Phantom menace returns as a drone

Danger Room:

Armed Predator and Reaper drones have become the primary weapons in the fight against Pakistani militants. But they can be pricey; the Reapers come in at around a hundred million dollars each. Which is why the Air Force is working on a cheaper option: killer zombies.

Visit Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, and you'll see rows upon of obsolete F-4 Phantom II aircraft – or at least their gutted carcasses. This is the Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Center or AMARC -- whatever you do, don't call it the Boneyard. For many years, it has been common practice to resurrect these deceased planes as QF-4 unmanned drones, so that they can have a brief and undignified existence as "full-scale aerial targets." Everything in the inventory -- from Sidewinder missiles to Patriots -- have been tested on one at some point, even though some find it "kind of hard to shoot at such a magnificent aircraft."

Some 230 Phantoms have been through this resurrection process since 1995. It costs about $800,000 U.S. per aircraft. The tail and wingtips are painted orange to they can be easily distinguished from manned aircraft. Typically they are flown several times. Not all tests need to end in the plane being shot down, and there is an onboard scoring system to determine how close a warhead came. Up to six QF-4s can be flow together remotely by computer, maintaining tight formation using GPS. (Hey, how about a robotic version of the Blue Angels?)

But earlier this year, the zombie fleet got a new twist (see photo): one of them fired a modified High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile.

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Could this become more than a mere experiment. Well, the idea of attacking enemy air defenses with a drone seems like a life-saver. Doing it with a QF-4 drone sounds like a money-saver, too. Those HARM missiles cost over $300,000 each. If you have four of them on a QF-4, the whole package comes out to $2 million or so. That's a small fraction of a Reaper's price tag.

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The economics of it make sense, and the old Phantoms are like to get the radar sets turned on so the HARM missiles can do their job. The operating costs may be higher particularly in getting the Phantom to the battle space, but it is an interesting idea. They could probably do the same thing with F-15's that have been withdrawn from service because of structural problems.

I think that drones will be an important aspect of air warfare well into the future. We are just in the early days of their development. I have compared it to the bi-planes of World War I.