Reviving Old Aircraft Could Help the U.S. Raise an Army of ‘Undead’ Drones
Fighters like the F-16 could come out of retirement to become armed drones ... if the Pentagon is willing to become a “bureaucratic necromancer.”

The U.S. Air Force has thousands of aircraft, including recently deactivated fighters, in mothballs.

A new proposal from war analyst Zachary Kallenborn would see them reactivated and refitted for combat duty as armed drones among other special mission uses.

The revamped “undead” planes would allow the Air Force’s overall fleet to grow, boosting the number of planes capable of combat.




The U.S. Air Force might be sitting on the key to expanding its inventory of fighter jets without even knowing it. Older planes, like the F-16 Fighting Falcon, could be brought back to life as uncrewed drones, among other combat weapons. The drones—what war analyst Zachary Kallenborn calls “undead aircraft” in a recent article for War on the Rocks—could be an inexpensive, expendable solution to the problem of rising aircraft costs. Undead aircraft could take on assignments too dangerous for crewed aircraft, flying one last mission before a permanent retirement.

This concept, which Kallenborn cheekily terms “necro-aeronautics,” would see planes brought out of retirement from aircraft graveyards, such as the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, or AMARG, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. There, in an area known as “the Boneyard,” thousands of ex-Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps planes are parked in neat rows in the Arizona desert, where low humidity slows decay. Many are also shrink-wrapped in plastic and maintained.



Aircraft sent to the Boneyard are typically retired after something better comes along; F-16s at the base have been replaced by newer F-16s, or even F-35As. For most planes, it’s a sunny retirement until the Air Force decides to send them to the scrapper. On very rare occasions, a service will reactivate planes, as was the case for the B-52 Stratofortress bombers “Wise Guy” and “Ghost Rider.”

Many of the planes in the Boneyard were in flyable condition, but have simply become obsolete. Some are considered no longer safe to fly, their airframes having reached the point of exhaustion. Others are cannibalized to keep active aircraft of the same family flying on active duty.

The Air Force already converts F-16s to QF-16s, the “Q” designation meaning “uncrewed.” QF-16s are used as target drones, mimicking high-performance enemy fighters, an opportunity for fighter pilots to use live missiles against a remote-controlled target. Kallenborn’s article goes a step further, considering what it would be like to actually arm an F-16 drone and send it into combat.

Undead aircraft, freed of the need to carry a pilot, can carry out a whole new level of dangerous missions. Kallenborn sees the possibility of robo-aircraft armed with missiles, bombs, and other munitions, or simply used as decoys. QF-16s could be armed with HARM anti-radiation missiles and then flown over enemy air defenses, automatically launching HARMs at any radar that dares to turn in its flight path. The concept would be extremely dangerous to an aircraft with a human pilot, but for an undead fighter, it’s just another mission flown.

Undead aircraft could even be loaded up with bombs and turned into giant cruise missiles. A drone bomb could then be flown against targets like the Crimean Bridge, an 11-mile-long bridge Russia built after it illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. The bridge is currently a supply route for Russian forces attacking Ukraine, and its destruction would be a major setback in a war that has not gone at all as planned for Russia.

Kallenborn’s idea could be a low-effort, high-payoff endeavor. The Air Force and the other flying services already have the planes and the technology to convert them into unmanned platforms, including the ability to take off and land autonomously. The last remaining step would be to equip them with weapons and the ability to use them. Undead jets in most cases could be supplied with spare parts from the Boneyard, and 3D-printing scarce parts in time might also become an option.

Adding undead fighters to the Air Force could solve two of the Pentagon’s most pressing problems: one, the high cost of weapon systems, especially aircraft, which threatens to gradually shrink the service’s ability to bring a mass of planes to a future conflict; and two, removing risk to pilots.

If Kallenborn has his way, the Air Force of the future will fly a fleet of crewed fighters and bombers, new drones, and these undead fighters. He calls on the Pentagon to become a bureaucratic necromancer—to “raise its arms and bring forth a shambling mass of undead aircraft to overwhelm adversaries.” If that happens, America’s enemies could face their own zombie apocalypse.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a40899974/air-force-undead-aircraft/

Might be a good idea.
In Taiwan invasion war game simulations against China, the U.S. lost 900 planes.

Not against the idea. Seems reasonable.

Pffft.   Break out the 105Gs,  the 104's and the 106's.

DARPA's been working on a robot pilot with mechanical arms and legs that could fly older aircraft without replacing all the controls and avionics.  If it works it could be super easy to mass convert manned aircraft to drones.  Here's one flying an analog-everything 1968 Cessna, there aren't even any added external sensors

Don't they use those planes for spare parts?

That would take the US about 10yrs to replace.

China is doing it with it's old MiG copies, but if I know the USG well.. this is entirely too expensive for us to do especially considering we have excellent decoy drones already available:

Seems like a great idea.  There’s trillions (?) of dollars invested in that hardware already.  Let’s show the commies how to do quantity and quality at the same time.

Skynet

Maybe in some cases.  In most however it’s because they are just clapped out.

Also, who’s going to pay to maintain this fleet of Q jets?

I said the same thing when the F16 target drones were announced. Turn them into unmanned cruise missiles.

Sounds like a good way to hide a secret program.

All of them.  It’s sunk cost at this point.  I’m thinking they could be like armed Quails - expendable RADAR target distractions - but that can launch a bunch of missiles too and help us establish air-superiority right off the bat.

This.  Most were retired because the cost per flying hour was getting prohibitive. That cost doesn't change just because there's no pilot this time.  

Unless you're talking one-way, which kinda makes sense.  But you still want the plane to be reliable enough to get to the target.  Which still costs.

Some.  Others are in storage for possible return to service.

We already have unmanned cruise missiles.  They are called cruise missiles.

Anything interesting or truly classic planes out there in the desert? I don't imagine its like a junkyard where you can just go out and walk around. Or is it?

Gone decades ago.  Even the F-4’s.

I think a lot of the 106s got expended as target drones already.

There are zero 104s, one 105, and one 106 in the AMRG inventory.

Those two are probably on celebrity row.

The one remaining is a QF-106.

Better than nothing, but purpose built unmanned aircraft are better.

The B52 lives on

I hope they don't pull them out of the Museum too save a $

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I have long thought this could be a decent idea - and not just with old aircraft.  Airforce complains that low speed support is too dangerous - Ok buy some airtractors and put robot pilots in them.  You could probably create a fairly simple drop in to do this - even more simple if the plane was already fly by wire.  Honestly, probably cheaper than making an ejection seat for one.  It does not cost all that much to put autopilot into a tractor as it is, how much more would it cost to use tech in a plane.


The real issue is bureaucracy.  You can get billions to fund a drone plane now - last thing they want is a cheaper alternative.

How much time and money do you want to throw at being able to remotely fly obsolete planes? Target drones are one thing, this is a logistical nightmare.

I work for a tier 1 aerospace provider. The cost to maintain is almost the same as a manned variant, plus you no longer have the experienced staff or supply chain to support ongoing maintenance. Hell, even some of the planes that are active today are running out of parts. I can’t tell you the number of OPRI (obsolete part re-introduction) estimates we’ve done in the last few years.

Not a great idea unless you’re desperate or just feeding the military industrial complex.

At the moment it looks like there are a ton of P-3’s, two tons of KC-135’s, bout 30 F-4’s a ton of A-4’s, a couple rows  of F-18’s, close to 40 A-10’s, a metric butt ton of A-6’s a ton of T-2’s, bout 20-F-15’s, and what appears to be over 200 f-16’s at Davis Monthan.

Bout 135 C-130’s as well.

So where are all these airplanes coming from again?

There is an F-101, F-100, a Blue Angel F-18, and an F-105, 2xF-14’s an F-8, a B-66, and a B-57 sitting around there.

But they won't have to fly them very often, right? This would cut down on the maintenance requirements.  The wouldn't likely gender a long service life in a hot way anyway, and just having them when we need them - several hundred attack aircraft or middle trucks even if for the first several days or weeks - could be a big deal.

I wonder if that is totally autonomous or is it run on ground to air telemetry?

Loyal Wingman?

That’s a lot of new turbines…. Bet GE and P&W are frothing at the idea

That becomes a loss open to discussion when it does not automatically mean the loss of 1500 or so crew with them.

So what you're saying is that my dream of a full sized fully armed A10 RC plane isn't off the table?

Have to factor in the cost of the conversion plus the cost of de-mothballing them against the total number you actually have, versus the cost of a purpose built drone.
It's great to say we have 20 of those and 30 of these but you really need to skip right to airframes you have a significant number of. It isn't going to be worth the trouble to resurrect 25 F-14s. 300 F-16s might be a different story.

The cost per flight hour and maintenance is much less of a factor because they are going to be in a "break glass in case of war state". They don't need to accumulate hours keeping pilots proficient.

I guarantee you that F-105 is no longer flyable, USAF is pissed that the Collings Foundation has both a flyable F-4D and an F-105.

Better idea would be to use them as decoys on airfields to soak up cruise missiles.

An F16 would have significantly more warhead payload, plus the onboard fuel than any other conventional missile in the inventory. Plus they're paid for.

But if you only intend to fly them once, who cares?

Do you want them to actually work when you try to use them?

And shit ranged compared to a bomber with a cruise missile.  Plus they are big as hell so they are going to be SAM bait, but at least they'll fly straight in response.

Finally, they aren't paid for as there is no system in place to use them as autonomous weapons.

So still less than the range of an ALCM after it’s dropped by a BUFF?

This is what’s known in the business as “a solution in search of a problem.”

Lol why empower Skynet that much more?

We still haven’t developed plasma rifles to punch holes in T800s yet.

For "other purposes" I've been tinkering with a similar idea. It would be very simple.

Makes you think....

In a hypothetical Okinawa first strike, I could see the usefulness of scrambling a dozen qf-16s on a one way mission loaded down with 120Ds to target H6s and AWACs and then absorb the long range PL-15s.  That would hopefully leave the manned F-15s and F-35s to mop up escorts and cruise missiles that get off.  

Then again, those manned fighters probably won't have anywhere to land when they come home anyway.

Mine was resurrected from the boneyard

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It's been done before. They used the F6F Hellcats as drones loaded with explosives to fly into Korean caves

Everything "New" was once "Old"...

See APHRODITE - using War Weary B-17s & B-24s on radio command to attack German Targets as Suicide Drones.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aphrodite

& the Germans did it with "Mistrel" of a command fighter (Bf-109 or FW-190) atop a tired old JU-88 with a enormous shaped charge warhead.



The technology of the time (WWII) was no where near what could be accomplished today

Bigger_Hammer