So, what should replace the F-35?

[backscatter712]

79. A drone could have advantages.

If the pilot's a computer, or the pilot's on the ground, the plane can pull far more G's. A manned fighter is limited to what, 5-7 G's, and when you're turning that hard, the pilot's likely to pass out, which is problematic in the middle of a dogfight.

A drone fighter can pull 10, 15, 30 G's, whatever the airframe can take. The pilot's on the ground experiencing a force of 1 G. Without the weight of the human pilot, the cockpit, the canopy, the ejection seat, instrument panel, life support, etc., I imagine that a drone fighter could be much lighter, smaller, more aerodynamic, stealthy, faster...

Of course, there's the difficulties of the interface between the fighter and its human pilot on the ground - we seem to have mastered that for less demanding missions - see the Predator. Of course, for a hard dogfight, the pilot would probably want to have a 360 degree view, maybe through something like an Oculus Rift style VR headset. It would have to be super-low latency, the radio-link between ground and drone would have to be highly resistant to jamming, and have enough bandwidth to transmit a huge amount of information - camera views, radar images, instrument data. Again, the Predator seems to be able to manage this task - the Predator blowing up weddings in Yemen is being piloted from Langley.

I suspect it would be quite the engineering challenge, but it could be done.