Chapter Five - The Drone

I stumbled on it almost by accident. I glanced to my right and my AR view showed an airborne friendly low in the distance. It was orbiting in a hold waiting for instructions that would never come from a ground station that no longer existed.

It is the best term to describe it. It looks evil. It appears narrow and with swept back wings. There is a single air scoop over the nose that feeds the engine. The lack of a canopy is disconcerting when you first encounter it in flight. It makes you realize that it does not need a pilot in it. In fact, the pilot is the greatest liability and weakness in a tactical aircraft. Keeping a pilot alive, comfortable and conscious means that it can not fly too fast or turn too aggressively. A pilot also has to be kept warm or cool and be provided with oxygen. It is a little disheartening to recognize that you are a liability.

Weapon stores are maintained inboard keeping the fuselage as stealthy (meaning it reflects very little radar) as possible. When it is given the permission (or when it decides the situation warrants) to release a weapon a bay door snaps open, the weapon is released and the door closes just as quickly. If you blink you might even miss the event. At that point the weapon is on its own and the drone may loiter to observe the result, move on to the next goal or reduce altitude to get in the radar clutter and disappear to any observer.

For an enemy pilot that has attracted its attention it can be terrifying, if the pilot knows it is there. It can out maneuver any other plane that is unlucky enough to get its attention. It has no feeling, no remorse, no concern and no mercy in its programming. Once given a goal it will do anything to achieve that goal and then it will move on to the next goal. It has no fear for itself. It can fly unimaginably aggressively and low. When you are flying near it you cannot stop wondering what it thinks of you. You also find yourself checking your IFF to make sure that it is transmitting. You want it to recognize that you are a friendly. One thing that you can be assured of is that it is aware of you.

I would not want to be in its goal set.

It can refuel in flight allowing it to perpetually fly until some component of its engine fails. Almost any other failure will be automatically compensated for and it will continue to operate.

My electronics let me connect to it and to get it status. What I saw was that it had a full weapons load but was getting low on fuel. I was pretty sure that its programming would have it loitering until it reached bingo fuel and then head back to its base. The bingo point was only an hour away so I started thinking of an alternative for it.

The alternative would be to have it also approach the tanker and gas up. That would give it at least as much air time as me. I radioed the tanker to give them a heads up. I figured that they would not want it to surprise them on their 6 any more than I would. Once I coordinated with them I started the process for tasking it to airborne refuel. It is fully capable of taking care of that itself which is another advantage of keeping it on my tool belt.

Another nice thing about the F-35 is its ability to integrate with and task modern drones. This would let me give it a plan and then allow me to monitor it while that plan was being worked.

The status information returned from the drone told me that it had the latest electronics configuration and software load. Drones are designed according to levels of autonomy. These levels range from the drone being completely controlled by a pilot or weapons system operator to the machine being completely independent. This drone was capable of the highest level of autonomy meaning that it could operate entirely by itself. This was a good thing.

When I was training to operate with drones I had an odd habit of imagining what its voice would sound like if it was speaking to me. It was invariably an electronic or mechanical sound with almost an echo to it. The voice of a Cylon from the original Battlestar Galactica television show is the description for how I would think it sounded. Interacting with this drone is only with text or menu commands. Its silence is probably scarier that any voice would be. Hearing a voice gives you a feeling of interacting with something. With this drone there is no kinship.