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"Pentagon in shock": China's next-gen stealth drones are now leagues ahead of DARPA's, says explosive new study
(www.sustainability-times.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Drones have a pretty big advantage over piloted aircraft in stealth terms because of their small size, the whole next generation of aircraft will be built around them.
Honestly it seems like the countries that skipped fifth gen fighters got the best deal here. Even China's newest ones are probably going to have a very short life cycle, and lmao rip the f-35 is going to cost two or more trillion dollars and accomplish nothing.
Are military aircraft size determined by the pilot? I figured it would be proportional to the ordinance they're carrying.
Not having to accommodate a pilot necessarily means it can be smaller.
the cockpit on modern fighter jets is so tiny though
You don't need to accommodate for stuff like the pilot passing out from g forces if there's just a computer flying the thing. This can also extend the operational window past however long a human can stay awake, so you can get aircraft that are more maneuverable, faster, with longer ranges.
To add, the weight of the human isn't much, but the weight of the chair; safety equipment for the human; the extra metal needed to make space for the human, the chair, and the safety equipment; the extra distance for equipment to steer/handle from the pilots seat as opposed to a distributed system all add up to sooooo much space and weight.
Also you can put fuel in the center (you usually don't cuz a human is sitting there) and that changes so much about the mechanics of the wings and the control system capabilities. The limiting factor was humans, but the next limiting factor disappears with the humans in the form of limited distribution patterns of fuel weight/less room to shift fuel during flight phases for different manoeuvres