I’m curious how much extra a fighter/bomber/attack aircraft weighs in order to accommodate its onboard crew. It’s hard for me to estimate this based on currently existing aircraft. Example, a Predator drone maxes out at 2250 pounds, but in comparison to other combat aircraft it’s got very limited payload, range, speed, power and g-load limits. The closest manned combat aircraft I could think of was the P-51, but even that has much higher performance in all categories.
If I wanted to build an aircraft with capabilities similar to that of the Predator - but I wanted to have a pilot on board - how much more would it have to weigh? Compared to the Predator, the telemetry unit comes off, but now I’m adding a dashboard full of readable instruments and controls, an environmental control system, a seat with an ejection system, and the extra capability of the aircraft that’s necessary to bear all this stuff aloft. So what’s all that extra crap weigh?
Ok, you have a seat, controls (stick and rudder, throttle, etc), oxygen system, most of the cockpit instruments, alarms and buzzers, any armor added for pilot protection.
I would guess a ton or more weight plus millions of dollars in gear. OTOH, a lot of that gear may still be needed, but configured in other ways.
The Predator’s flight performance isn’t all that far off from WWI biplanes in terms of weight, speed, and service ceiling.
I’d guess that it’s probably not a whole lot- the weight of an ejection seat, maybe some kind of air compressor for the pilot’s air supply, and whatever an instrument panel & it’s hookups into the avionics weigh.
I’m thinking it would be relatively substantial overall. The difference between a QF-4 and an F-4E is close to 11000 lbs difference between loaded and empty weight and that doesn’t include payload or fuel. That does include everything else to turn and burn including a crew of two. Assume 250 lbs apiece for each crew member and his/her personal kit, 150 lbs for each ejection seat, roughly 100 lbs for instruments and wiring, and about the same for O2 (either OBOGS or LOX). The rest (crew controls, ladders, g-suit system, etc) would likely net about the same whether you were using meat or digital controllers). You might save about 1000 lbs but you also have to consider that you will have to maintain your c of g and moments to preserve the same handling characteristics. That’s why the QF-4 has about the same mass as the radar and a bunch of other systems have been replaced with ballast to keep those parameters.
The predator is a bad basis for comparison. It’s not a fighter jet, not designed for anything like that. It’s a small, relatively stealthy air truck with a few missiles that’s designed to be able to loiter. A drone designed to be a fighter from the ground up would be dramatically different.
A better comparison might be between the MQ-9 Reaper (Predator’s bigger brother) and a modern prop-powered light ground attack aircraft like the Super Tucano. Both can carry similar payloads, but the Super Tucano is about a ton heavier when empty. The Reaper has more range and endurance, while the Super Tucano has higher speed and presumably is a lot more maneuverable. My WAG is that most of the extra weight of the Super Tucano is in its bigger engine and sturdier air frame, but a fair portion of that one ton difference will be for the pilot.
A designed manned aircraft would have lesser performance than an identical designed unmanned version. More mass in the manned version would reduce range, acceleration, altitude, maneuverabity, payload, etc.
It’s a hard question to answer, because whether an aircraft is manned or unmanned is a fundamental design choice (with optionally manned defaulting to manned design). It is not really a realistic thing to ask how much weight it would take to add a pilot to an unmanned vehicle: it’s like asking how much adding three tires to a unicycle would cost. The answer of course, is that if you wanted a four-wheeled unicycle, you would design a car, not bastardized unicycle.
Take one example of an optionally manned aircraft:
I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet you anything that if you wanted to fly this airplane unmanned, you’d have to put some type of ballast in the cockpit to preserve weight and balance. The weight savings of flying it unmanned are probably quite modest.
It is a war plane, forget about pilot safety and you can do a lot. it is all the 'get the pilot back and the plane back that costs so much $$$ & weight.
Look at the space program. If humans were not so ego driven and thinking they are so important that they have to ride along and have to be as sure as they can be that they will get back that we waste 90% of the $$$ doing that part.
Make it 60/40 that they can get back and 60/40 that they will be unharmed if they do get back and make the mission 100% even if you have to sacrifice the ego driven idiot that thinks they just have to go along.
We have the Tech, bigger, faster, stronger, we can do this, oops, I really liked the 6 million Dollar man as a kid…