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Cheap and cheerful

The cost of high technology can be staggering.

One only has to look at the price of modern "state of the art" aircraft to see the massive price-tags that such technology carries, and nowhere are those prices higher than in the area of military aviation.

Modern fighter aircraft cost far more than just an arm and a leg -- they can cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars a pop. Then there are the operational costs which also accumulate at an eye-watering rate.

Depending on configuration, equipment and exactly when it was made, the USA's latest manned fighter, the F-22 Raptor, costs as much as US$412 million a pop!

Add the US$6 million cost of training a pilot to sit in the thing, then the US$65K per hour cost of operation and you can see that this is spendy territory!

However, always keen to fill a niche, the US company Textron has been quietly working on a much cheaper alternative to the USA's existing military fighter inventory.

The Textron Scorpion seems to be an attempt to Volkswagonise the concept of manned fighters and thus save the US military a fist-full of dollars.

As well as a much lower capital cost for each aircraft, the operational costs of the Scorpion are said to be just 1/10th of those for the ubiquitous F16 fighter, facts that could significantly slash the costs associated with relatively low-risk missions such as domestic border and maritime security.

The Scorpion was developed entirely without any government funding and is a joint venture between Textron, who also own Cessna, and (believe it or not) E-Z Go golf carts (no, I'm not kidding).

Unfortunately, many commentators are predicting that the US government will show little interest in this new budget craft -- mainly because of the huge amount of lobbying power (and "ownership of government") that the incumbent defense contractors have.

There is already plenty of speculation as to exactly how the USAF could justify sticking with its existing contractors and ignoring this low-cost option. A move to unmanned "drones" for combat is suggested as the most likely objection that could be raised.

Chances are that the Scorpion's biggest customers will not be the US Defense Department but the airforces of other countries who will almost certainly see this craft as a viable alternative to the far more expensive offerings currently on the table.

The USAF's view that the age of the manned fighter is almost over is an interesting one and something that has already sparked strong debate.

While it's true that unmanned fighters can be cheaper, more agile, offer better performance and eliminate the risks to the pilot -- there are potential problems which I think will ankle-tap any moves to take the man out of the plane.

Firstly, these drone fighters will almost certainly rely very heavily on satellite communications to provide the link between pilot and aircraft. This could make them very susceptible to electronic countermeasures that might disrupt that link. In the case of a war with China, those countermeasures could also include the use of "satellite killers", a weapon that China has already demonstrated as being part of its military arsenal.

Having such a massive single point of failure in your ability to wage aerial warfare would be a massive military risk and one that I doubt the USA will be prepared to take. The alternative is to hand over all control to onboard artificial intelligence. Anyone who's watched the Terminator movies will realise that this approach is also not without its dangers ;-)

So it will be incredibly interesting to watch and see how the US government and its rich defense contractors stave off attempts by some private upstart to muscle in on the fighter market. The results could be incredibly revealing in respect to the relationships between private-industry money and those who make decisions within government.

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