US could convert old planes to increase drone fleet

 Popular Mechanics:

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Aircraft sent to the Boneyard are typically retired after something better comes along; F-16s at the base have been replaced by newer F-16s, or even F-35As.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.
...

It is an interesting idea that could increase the US drone fleet at relatively low cost with some superior craft.