Military Aircraft Of 2163 - A Speculative Thought Experiment

[JasonSpidey]

Hi there SecretProjects forum members,

Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm a writer by trade, and I've always had a great interest in military technology—especially military aviation. Obviously, there's a ton of great information here, and I'm really appreciative of so many of the cool stories and intriguing articles this forum has turned me on to.

I'm currently working on a fiction story set in the year 2163, and I'm trying to make it as realistic as possible. So to that end...I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts about what the military aircraft of 2163 will be like. Assume there have been no drastic changes from the way history has conducted itself over the last 150 years—no contact with aliens who share their technology with us, no apocalyptic events, no mass human extinctions or dramatic power shifts on the global political scale. (For these purposes, assume the United States, China, Russia and the European Union remain the four major hubs of military aviation development, technology and production.) Do assume, however, that technologies have continued to mature at a similar speed as they do today—for example, it's safe to assume batteries will be vastly more compact and powerful in 2163 than today.

So what will the aircraft of 150 years from now be like? Will we still have fighters and bombers and helicopters? Will our craft be manned or unmanned? Controlled by pilots or AI? What sort of weaponry will they carry? Be as detailed as you want. I want to know your thoughts.

And thanks in advance!

 

[royabulgaf]

UAVs with a lot of autonomy flying nap of the earth. Energy weapons will rule. Also, a lot of ASAT and space-to-earth weaponry. Either flying closer to the ground or trying to make a higher orbit.

 

[UpForce]

Well, think back 151 years (instead of forward) and we arrive at the days of civil war balloons, John Stringfellow, George Cayley, and perhaps things like carrier pigeons. What we have today is much more potent but not necessarily very qualitatively different as far as the very basic ideas or motivations go. Shortly thereafter (i.e. aD 1861) Jules Verne started writing some very prescient scifi. The future trajectory you have chosen may perhaps to lend itself to a somewhat similar forward projection. While the classical laws of nature remain, I think evolution of any stripe is at least somewhat unprestatable. There just needs to be an amount of consistency to any World you may create and the constraints you presented are already fairly strict for that time frame. That is okay. In any case it can only be "so" plausible, witness for example the modern interpretations of past imaginations like steampunk.

 

[cubit]

I'm thinking something combining nano-technology with practically unlimited energy densities (relative to mission duration) and AI would give a self aware fully active vehicle (think of a flying T-1000 mimetic poly-alloy (liquid metal) terminator from Terminator 2) with the ability to generate and duct surface plasmas (for active boundary layer control/temperature management) and plasma jets of required power at will. It would fire plasma beams too. Plasma beams are very cool.

 

[Lauge]

It would fire plasma beams too. Plasma beams are very cool.

They are. The only downside is that they most likely won't work (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunexotic.php#id--Plasma_Weapons).

However, if your poly-mimetic fighter can control surface plasma, it might be feasible to make the plasma lase locally, thus making the entire surface of the craft a laser emitter. Just a thought.

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg

 

[Antonio]

2163 it's very far in the future...everything you could imagine now can be far from reality. Just look at that funny predictions (for us, humans from 2012) available in the Web of "L'an 2000" and similar which were made a century and even more about fashion or technology.

Science can give us miracles, predictable technologies or just useless things. It's just a matter of fortune. (I read somewhere: "scientists/engineers promised flying cars but they gave us Tweeter")

My speculations for your aircraft:

Almost everything unmanned
Extensive use of Biomimetics on microaerial vehicles
Full AI: collaborative self learning drones with very accurate munitions. Self repairing. Low maintenance dependable machines thanks to their intelligence. Capable of operating deep into enemy territory for long time.
Consider alternative fuels and energy sources. By 2163 the only oil will come from Antarctica.
Active Stealth
Shape shifting

 

[royabulgaf]

The F-35 will have the bugs worked out and be in service ;D

 

[GTX]

Cheeky...alternatively, people will still be talking about how great the F-35 was and how they should never have been retired... ;D

 

[zen]

Military aircraft in 150 years time?


Depends on a lot of factors. Most certain is the transport, because to move people and stuff around will still require something.


AI is likely to feature, as is various 'swarm' concepts. Likely as much trying to take over or spoof the opposition over their networks as they are to try to destroy each other.


Power sources raise all sorts of possibilities, the higher the energy density the more ferocious the systems.


High end and we get into the real 'hard' sci-fi. Virtual matter, electrons forced to spin as if around nucleus (which is where all the mass is), would provide for a material that can be changed in properties as fast as a electronic switch and as light as the base structure that provides all this.


Just think how far we've come since 1862.

 

[Bill Walker]

I agree that most (if not all) combat operations will be unmanned by then, but if your plot needs a hero in the cockpit I foresee a manned vehicle as the command centre for a swarm of extremely smart AI unmanned vehicles. This gives you some interesting plot possibilities, when the one human becomes bonded to the AIs around it. Those of us in the airplane business today fully understood when Luke Skywalker got so concerned whenever R2D2 was damaged or lost.

 

[Orionblamblam]

So what will the aircraft of 150 years from now be like?

Like this:

In seriousness, I foresee two main alternatives:
1) We've made a real go of spaceflight. The population off-Earth is measured in millions. Superpowers have space-based offensive military capabilities, and thus military aircraft are a mix of the mundane, such as cargo aircraft, and the exotic, able to evade space-based weapons just long enough to do their job.
2) We haven't made a go of space, in which case the future is likely an over-populated, under-resourced dystopian craphole, with the most powerful nations on Earth barely able to muster enough energy to sneer at each other.
3) Like 2), but with the added bonus of easily produced designer super virii, so that every whackjob religious or ethnic terrorist with access to a 2100-era laptop and an Intenet connection can download the latest AIDS/ebola/smallpox/snooki plague and cook up a batch in somethign the size of a flash drive. Planetary population is measured in tens of thousands in scatted hermetically sealed bunkers. With no industrial base, nothing is flying.

 

[Matej]

Morphing shape, self-repairing structures, able to extract some sort of energy from environment, capable of atmospheric and near space (orbit) flights. There still will be a categories of aircrafts, because to create just one multipurpose platform is not effective. It never was and it never be.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Biomechanical constructs for tasks such as ISR, suprise attack, battlefield courier will be commonplace.
EW/IW techniques may make the use of most unmanned and optionally manned vehicles dangerous or impractical (such as in the Avatar timeline), resulting in a wholesale renaissance for fully manned aircraft, although AI support will still play an important role in a lot of designs.
Orbital weapons systems will be an occupational hazard, offset to some degree by aforementioned EW/IW and other countermeasures.
True aerospace designs (capable of regular operation both out of and in atmosphere) will also be common.

 

[Steve Pace]

In my humble opion military aircraft some 150 years in the future will most likely be occupied by robots - maybe even androids. As far as passenger travel goes I'm almost positive that they'll travel via pure aerospace planes. -SP

 

[circle-5]

2) We haven't made a go of space, in which case the future is likely an over-populated, under-resourced dystopian craphole, with the most powerful nations on Earth barely able to muster enough energy to sneer at each other.
3) Like 2), but with the added bonus of easily produced designer super virii, so that every whackjob religious or ethnic terrorist with access to a 2100-era laptop and an Internet connection can download the latest AIDS/ebola/smallpox/snooki plague and cook up a batch in something the size of a flash drive. Planetary population is measured in tens of thousands in scatted hermetically sealed bunkers. With no industrial base, nothing is flying.

Thank you for the positive, serene and joyful outlook. But seriously, why don't you tell us what you really think? No need to sugar-coat it. Now I think I'll go watch the Syrian channel with a whisky-Prozac to cheer myself up!

 

[zen]

More to the mix. IA, Intelligence amplification. In essence adding more to the organic mind.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Thank you for the positive, serene and joyful outlook.

Shrug. The future does not belong to the blissfully ignorant.

But seriously, why don't you tell us what you really think?

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Human society on Earth is doomed. Seriously: compare our ability to tinker with bacteria and virii today with our ability to do so fifty years ago. Now project *one* *hundred* *and* *fifty* years into the future. Even without Skynet, just a few decades from now the descendants of the iPhone will be able to dream up a design for a virus to do whatever the jerk holding it wants it to do, and plug-in biological "factories" to replicate batches of the bugs could be arbitrarily small. You think spam is bad now? Just wait until some jackass figures out how to make a retrovirus that will re-write your DNA directly to crave whatever rubbish they're selling ("Brawndo. It's what the artificially mutated crave"). Someone will get all pissy about racism and create an airborne retrovirus that'll turn everybody green, but with an unexpected side effect of virtually instantaneous blindness and explosive ass cancer. Someone else will create a virus that eats chlorophyll, just for the hell of it, so all plant life on Earth dies within a year. Someone who hates fat chicks will create a virus that make people burn through their fat... all of it. The sky is the limit on such things.

Everyone used to be afraid of global thermonuclear war; now at worst it's terrorists getting a few nukes. Losing a few cities would be undeniably bad (of course, nuke Detroit and who'd notice?), but in the long term, hardly noticable. And home-made nuclear terrorism will forever be a virtual impossibility due to the difficulty in actually producing plutonium. But bio-warfare only needs carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, some trace elements, information and the machinery to string molecules together.

Human settlements separated by enough space to make travel time meaningful for quarantining purposes might be our only real hope for long term survival. You need not imagine a James Bond supervillain; instead, some pimply high school reject who wants to one-up those Columbine chumps. The first few half-assed attempts at such biological chicanery will very likely lead to air travel becoming either a thing of the past, or so expensive and regulated that it'd be left only for the select few. Think getting fondled by the TSA is annoying *now?* Just wait until air travel requires a 24-hour quarantine before and after the flight, with blood tests before and after.

I'm sure 150 years worth of technological innovation will produce defences against this sort of thing... nanotech, force fields, fricken' magic, I dunno. But thirty or so years of defending against hackers and spammers have not eliminated hacking and spamming, and when it comes to world-ending superbugs, they only need to defeat the defenses *once.*

And then we can get into what a massively industrialized world of nine or so billion people all highly dependent upon modern tech would look like after a few glitches in the system. Jackass with an A-bomb and a missile sets off an EMP burst 100 miles over the central US, central Europe, eastern China, wherever. A nice solar flare fries the power grid over half the planet. A minor war over resources flares into an apocolyptic war over the last drops of oil. The luddites and panic mongers wipe out the nuclear power industry, and leave the world dependent upon low-density systems like wind and solar, while China burns enough coal to darken the skies of the entire northern hemisphere, and there's no more petroleum for jet aircraft, and not enough spare electricity to produce methane or hydrogen fuel, and mankind abandons powered flight to the birds.

One really good *thwack* to the global system could permanently set us back. We've drained all the easily accessible oil sources. We've dug up all the readily accessible coal. Uranium and thorium are only for those who have the industrial base to use 'em. So, a global grid crash, or a global epidemic of Black Death proportions, shuts the system down for a handfull of years... with no readily apparent way to restart it. You might have an emergency generator in your well-provisioned bomb shelter... but without gas, what use is it apart from a boat anchor?

 

[circle-5]

Wow. I need to flip a coin between blissful ignorance and enlightened torment. I should probably try to avoid living another 150 years. Thank you for the insight -- I always thought nukes were the solution to every problem, but I stand corrected.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I always thought nukes were the solution to every problem, but I stand corrected.

No, you were right the first time. Nukes can save humanity - and whatever bit of greenery and critters we decide to keep - from a biological apocalypse. By simply using nukes to get colonies the hell away from Earth *before* everything goes to pot. Now, each one of these colonies will of course face its own troubles with home-grown biological insanity, but if you have enough colonies, chances are good that some will figure out how to survive and thrive long-term. And *they* will go on to colonize the universe. And perhaps even restore Earth.

 

[Kryptid]

My thoughts: by that time, people will no longer design and build aircraft (except perhaps for hobbies). Instead, dedicated computer programs will do it all themselves. You tell the computer what kind of aircraft you need, and it designs one for you. Then it figures out a good way to build it in a factory that it controls. It only makes sense to me to use a highly-capable AI that can test its own designs at superhuman speed instead of relying on a giant team of humans to try to do some computer-assisted figuring on their own. That may be the only practical way to get around the enormous time gaps we currently have between Requests for Proposals and a completed production line of aircraft.

On top of that, I'm thinking of something along the lines of what cubit said; an aircraft that isn't just a single design, but rather one that can change itself into other designs as is needed. Consider the emerging field of claytronics. 150+ years from now, I can see it being a highly mature and proven technology that, combined with nanotechnology, could allow for practical real-time reconfiguration of planforms. Imagine if the wing sweep, aspect ratio, percent thickness, camber, dihedral, etc. could be changed at will in flight. Suddenly flight becomes much more efficient in many widely-varied regimes. If the catoms (claytronic atoms) are advanced enough, they could behave like the cells in a living organism and allow for healing when damaged. Although I'm somewhat doubtful you could build the entire aircraft out of claytronics/nanotech (extreme temperatures in the engine might always require refractory materials), it may be practical to deliver aircraft as "blocks" of claytronics that are simply programmed to take on the shape you want (engines come separately). Since catoms are computerized, the entire aircraft could also be one giant sensor/avionics suite.

I also believe that SSTO will become both practical and commonplace for civilians and military alike.

About an energy crisis...let's hope that nuclear fusion and orbital solar arrays can help us avoid catastrophe.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Instead, dedicated computer programs will do it all themselves. You tell the computer what kind of aircraft you need, and it designs one for you. Then it figures out a good way to build it in a factory that it controls.

"Robots building robots. Now that's just stupid."

Seriously, think through the consequences of that concept. If AI was good enough to replace human designers, engineers, chemists, electricians and all the rest, then there would be basically *no* job that would need humans. And thus the humans would be unemployed. And thus poor, and unable to buy a ticket on a plane, much less a plane itself.

Not saying it can't happen, just that it could be kinda... bad.

I also believe that SSTO will become both practical and commonplace for civilians and military alike.

Since robots will have replaced humans for all meaningful jobs... what humans would be going up on SSTOs?

About an energy crisis...let's hope that nuclear fusion and orbital solar arrays can help us avoid catastrophe.

"Hope."

Meh.

 

[zen]

Course none of this mattered after the Earth enjoyed another major impact, wiping out a large number of then specialised lifeforms yet again.


Apparently someone thought they saw some sort of intelligent life there just prior to impact, but hey that guy was later discredited after it was arrested for being drunk in control of a flying saucer and spent the rest of its life writing books about his experience posting flyers for rock concerts at Vega.


I mean radio....who uses radio in this arm of the galaxy?

 

[Evil Flower]

In 150 years, there will be no flying anymore, but there will be leather outfits.

 

[Kryptid]

Instead, dedicated computer programs will do it all themselves. You tell the computer what kind of aircraft you need, and it designs one for you. Then it figures out a good way to build it in a factory that it controls.

"Robots building robots. Now that's just stupid."

Seriously, think through the consequences of that concept. If AI was good enough to replace human designers, engineers, chemists, electricians and all the rest, then there would be basically *no* job that would need humans. And thus the humans would be unemployed. And thus poor, and unable to buy a ticket on a plane, much less a plane itself.

Not saying it can't happen, just that it could be kinda... bad.

I also believe that SSTO will become both practical and commonplace for civilians and military alike.

Since robots will have replaced humans for all meaningful jobs... what humans would be going up on SSTOs?

About an energy crisis...let's hope that nuclear fusion and orbital solar arrays can help us avoid catastrophe.

"Hope."

Meh.

Good or bad, I feel it's a decision we're going to have to face one day. When it comes to issues of morality vs. cost-efficiency, I don't think we can trust the militaries of the world to always choose morality. 150 years in the future, we can expect some less-than-friendly nations to possess AI as well. What if they care more about military dominance than the well-being of their population? What if they then decide to play catch-up with the western world by employing AI in the design and production of military equipment? How will we respond? Keep on trucking with human labor and hope it's good enough to stay on top?

 

[Orionblamblam]

Good or bad, I feel it's a decision we're going to have to face one day.

I don't.

More specifically, I think it's likely going to be something that creeps up on us and becomes a force to be reckoned with before we (i.e. "society") even really gives it any thought. Robotics and AI are a constantly evolving and improving field; it is simply a matter of time before there are robots that can replace virtually *everybody.*

Imagine if the US Army had access to the "NS-4" robots from "I, Robot." Capable of doing pretty much anything a human can do, capable of being mass produced and even if they are millions of dollars each, they are cheaper and easier to throw away than soldiers. So how long would it be before soldiers would become superfluous? And then we can start doing away with the officers.

In happy-chirpy sci-fi like "Star Trek," the effects of really advanced human-replacing tech is often described as "freeing" people up to achieve stuff in art, science, music, etc. But most people are worthless in art, science, music, etc. Most people can only provide for themselves by doing stuff that robots would seem to be quite capable of doing cheaper. So, what to do? Do we succumb to the nightmare of a ultimate nanny state, and let robots take over, do all the work and coddle the people? That can't end well. Or we could put limits on robots. But the chinese, say, might not, and thus a serious imbalance in technology and power would arise. Hell, you might end up with a world where China is basically depopulated of humans and turned into a Matrix-like world where the few remaining humans are in a virtual reality and the cities are giant robotic structures... and the rest of the world is a nuclear-armed camp with strict robo-limits and a serious paranoia about the monster in their midst.

 

[Evil Flower]

Hell, you might end up with a world where China is basically depopulated of humans and turned into a Matrix-like world where the few remaining humans are in a virtual reality and the cities are giant robotic structures... and the rest of the world is a nuclear-armed camp with strict robo-limits and a serious paranoia about the monster in their midst.

That was essentially the plot of [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970472/]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970472/[/SIZE]]Vexille, but there it was Japan.

 

[Orionblamblam]

That was essentially the plot of Vexille, but there it was Japan.

Reading the plot summary on Wiki, yes, that certainly sounds similar. But where "Vexille" posits your standard Evil Corporation That Does This Horror On Purpose, I'm looking towards a more gradual and non-intentional replacement of humans with machines. The growth of capability would simply make robots more and more desirable for roles currently held solely by humans.

The question then becomes whether some terrorist cranks out the Super Plague first, or whether it's some robot tired of the unemployed humans constantly throwing rocks at it.

 

[royabulgaf]

Well, I for one will welcome our new insect overlords.

 

[UpForce]

Many seem to be thinking of AI as something ... "futuristic". It's not, it's been among us for a long time (as a an idea as well) and perhaps can be regarded as intrinsic to what being (even a human) is. Your basic calculator (if you still have one) uses some rudimentary AI (agency, percept sequence, mapping) to return square roots and that's not generally regarded a feat worth awe. It's more the case of recognizing and employing intelligence and perhaps a reconsideration of what can be regarded as artificial.

Metrics such as E. J. Chaisson's energy rate density ties evolution to "inanimate" entities and all of history (as we know it for the past 13.7 billion years) as well - a reminder that while we don't generally extend "life privileges" beyond some very particular CHNOPS arrangements, that those need not be at the center of the universe of life. Also in our more constrained earthly setting people don't only become less useful (or even measurably less human) with technology, I'd say also the opposite is true at least half of the time - new opportunities, empowerment of unique human capabilities and modes of being emerge as our state space gets richer and more complex. (Witness us being able to converse here!)

I feel it's a mistake to try and steer this as a reductionist replacement process, it's imposing a directionality percept in some ways lesser than those that can be realized with and by the whole. By this I don't mean to imply that being subjective need somehow be worse, but only different and complimentary. AI is in many senses generalized intelligence and I just think most of the unease associated with it has been uncalled for and a detriment to its potential to begin with (... as in the general context, not just this discussion).

At least give equal thought to both the possibilities and the risks, even though the propensity for either might dominate in any particular mind. As AI was (perhaps inevitably) raised in the military context here due to the original enquiry, the framing may have tinted the associations darker overall than they need be. I'd say looking into AI is worth many a while, at least my exposure to it has been a sobering and positive experience, only shifting the scope of life's mysteries to areas I was less able to perceive and enjoy before.

 

[bobbymike]

With the advent of 3D printers, nanotech and more and more powerful 'home' computers I will be able to 'print' and assemble my own airplane in my garage and when I land have it disassemble back to nano dust or something.

 

[Orionblamblam]

... and when I land have it disassemble back to nano dust or something.

Why wait? I expect the FAA will help you to disassemble it back to nano dust while still in flight. "Hmmm. Seems Flight Bobbymike did not file the 14,000 pages of requisite paperwork. Cancel that flight with extreme prejudice!"

Translation: can you imagine how badly bureaucrats would freak out if aircraft could be created and flown at will, without multiple layers of regulation at each stage in the process? Any system that could be used to grow a good aircraft could be used to grow a prefectly good AK-47. That alone would assure that efforts will be made to prevent you from aquiring the tech "for your own good."

 

[bobbymike]

... and when I land have it disassemble back to nano dust or something.

Why wait? I expect the FAA will help you to disassemble it back to nano dust while still in flight. "Hmmm. Seems Flight Bobbymike did not file the 14,000 pages of requisite paperwork. Cancel that flight with extreme prejudice!"

Translation: can you imagine how badly bureaucrats would freak out if aircraft could be created and flown at will, without multiple layers of regulation at each stage in the process? Any system that could be used to grow a good aircraft could be used to grow a prefectly good AK-47. That alone would assure that efforts will be made to prevent you from aquiring the tech "for your own good."

I can buy an AK on the black market why not a nano assembler it is 150 years from now ;D

 

[Kryptid]

In that case, I imagine you would have to be licensed in order to print out certain restricted machines like aircraft or weapons. There would be restrictions on making your own designs as well, I have no doubt. If all else fails, they may just make the futuristic super-printers themselves restricted to those companies and individuals with the need for them. "You want a plane? Okay. We'll print it out and send it to you with the bill."

 

[Orionblamblam]

In that case, I imagine you would have to be licensed in order to print out certain restricted machines like aircraft or weapons.

In this case, machines would be just information. An F-16-equivalent might be 100,000,000 terabytes, which given Moore's law could probably be downloaded off the 2163 Web in half a second. So, in order to restrict "printing," Big Brother would have to restrict *data.* Governments have a hard enough time doing that today with music piracy. And of course, if you want to save your data files toa flash drive and simply hand it over to a friend, co-worker, customer or accomplice, the government can do approximately nothign to stop you. I don't see how that could much change in the future barring a completely dominating orwellian state (which is of course not exactly unforeseeable).

If all else fails, they may just make the futuristic super-printers themselves restricted to those companies and individuals with the need for them.

See how well that has worked for restricting firearms. Tell people that can't have something, that just makes 'em want it more. And it would only take one really good "printer" with the ability to self-replicate getting out of the governments control, and things will get exponentially out of hand.

 

[Kryptid]

In short, the world of 2163 will be both really awesome and really awful at the same time!

Back to the airplanes, I believe we will have things by then which are difficult to predict. If we are lucky enough to find a way to manipulate the Higgs field by then, we might not even need wings to fly (make the plane extremely lightweight by reducing its mass and fly on body lift/thrust alone). Regardless, I firmly believe that we will develop increasingly adaptive aircraft (both in terms of planform and payload) as time progresses.

 

[Orionblamblam]

If we are lucky enough to find a way to manipulate the Higgs field by then, we might not even need wings to fly (make the plane extremely lightweight by reducing its mass and fly on body lift/thrust alone).

Maybe.

Keep in mind, we are *fifty* years beyond having a good grasp on how to make a nuclear powered airplane... and we're nowhere near doing it. This is because it's really expensive and really dangerous. An anti-gravity aircraft might be equally understood in 2163... and equally non-existent, and for similar reasons. Might cost the equivalent of a trillion dollars per unit, and while it makes flying on antigravity possible, it builds an "event horizon" around the craft where the tidal forces build up so fast that all the nuclei of atoms in air molecules are shredded, making the craft a massive emitter of hard radiation. So, yeah, you'll float, but if you try to land it, you'll be setting down in a pool of radioactive lava.

 

[Michel Van]

my mustard to the topic


Option A

India new quantum leap in aeronautics
HAL Vimana from Hindustan Aeronautic Limited.
It's use a magenetoplasmadynamic thruster superconductor drive, embedded in silica-carbon fuselage covered with monomolecular skin of nacre
Powered by by small superconductor battery, it's capable for several intercontinental fights or SSTO mission


Option B

EADS Dominator b
one of last build aircrafts during Resource wars of 2163 aka Worldwar VII
the Dominator b is based on last possibly on technology and build from only resource available.
the fuselage is build from steel, powered by a ethanol fueled jet-engine Atar-NEO 101E. it last of it's kind.
Instruments are newest level of neo-analog technology, replacing digital hardware, impossible to manufacture any more...

explanation:
it simple, how farther you look in future, more possibility come up and prediction get fuzzy
even a 50 year look in future of Aerospace 2062 is hopeless to use, if you look back 50 years in past "future" of 1962
every one expected that in 2000, we fly with supersonic atomic powered Airliner in 75 minute from one corner to other corner of the World
it not happened ! Why ?
to blame: mostly politics, financing and possibility on technology
in Option A it's India who take the lead in technology in 22 century, by using there knowledge by inventing new materials who replace rare raw materials.
in Option B mankind fights over last resource available: scrap yards and dumps fields
I guess the future of 2163 aerospace lies some were in between option A and B...

 

[robunos]

If we are lucky enough to find a way to manipulate the Higgs field by then, we might not even need wings to fly

I think the ability to manipulate the Higgs field would itself make an extremely effective weapon...I foresee a 'Higgs Beam'. Point at the target, there would have to be some form of 'focussing' arrangent, to make sure it is only effective at the desired range, and activate the Higgs Field neutraliser. Target dissolves into a cloud of relativistic sub-atomic particles.
Or a 'Higgs Bomb'. A Higgs Field neutraliser placed next to, or surrounded by, a decent amount of matter. Something with lots of nucleons, uranium, perhaps? At the moment of 'detonation', the Higgs Field neutraliser, focussed on the accompanying matter, activates, result as above, the resultant particle decay, anihilations, absorption, etc, will surely ruin the targets whole day...


cheers,
Robin.

 

[Dragon029]

I'm not sure such a thought experiment could yield anything near what will exist then:

In the coming decades, it is predicted that we will encounter a technological / computational singularity; it may not be until late in the century, but once it does happen, it has the potential to begin a new era in human development.

If we either don't have that singularity, or other aspects of our civilisation limit it (energy, manufacturing, materials, etc), and we follow a somewhat linear technological progression though (and also just for my imagination to have fun):

I predict that we'll only really need 3 or so different types of aircraft; we could have many more, but they'd just be variants of the same type of aircraft:

1. Heavy lift - probably a VTOL, using re-directed thrust and new materials to make it happen efficiently enough. Powered by some form of jet propulsion, with low-level (but more significant than anything today) ion / plasma airflow modifiers; allowing for variable airfoils and controlling engine air intake without any of the mechanics.

2. Ground attack - Scramjet-based propulsion, with secondary, fusion-powered, ion/plasma thrusters for loitering. Primary armament consists of a number of smart kinetic / chemical / nuclear missiles, themselves capable of "basic" ELINT operations and loitering. Secondary armament consists of a 'low-powered' maser for where excessive force is not needed (can be used for crowd control, or the elimination of individuals).

3. Anti-air / fighter - most costly type; propelled via rocket/scramjet + plasma thrusters / airflow manipulators; powered by multiple high-output fusion generators which also provide power to multiple free-electron-laser turrets, designed to eliminate enemy aerospace vehicles as soon as they enter direct line of sight. Also carries extreme-stealth drones which can use metamaterials to re-route FEL radiation beyond the horizon; the invisible pawns of queens.

But really, everything I said other than that first paragraph was rubbish; by 2163, our military spaceplanes will be unrecognisable. Maybe they'll be swarms of nanobots, maybe they'll be hypersonic rockets, maybe they'll use beam weapons, maybe they won't have any weapons themselves at all, instead relying completely on subordinate vehicles.

If a singularity takes place, we can accommodate it, and we can develop benign learning programs (not AI, which can have their own interests), then perhaps we could even possibly on the brink of post-physicality by then. Scary thought, but one very much achievable under an optimistic, exponential development rate.

 

[bobbymike]

Can a 'printed' aircraft be that far off:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-07/working-assault-rifle-made-3-d-printer