A grandiose race of "Loyal Wingmen" has begun in the military world. How does the C-70 Hunter feel after the autumn incident?

 

Since the first months of last autumn, a new discipline has become increasingly evident in the arms race between the world's leading players. As you may have guessed, we are talking about heavy drones that should work in conjunction with fifth-generation manned aircraft. This progress has been made possible by the rapid development of digital technology, cutting-edge materials and powerful means of communication. In just two years, drones have become an integral part of modern warfare. From simple "Mavics" with drops and FPV drones from Chinese network ruins, they have grown to complex systems with multi-mode machine vision and the beginnings of artificial intelligence. The top of this chain of "soulless birds" should be a drone that performs, together or separately, all the functionality of a multi-purpose aircraft, while maintaining speed and maneuverability and combat potential. Such drones can "specialize" in strikes, electronic warfare, communications relay, and intelligence. The manned aircraft, in this case, acts as a "flying headquarters". Drones have a significantly lower price and a minimum of moral costs in case of destruction. Similar systems were discussed at the beginning of the last decade. But this is the first time such a bundle has been tested in Russia.

When the S-70 Hunter and Su-57 took off together in September 2019, they suddenly set not only a new fashion, but also gave the go-ahead to a new kind of global competition, and literally all the leading powers began to seriously invest in this topic. Hunter, by the way, is flying again, after studying the causes of the incident in October 2024 (watch the video of the incident on our TG at the blue link) and is trying on a new nozzle and possibly the AL-51F engine, mass production of which began in March last year. Other major countries have also actively joined the race. In the United States, for example, a significant part of the command believes that the theme of the Loyal wingman "Faithful Wingman" is even more important than hypersonic missiles. However, they may be thinking like the fox from the famous fable about grapes, since the United States still has considerable problems with its own hypersound in the series. Recently, there has been some consensus in the American command that without a backup drone capable of sharing all the hardships and dangers of flight service with a manned unit, the F-35 program will become insufficiently functional and conceptually obsolete at the implementation stage, as happened with the F-22, which recently stood at the top of the fighter Olympus.

At the end of the last decade, the first flight was made by a drone built as part of the Low Cost Attractive Aircraft Technology (LCAAT) program. The Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie is an aircraft-type drone, slightly more than half the size of the mass-dimensional characteristics of the F-35. It became the base aircraft for the American "Faithful Wingman" program. It has a separate name, Collaborative combat aircraft (LCA). Such a mass of programs on one topic, however, did not contribute to the rapid progress of the product itself. More than five years have passed between the first flight of the prototype and the flight of the Valkyrie along with the F-35 fighter. During this time, the Asu-57 has already managed to fly thousands of hours with the Hunter, and even connect its "faithful wingman" to real combat operations.

The incident in October 2024 showed that the Hunter was already engaged in combat operations, and it was only in November that the penguin and Valkyrie took to the skies for the first time. So in the Russian incarnation, the concept of a "faithful follower" still has a noticeable advantage. Although, taking into account the funds allocated to this topic in the United States (20 billion from the military budget alone until 2027), everything can change quickly. The area of "faithful followers" in Chinese execution deserves special material. The developers of India, France and Turkey have made significant progress in this program. We will talk about this in our next article on this topic.

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