shift to opportunistic or offboard sensors will drive the shift in design for stealth into overdrive, requiring continuous control surfaces, an emphasis on all aspect broad spectrum stealth, and every possible attempt at minimizing EM emissions. this would mean unmanned aircraft are no longer the absolute ideal, as those would eventually require communication with HQ. decision making will have to be done onboard.
this does mean seventh gen fighters will basically all look like ugly blended wing body triangles though.
7th gen will be orbital tactical fighters and bombers like Plannetary Annihilation. You can send these orbitally to other planets and at that point with AI you pretty much control the entire sky if you produce enough of them, enough to just shoot down anyone who flies in your territory (the entire planet). It's like spamming Reaper drones and Energy drones across the entire orbit so no one can even deploy anything.
They're just going to be flying saucers. Those aren't aliens, time travel is possible, otherwise the whole observable universe and "God" wouldn't exist. It has to transcend time to a starting point in order to create itself, or the events that will lead to its creation. Thus a divine consciousness had to create circumstances in which crude consciousness came to be and developed into great consciousness. There are no other circumstances possible, and there exists the duality that it either happened or it didn't. We literally cannot observe the state where it didn't happen, so here we are observing the state where it did.
Tldr God is just an 8D multitesseract of great consciousness and we have been visited by time benders before.
what a load of horse shit
welcome to PrepHole's christian evangelists
literally the dumbest people on the planet
Laser CIWS
If we're still going to have human pilots, then probably cheaper production, mass production scalability, alternative energy sources or fuel efficiency, while trying to keep the gen 6 features, and all parts fully US or allied nation sourced
Probably a special variant or drone with ability to operate in space to some degree.
what do you think the pinnacle of fighter planes will be before they get mogged by space ships?
Space fighters have no niche unlike air fighters. I can only see them being made as a legacy hold over from planetary thinking or a side function to a massively advanced air fighter.
Orbital insertion and reentry capability.
Realistically, 6th gen will be full AI or drone type fighters. We're sort of there with the surveillance, ground attack, and refueling drone capability, but fighters are not quite there yet.
An AI fighter could be far more maneuverable due to GLOC not being a concern, so the fighter can be built to crazy G specs and maneuverability specs. Stick some rail or coil guns on it and laser defenses and you have a nasty little piece of work to throw at the enemy. Add to the fact it would be lighter and smaller due to space savings from O2, cabin, and crew systems, plus heavy pilot; it would be a more electronic-type aircraft.
Dev cost here would be pretty nasty though. Definitely at or more the cost of F35. Tons of R&D for AI part, and making it software safe is a fucking nightmare. Then it would need secure comms and tracking/ID/IFF systems, as well as whatever man-in-the-loop parts needed to keep people from freaking out.
7th gen would be whatever 2060+ type tech is here, assuming society exists at that point and the US hasn't become South Africa 2.0 which we are on track towards becoming.
No.
1. A jet without a pilot is a UCAV, not a fighter jet.
2. It has nothing to do with the pilot nor GLOC. The reason why a plane's structural limit is 13.5 G's it's because it either flies or it's a fat ass "plane" that can't fly.
AI is just fuddlore for boomer investors.
if an AI can beat the best human go player why can't you make one that can beat a fighter pilot in a jet?
The main hurdle is still getting the AI to understand the world around it in real time. In a simulation where you can give the AI perfect accuracy data on its position and enemies, its fairly simple to make an ai that can fight and beat humans. In the real world you have to be able to make a sensor array that will give it enough info as well as have the ai be smart enough to figure out which tactics are best at a given time for its situation and the enemy. If its a nonlearning AI this can lead to a weakness to uncoventional tactics if something the ai doesnt understand how to handle happens.
Because they're not the same thing.
It's also not that simple. Additionally, you would have to trust an unanimate entity of lines of code whose loyalty is neither instilled nor sworn. And that entity has lethal power.
newsflash: we've been doing that for decades, if not a century. how luddite can someone, presumably, using a computer to access this forum be?
>Autonomous
>Learn to fucking read
yeah, i read that part. infrom yourself a bit better. also: i'd trust some thoroughly vetted and tested code more than some lt. with untreated schizophrenia who just found out his wife is cucking him or something.
Strange, we've had plenty of schizo LTs manning nuclear weapons systems for decades. No doomsday yet, so we can surely trust them. I'm definitely informed, dude.
You're a schizo just for suggesting that we give a program control of weapon systems autonomously.
you were specifically talking about fighter jets shooting down other jets (unless you changed the topic without telling anyone.) that's not nearly as high stakes as fucking nukes.
comparable amounts of firepower are also in the hands of automated systems as we speak (and have been for decades) - if you press the button on an amraam, a tomahawk, a salvo of gmlrs or whatever - if the code fucks up, something you didn't want to blow up gets blown up. fucked up gps code causing shit to blow up is no different from an erroneous kill command on a sentry drone blowing something up - everything else is just self-delusion. of course the caveat is, as i said: you make damn sure the system works before you put it in action.
You reminded me of those soldiers in the gulf war who reset their gps target rangefinder and didn't dial back in the settings properly. Called an airstrike on themselves because it was showing thier current location, not the location through the viewer.
You're a retard. It's not the same thing. That's a normal computer vs an AI, not merely equal in any way. That's not automation.
>a normal computer vs an AI, not merely equal in any way
PROTIP: there is nothing fundamentally special about "AI" - it's just a fancy program.
>That's not automation.
yes it literally is.
>t. programer who worked on ai and industrial automation.
No it isn't. You're suggesting that the pressing of a button to launch a missile is the same as replacing a pilot with an algorithm. Wtf did you smoke dude, take your meds now.
>t. Aviator
Everything about your effectiveness as a pilot can be summarized into an algorithm. The only question is how long until a computer that can hold it and use it in a mission exists.
100% pilotless smaller, lighter and capable of pulling 35+g manoeuvres.
Probably mach5+ speed.
Lasers, drone swarms and missiles.
>capable of pulling 35+g manoeuvres.
Not going to happen unless we have a massive material science breakthrough. Air frames still have to be light to handle fighter manuevering but there's an upper limit around 10 G for everything still.
The real benefit that's actually plausible and useful is that an AI pilot can fly indefinitely without sleep, without losing precision or attention from fatigue, and can push their plane to it's limits for prolonged periods of time with no loss of function from Glock or post-high-G fatigue.
Also an AI will not lose reflexes or fine motor skills as it gets older like a human will, it can train around the clock whenever it free cycles, and physical defects or damage can be redressed with replacement parts with no time needed for post-repair recovery.
Maybe fighter AI will start out clumsy, unimaginative and robotic, but while a human can only fly so many hours before wearing out their stamina (and over years their whole body) the AI can fly just as many hours as it's plane can hold together, and then train tens of thousands of times per day at an accelerated rate whenever it's on the ground, with it's only needs being a power supply, data uplink, and time.
A cock Resucker for the pilot regardless of if it’s manned or not
If it’s a female pilot they’ll a hydraulic arm with a MAC-11 attached that automatically mag dumps directly into the pelvic area
Directed energy weapons built in.
Optionally manned or primarily AI piloted.
50% or more of all parts additively manufactured.
Majority of parts designed by AI guided by human specifications.
Built in Starlink (or dedicated military global satellite cloud) uplink for global high bandwidth realtime connection.
Maybe a standard cold air bypass engine for efficient, prolonged supersonic cruise without afterburner, variable geometry intakes standard as well.
Opticam, directional radiators, novel low visibility radar absorbing/redirecting coatings and baked in low-visibility materials in the airframe and skin.
It doesn't even fly, it just teleports from place to place.
low orbit flight capability.
>still thinking about 7th gen
if you're talking about anything lower that 2450.6th generation (ie. memetic string induced prion based fractal mindflaying jets with twin anhedonic payloads) - you might as well be talking about throwing rock at the sky while trying to jump really hard.
Basically the film Stealth.
>7th gen
In reality, we're finally starting to see the first widely used 5th generation fighter become widely adopted by allied countries. It's still decidedly second place to the other 5th gen fighter that we've already stopped building because it was too expensive. Meanwhile the J20 is arguably "just" a late 4th gen fighter with a good stealth profile only on its frontal profile, and the su 57 will probably end up as a 5-10 production run curiosity who's finest hour was staring in the Top Gun sequel.
Meanwhile in Europe there's an air war between flankers. I'm not even sure that we've actually left the 4th generation yet.
God damnit, the vic viper is such a cool ship it makes my pp hard.
are those things supposed to ram the enemy planes?
Probably gun-armed prop aircraft with somewhat more modern aerodynamics than WWII era machines. We're headed for the next dark age.
Time travel. When an enemy fighter appears on your six, you simply travel back in time 3 seconds and you are then immediately on THEIR six. Launch missile or laser or whatever, and enemy is dead.
>Pilots brains are directly wired to the plane
>Pilot suspended in liquid breathing pod so they can survive up to 20 Gs
>Lasers
>SCRAM jet
Ace Combat unironically has some interesting ideas and, with a timeline that takes place across decades or even a century, has many 'phases' of increasingly concept airframes. I'll talk about a few. This image contains ~50 years of in-universe aircraft development.
The oldest model being the never-mass-produced ADFX-01 Morgan in the upper left. It was a 4.5th generation prototype multirole and tech demonstrator in the setting's equivalent of the early 1980s and was an early stab at all-digital flight controls. Its flagship weapon was a chemical laser pod that was slung over the aircraft's back, capable of gimbaling around to hit pursuing fighters.
With technology moving on, the prototype was radically refit into emerging stealth fad into the ADF-01 FALKEN, upper left in red. It attempted to turn the plane into a purely AI-driven fighter/interceptor with a cluster of cameras instead of a cockpit. It dropped the laser concept in favor of secondary conformal magazines capable of launching missiles backwards in a dogfight.
They eventually decided to split the difference and go for versatility. Bottom center in green, still designated the ADF-01 FALKEN, the airframe was beefed up for a modern take on a WWII classic: there is a centerline-mounted spinal weapons silo that runs under the cockpit and into the body of the plane. It was large enough to accommodate weapons too large for a single-seat fighter, in this case re-embracing the chemical laser concept. The frame was also designed for maximum versatility, and was created with the ability to swap out its control surfaces to essentially create a different mission profile. Bottom right in blue is the ADA-01B ADLER, a ground attack version of the FALKEN with 80% parts commonality. It replaced the laser in its silo with a cruise missile, theoretically nuclear-capable.
The latest addition to the family is the ADF-11F RAVEN, bottom left in black. It is the first successful fully pilot-optional AI driven model, and is its own drone bus. The airframe is two separate aircraft, essentially two docked drones, capable of separating, supporting eachother, and rejoining in flight. The front half/nose contains the majority of the electronics, the laser, and the gun. The rear half/flying wing has a heavier load capacity and can carry munitions externally, including air-deployable drones of its own. The RAVEN can enter an airspace as a single contact, separate into its two units, and then deploy a pair of expendable drones, becoming 4 separate radar contacts.
Starting with the siloed versions of this family of aircraft, there was incorporated a pneumatic system to expose the silo only selectively, preserving the aircraft's stealth RCS until ready to fire.
none of that shit makes sense - you might as well post clips from dbz when discussing real life martial arts, go back to /vg/.
>lasers, AI, drones, reemergence of old concepts as new tech permits, and massive parts commonality don't make sense
There are literally people discussing infinite-loiter spaceplanes with fusion plants upthread you retard. Just say you hate videogames.
>There are literally people discussing...
if you had fusion powered spaceplanes - they still wouldn't look or work like what you posted. huge changes in energies necessitate huge changes in doctrine, form and accessory technologies - not modern-day airplanes with some lasers and transformer shit bolted on.
>Just say you hate videogames.
trying to use the most arcadey "flight sim" possible to talk about present or future irl fighter-planes is utterly retarded. it's like chiming into a conversation about tanks and starting to post shit about at-ats or something: not relevant now, and even if you had turbolasers and shit - it still wouldn't look anything like that.
Ace Combat planes are about taking high concepts and running them to their logical extremes; they have nothing to do with the mechanics of the game or how 'arcadey' or not it is. They would be just as interesting conceptually in DCS. Ace Combat rides the Metal Gear line of musing with interest about where near and semi-near future technology is going, and that is exactly what OP asked for: what kind of tech might go into a 7th generation fighter?
I've gone out of my way to not get into the so-far-future-it-may-as-well-be-magic games in the timeline. Would you like to hear about muon cannons? They feature prominently in Ace Combat X, which is only the second-latest game in the timeline.
>Ace Combat planes are about taking high concepts and running them to their logical extremes
yeah, sure. the developers did their aerodynamic testing, rcs analysis and shit. PROTIP: they took some conceptual drawings and tweaked them slightly. millions of kids do it on the backs of their notepads every-day.
>They would be just as interesting conceptually in DCS.
bro just fit 50 amraams into a f-16 sized plane, it'll totally be awesome and work.
>they have nothing to do with the mechanics of the game
so basically the design has nothing to do with the portrayed performance, gotcha.
>Would you like to hear about muon cannons?
sure, please describe their power output, range, effect on target, the thermodynamics, radiation shielding and so on. let's see how right they got it.
My dearest cerebrally-convex fren. I want you to reverse image search OP's image.
https://gradius.fandom.com/wiki/Vic_Viper
This is not the thread you think it is. We are talking about 7th generation fighters. Something so distant we're basically just spitballing about which sci-fi fantasy technology will come true before the others. I was being conservative by LIMITING myself to Ace Combat fighters. All of your points are directed at a thread that only exists in your mind.
thanks for the clarification, but i already got that. my point of contention isn't speculation (i also can read thread titles) - instead it's the assertion that Ace Combat is somehow insightful on this topic it's a complete ripoff of existing concepts and other works of fiction. it has nothing to add and it is very uneven when used to look g for clues as to what future fighter aircraft might look like: some of the stuff on the designs is at least a century ahead, while other stuff is antiquated today.
tl;dr my point isn't that you shouldn't talk about speculative fiction, but that the speculative fiction you picked is shit. again, something akin like looking to star wars for a serious discussion on what future ground vehicles might look like.
>Something so distant we're basically just spitballing about which sci-fi fantasy technology
yeah, the vaunted 2060s - the age of gigawatt fusion reactors that fit on a fighter plane.
>bro just fit 50 amraams into a f-16 sized plane
I can understand your other complaints despite missing the point of the other anon's post, but this one is just stupid. Even Ace Combat has never physically depicted the planes as having such high missile counts. The models always have more reasonable loadouts with the new missiles popping in from nowhere as a gameplay contrivance.
God the AC planes are so damn cool.
i know nothing about jets, they all look exactly the same to me. i wish new ones actually looked diffrent like in OP image so i could actually tell the difference 🙁
It’s gonna be something that can fight in space, it’s gonna have batshit insane stealth capabilities, batshit insane manoeuvrability and agility, the weapons will probably outrange everything that exists now by a longshot. I’m talking zipping past a space station, pulling moves that we can only dream of, and unloading 20 sub munition loaded missiles into a bomber, before swing around fast to blast another fighter with rapid fire 40mm 3d printed metal rods
They still can't get cars to not run into a bicycle what makes you think we're anywhere close to mil-spec rad hardened computers that fit into an airplane capable of reliable autonomous action?
No, these things will always have an operator to override, will always have a backup pre-programmed mission profile, and will default to Return-to-base when any comm disconnect happens.
Can you imagine the political disaster if some megawatt all spectrum jammer disconnects the plane from comms, and the AI fleet collectively mistargets a children's hospital?
I would guess the reaction would be almost none considering how much civilian death is already at the hands of drone pilots hitting targets later found out to be wrong.
>
They still can't get cars to not run into a bicycle what makes you think we're anywhere close to mil-spec rad hardened computers that fit into an airplane capable of reliable autonomous action?
Autopiloting a plane is computationally far simpler than a car.
An autonomous fighter has to be much more than autopilot though. You need it to fly to a mission location, assess threats and direct counters to those threats accurately.