Drones are becoming more and more common and in military aviation they represent a great level of strategy for wars. Unmanned aerial vehicles, as they are also known, represent what should be the future of military aviation, they are cheaper and human lives are not lost.
When a drone is built, a whole study is done, but there have been attempts to turn an F-16 Fighting Falcon into a drone. The idea of this in 2010, when he created the QF-16 (Q = acronym for drone).
The purpose was to have F-16 targeting drones shot down by AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. The F-16 is easy to become a drone as its fly-by-wire feature helps.
Boeing video showing details:
Boeing also participated in the project and equipped them with $1,9 million worth of Peculiar Drone Equipment, including an automatic flight system that triggers takeoffs and landings at the press of a button.
Soon they are sentenced to Tyndall's "death row" lane. They perform elaborate maneuvers (barrel rolls, S-curves), mimicking what enemies might do in battle, until they are shot down and sink to the bottom of the ocean.
the AI software “Skyborg” of the Air Force, intended to act as an R2-D2 for a pilot on a manned plane or a computer wing on a separate, unmanned plane, could also be retrofitted to the QF-16.
In this year of 2010 around 32 QF-16s flew over the Gulf of Mexico as elusive moving targets until they were shot down.
Sources: Wired and PopularMechanics
