At the dawn of aerial combat 100 years ago, World War I flying aces frequently closed to within 15 meters before firing at enemy aircraft with their machine guns. Such intimate encounters helped create a perception of pilots as skilled “knights of the air” who climbed into the cockpits of nimble aircraft to duel their opponents. But a recent report hints at a very different near future, where military pilots fly large, bomber-size aircraft loaded with missiles and command networked swarms of robotic drones.
The report, titled “Trends in Air-to-Air Combat: Implications for Future Air Superiority,” suggests future aerial combat may not look much like Tom Cruise’s dogfighting stunts from the Hollywood filmTop Gun. The analysis comes from John Stillion, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and former U.S. Air Force officer who compiled statistics on “air-to-air kills” between aircraft from 1965 until 2002. His report shows that modern fighter pilots have increasingly relied on long-range sensors and missiles to destroy enemy aircraft from kilometers away. The lethal combination of sensors and missiles makes it largely unnecessary to use a fighter jet's agility to get in position for a perfect kill shot. If such technological trends continue, the ideal combat plane of the future might be a bigger, slower aircraft capable of carrying an armada of sophisticated smaller vehicles. “The heart of the analysis is the idea that, over time, the performance of sensors, networks and weapons have come to increasingly dominate air combat outcomes,” Stillion says. “It may be possible that speed and agility are becoming less valuable in air combat.”