QF-16 aerial drone phase I under way

[tom d. friedman]

some f-16 variants approaching target drone stage?? makes me feel old!! i can remember as a kid as it being cutting edge!!

[mlenoch]

Plus remember, real drones are one mission/ one flight aircraft. The QF aircraft are flown for 200 to 300 hours till they are "executed". Makes the QF mission a bit more cost effective after each flight.
VL
(I just can't stand the folks that claim that we are already at total tech victory; these are the same bunch of people who say we don't need guns on airplanes anymore.)

[Randy Haskin]

The QF aircraft are flown for 200 to 300 hours till they are "executed". Makes the QF mission a bit more cost effective after each flight.)

They aren't 'splashed' on every shot, either.

In fact, they go out of their way to keep the full scale drones alive for many many missile shots. With the warheads removed from the missiles, unless the missile physically strikes the aircraft (which is rare, BTW, because the missiles are proximity fuzed and have blast radii that are more than enough to do the job without kinetically impacting the target), the drone lives. They're able to do some end-game maneuvers right before the impact of the missile to ensure that a miss -- even by one foot -- will happen and spare the drone. In that scenario (which happens all the time), everyone wins -- the crews get the experience and lessons from the live missile shot, the missile itself gets tested and operationally checked (and scored), and the drone lives to fly again.

[Avn-Tech]

Group,

Droning aircraft is such a terable waste of money!

After Obama talks to everyone, they will want to be our friends and we won't need a military to protect us.
Then he can use what is left of the military to keep us from our government run healthcare system!

Laterrrrrr
Avn-Tech

PS: When I was at Davis Mothan, I used to wath them fly the F-100 drones (1986/87). Also saw ANG F-106's being flown in boarder security role.

[RSpivey]

Well, at least the Viper is good for something.

Just remember Randy, At Tyndall the Eagle will always have a home, 3 miles East in the colors of a drone.


And I don't just mean the one with only a single mission role

[K5DH]

Randy, I'm sure you can answer this question. Aren't the drone candidate aircraft actually ones that are out of airframe hours, and that's why they were parked in the first place?

Dean the curious

[CrewDawg]

Like someone else said, this makes me feel old! I remember going through Tech School at Sheppard and seeing QF106's sitting on the transient ramp in the late '80's when F-4's were the workhorses and F-16's still had that new jet smell. I crewed F-16 Block 32's at Carswell just 3 years ago and they're still flying them!

Make all the jokes about the Viper you want, it is a good jet that can do just about any job it's asked to do. Dogfight, Close Air Support, Wild Weasel, hell we even launced as SAR when the shuttle came apart over Texas! That was a weird drill weekend! We used the targeting pods to locate wreckage and relay GPS coordinates to folks on the ground. I'd say the USAF got thier money's worth out of them and the fact that Lockheed keeps pumping them out says something about them. If they weren't good, nobody would be buying them.

I'm on the left.

[vernicator]

F-16's turned into furniture make me feel old.

[flyboyj]

I have been to several countries that would be overjoyed to get even "worn out" F-16's, NATO countries that are supporting us with boots on the ground in OEF/OIF. Yet, they can't get old A models or even old C models, they can be only sold or given the latest nearly new block type or USA Depot overhauled (Read:Expensive) airplanes.
I guess selling off cheap 16's would cause even more customers of the Uber expensive F-35 to have second thoughts about committing billions for a squadron or two of the new stuff.
BAE reported once that it cost over $800,000.00 to convert a F-4 to a drone. That is ridiculous when you think about what it is to be used for. And you know the -16 is gonna be more than that.
And Randy, last time I was in the Eglin museum there seemed to be quite a few drones that were already in the inventory or could be reproduced by a small entreprenurial company for one heck of a lot less than $800 grand a pop. I'm not against drones at all, just this incredibly expensive way of doing it. I am sure that if the major defense contractors didn't have a lock on it that a smaller company could come up with something very viable. And the QF-4 program is run by contractors, there shouldn't be a huge logistical tail. Exotic Jamming? IR Signatures etc? Who is the threat? a bunch of ageing Su-27's, worst case 99% of the time?

Like I said, I am waiting to hear about the cost overruns on the QF-16. $1.5 million a pop to convert? 2 Million? this is gonna be fun to watch.

Don't forget to wear your reflective belt!!!

I worked on the QF-4 drone program for BAE out of Mojave for several years and Randy has it 100% correct. If you think $800K is expensive to drone these aircraft, you should see the bill for putting them back into a 100% operational condition, and even if that was done you're still looking at airframes that are either close to or have exceeded their operational lives.

If you think that these drones can be "produced by a small entrepreneurial company for one heck of a lot less than $800 grand a pop," guess again. There's a lot that goes into the conversion, let alone the inspections and "over and above" repairs that need to be done so the aircraft can be safely flown. You just don't slam in a few servos and black boxes into these things. The division of BAE that produced these drones was a small company that found a market niche and was eventually swallowed up by Tracor, Marconi and later BAE. Considering these contracts go to the lowest bidder, anyone company attempting to bid a program like this with no experience will be committing economic suicide.

Randy has "been there, done that," there is no better authority than those who have actually laid hands on the hardware and flew the mission.