Loyal Wingman

Our life is full of mistakes starting from eating unnecessary things as a kid to our first heartbreak. But what if our mistake cost someone their life? On 27th February 2019 tensions were high after IAF jets conducted airstrikes in Pakistan's Balakot on the 26th and destroyed JEMs terror camps, which was in response to JEMs attack on Indian convey that killed 40 CRPF personnel in Pulwama on 14th February. 

Pakistan tried to retaliate by sending fighter jets towards the Indian side. Unfortunately, a Mi-17 helicopter, which went to involve in a dogfight with Pakistani jets, was shot down by IAF's SPYDER (Surface-to-air Python and Derby) air defense missile killing all 6 IAF personnel on board. Not only this, at least 20 air force personnel were killed in air crashes from January to September 2019. 

With rapid development in AI and robotics technology, automation is at a tipping point. Today, robots can perform a slew of functions without considerable human intervention. Automated technologies are not only executing iterative tasks but also augmenting workforce capabilities significantly. 

And now Boeing (which is the second-largest defense contractor in the world based on 2018 revenue) is going one step further by building ‘Loyal Wingman’, in collaboration with RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force), which is a self-piloted warplane designed to work together with human-piloted aircraft.

The autonomous plane is 11 meters (38 feet) long and clean-cut, with sharp angles offset by soft curves. The look is quietly aggressive. It is designed to achieve a range of 3704 km and will carry electronic warfare systems and sensor packages for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.

The aircraft is also designed to operate as a swarm. Many of these autonomous fighters with cheap individual sensors, for example, could fly in a “distributed antenna” geometry, collectively creating a greater electromagnetic aperture than you could get with a single expensive sensor. Such a distributed antenna could also help the system resist jamming (transmitting additional radio signals towards enemy receivers, making it difficult to detect real target signals).

The design avoids angles that might reflect radar signals straight back to the source, like a ball bouncing off the inside corner of a box. Instead, the design deflects them erratically. Payloads are hidden in the belly. Of course, if the goal is to trigger enemy air defense systems, such a plane could easily turn unstealthy (can attract attention). The design benefits from the absence of a pilot. There is no cockpit to break the line, nor a human who must be protected from the brain-draining forces of acceleration.

Setting the exact parameters of the Loyal Wingman’s autonomy—which decisions will be made by the machine and which by a human—is the main challenge. If too much money is invested in perfecting the software, the Wingman could become too expensive; too little, however, may leave it incapable of carrying out the required operations.

The need to balance capability and cost also affects how the designers can protect the aircraft against enemy countermeasures. The Wingman’s stealth and maneuverability will make it harder to hit with antiaircraft missiles that rely on impact to destroy their targets, so the most plausible countermeasures are cybertechniques that hack the aircraft’s communications, perhaps to tell it to fly home or electromagnetic methods that fry the airplane’s internal electronics.

Boeing Australia has concluded the major fuselage (the main body of an aircraft) structural assembly for the prototype of the first Loyal Wingman aircraft and is planning to conduct its first test flight later this year.

This year’s test flights should help engineers weigh trade-offs between resilience and cost. Those flights will also answer specific questions: Can the Wingman run low on fuel and decide to come home? Or can it decide to sacrifice itself to save a human pilot?

And at the heart of it all is the fundamental question facing militaries the world over: Should airpower be cheap and expendable or costly and capable?