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Tomorrow’s squadron leaders will be accompanied by drones.

Will future combat aircraft needpilots? At least part of the answer can be found 400km north of Farnborough, near Preston, Lancashire. Warton Aerodrome is the site ofBritain'snearest equivalent to Lockheed Martin's celebrated Skunk Works—a research anddevelopment facility run by BAE Systems, the country's largest aerospace and defencecontractor. Inside a high-security building called 31 Hanger sits Taranis, anaircraft named after the Celtic god of thunder.

Taranis looks like something outof “Star Wars”. It is about the size of a small jet fighter, but is shaped likea flying wing. It is an unmanned, stealthy combat drone. Like most militarydrones it can be operated, via a secure data link, by a pilot sitting in acontrol centre on the ground. Taranis, however, can also be let off its digitalleash and allowed to think for itself using artificially intelligent automatedsystems. Left to its own devices, Taranis can take off, find its way to acombat zone, select a target, attack said target with missiles and then findits way home and land. A ground pilot would be needed only to keep an eye onevents and take control if there was a problem.

Thunder follows Lightning

Removing the pilot, together withthe systems required for a human being to fly a fighter aircraft and remainalive during the gut-wrenching manoeuvres this involves, has many advantages--not least of them, cost. A manned version of Taranis, were one to be built,would be twice the size and twice the price. The current prototype is thoughtto have set BAE back by around £185m($244m). That is cheap for whatis a one-off experimental prototype. The F-35, a ten-country effort led byLockheed Martin, is reckoned to be the most expensive military weapons systemin history. Some $50bn was spent developing the aircraft, which cost around $100m each.

The good news for pilots is thateven in drone-heavy air forces they will still have a job-though not necessarilyin the air. Many will be employed supervising drones from the ground. Others,though, will indeed remain flying for, as Michael Christie, BAE's head of airstrategy, observes, in the future pilotless and piloted fighter aircraft willoperate together.

A human being who can makedecisions will always be needed somewhere in the system, Mr Christie reckons.And in some cases it would be best if that person was in the aerial thick ofthings. Just as fighter pilots now fly with wingmen alongside them, a singlepilot could fly with a number of combat drones, similar to Taranis, as his“wingbots”. The drones would operate autonomously but respond to a pilot'scommand. They might be used to reconnoitre an area or attack it, permitting themanned aircraft to hold back.

The idea of people flying information with drones is being explored in several other countries, too. Lastyear Lockheed Martin's research engineers converted an F-16 fighter into anunmanned drone, complete with various anti-collision systems, and flew italongside a manned fighter to carry out ground attacks on a test range.Japanis also looking at using drone squadronsto accompany piloted aircraft. Japanese officials say the drones couldundertake defensive twists and turns at gforces so high that a human beingcould not withstand them, and thus be used to divert incoming missiles awayfrom a manned fighter.Chinais also developing a combat drone known as Dark Sword, which might similarly beused in conjunction with manned fighter jets.

This vision of a team offull-sized drones with a single human mind in charge gives the term “squadronleader” a whole new meaning. It also requires new technology, some of which isprefigured in the F-35. This aircraft is a massive information system, in whichthe amount of data generated by its sensors is beyond anything a human beingcould take in, so the aircraft's computers dish up only what a pilot needs toknow, when he needs to know it. Information relevant to the flight at anyparticular time is presented on touchscreens in the cockpit and as imagesprojected within the pilot's helmet. His vision is improved further by camerasembedded in the aircraft's skin, allowing him to “see” through its structure.That way he can spot anything which might otherwise be obscured-even thingsdirectly below.

This information feed alsoextends to other manned aircraft, to reconnaissance drones and to groundforces. Instead of attacking a heavily defended position himself, an F-35 pilotcould, for example, summon a missile strike from a ship. Eventually, thisinformation feed will extend to his receiving data from, and issuing orders to,accompanying combat drones.

All these extra data meanmilitary aviators of the future are likely to be even more reliant than today'sare on their helmets. BAE has an experimental system in which almost all thephysical instruments and controls in a cockpit have been replaced by virtualones projected into the pilot's helmet. The pilot can reach out to touch oroperate these controls as if they were in physical form, with sensorsrecognising from his movements what he is trying to do. This could mean thatwhen an aircraft's flight systems need updating, it is the pilot's helmetrather than the aircraft itself that is revised.

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