How will collaborative drones disrupt the combat aircraft market?

The new capabilities offered by collaborative combat drones will not only change strategies and doctrines, but also the combat aircraft market in the years to come.

Since its arrival on the international combat aircraft market some fifteen years ago, Lockheed-Martin's F-35 Lighting II largely took the lion's share in international competitions, with firm orders from no less than 14 air forces outside the United States.

And the dynamic does not seem to want to dry up, with many other countries, therefore five European countries (Germany, Spain, Greece, Czech Republic and Romania) having announced their intention to equip themselves with it in the short or medium term.

In many cases, the American aircraft won at the end of a competition pitting it against other American and European fighters, notably the Rafale French, the Swedish Gripen, the Typhoon European or even the Boeing Super Hornet.

In each of them, the Lighting II was declared the winner, in particular because of its more recent design, but also of its stealth, knowing also that the political and military weight of the United States played full in many cases.

However, this hierarchy, although well established, could be called into question within a few years, and the arrival of new so-called collaborative combat drones, these drones which will be able to evolve alongside and for the benefit of manned combat aircraft, and which are actively being developed throughout the world, with the American and Australian Skyborg and Loyal Wingman programs, or the European Remote Carriers.

Indeed, these new devices, which will act like appendages to combat aircraft, multiplying their detection and action capabilities, will profoundly change the conduct of air warfare operations, and with them, the very role of combat aircraft in this future device.

However, in such a hypothesis, the key arguments which made the success of the F-35 over the last 15 years are likely to no longer prove decisive in the face of the characteristics that other, sometimes older, aircraft may put forward, such as the Rafale from Dassault Aviation.

Collaborative drones, whether Loyal Wingmen or Remote Carrier, represent a new generation of combat drones intended to be controlled by a combat aircraft, so as to extend its capabilities. Unlike current drones, such as MALE drones, these will not be piloted remotely, but simply controlled by the crew of the combat aircraft, with the piloting function being managed by artificial intelligence.

These new drones will be of variable sizes, shapes and capacities, depending on their missions, and will be able to carry sensors and effectors (missiles, bombs, jammers, etc.) so as to increase the combat capacities as well as the tactical options of the piloted device, especially since a single fighter will be able to control several of these drones simultaneously.

We understand, therefore, to what extent the arrival of these new systems will upset the conduct of air warfare operations, bringing it, this time in a very significant way, into a real new generation, much more surely than has could be the arrival of the famous 5ᵉ generation of combat aircraft.

This transformation will also radically change the role of the fighter aircraft in this new environment, with a redistribution of the cards in terms of their high added value capabilities, determining criteria both in combat and during handovers. markets.

Indeed, the fighter plane will see its primary role evolve from a vector function to a coordinator function. Today, a combat aircraft is above all a centralized platform capable of receiving, transporting and implementing detection systems and ammunition, whether for air superiority missions, strikes or information.

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