The air to air fighter pilot will soon be sitting at a desk with a computer monitor.
http://video.boeing.com/services/player ... 4464741001

They designed it to be a missile sponge......

Now, imagine this tech 10-20 years from now available to Beech, Cirrus, Piper, etc.

^^ As Dave said, it's a missile sponge.

We've been doing this for a long time. The QF-4 is the current version.

http://www.fencecheck.com/content/index ... get_Drones

Here's what Fate holds for this F-16:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/xISpZYajveA[/youtube]

Cool video. I love how they're using old planes they've had in storage in the desert

Chris,
That video is "%#$@ hot"!!!!

That looked like an F-4 Phantom to me. Sad to see those great old planes getting blown out of the sky, but I guess it's inevitable. The cost to convert, maintain and fly the QF-series drones usually means they usually have quite a long life as a target before the decision is made to destroy them. Pt. Mugu NAS which is home to the Pacific missile range is just a few miles from my home airport.

My last tour in the Navy was at Pt. Mugu in the Targets Directorate and I flew QF-4s. They came out of AZ and were ferried to Cherry Point for rework. They came out of there with the standard 48-month life - same as for any fleet aircraft.

Never flew from the console, but I did fly a number of hops as the safety pilot during practice for a drone mission. Usually no big deal until the landing. It felt like a couple approach to the ship and I didn't trust those, either.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, Mr. Vinson's Wild Ride. I've only had a Mode 1 either bolter me or scare the s@!t out of me........

I prefer to do either myself!

Reminds me of those F-4 propaganda films produced by McDonnell Douglas back in the sixties, a Phantom flying straight and level knocking down a similarly straight and level target just outside of visual range with a Sparrow. "Yep, the day of the dogfight is over". That kind of thinking got some good guys killed.

Now, the reality: A small, hard to see, stealthy, unmanned combat aircraft that can passively acquire, out turn, out sustain and outlast a manned fighter with minimal input from a ground based controller half a world away (and at about one third the price). The QF4s and 16s aren't very good examples of what can and will be the norm in the not too distant future. Today's manned combat aircraft are merely custodians waiting to turn the mantle of elite aerial warriors over to the next generation of weaponry. Like the french armored knights at Crecy and Agincourt who yielded to English archery and, later, to musketry.

Sad but true.

Jammers are very effective against UAVs. Predator data links have issues with visible moisture (ie clouds) and have a host of other issues. Jam signals and sensors and you have an expensive cruise missile. UAVs have a host of issues that are downplayed by UAV advocates. Nice additional capability, but don't count out pilots yet. Also, does anyone think it would take less training to safely operate a drone?

I was at Cherry Point in '93 and '94. We had a long line of "shrink-wrapped" F-4's on the old runway east of the center mat. It seemed like every other test flight came back as an emergency with hydraulic leaks.

One beautiful afternoon as I was on a solo practice flight in a C-150 over the lighthouse east of Cherry Point (Point Lookout, I think), I saw an F-4 returning from the Warning Area. I yanked it around and got him in my sights at about a half-mile. He never knew how close he came to getting splashed.