Dogfighting will be lost for the same reason the SR-71 was retired: New technologies came along that superseded them. Doesn't matter if you can dogfight if you disable the vehicle with a laser from the ground (future) or you can overwhelm it with surface-to-air missiles (now).
An aircraft is now just a mobile long-range weapons platform.
>An aircraft is now just a mobile long-range weapons platform.
That same type of thinking was prevalent in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Its failings ultimately led to the creation of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, more commonly known as TOPGUN.[1]
Positive target identification sometimes requires closing within visual range of the target. As long as there's still a human in the cockpit, the necessity of pilots being trained and equipped for dogfighting will persist.
Even then, there's still going to be dogfighting in a sense, because one of the foremost advantages of autonomous figher aircraft is their ability to execute high-G maneuvers far in excess of what humans can tolerate.
"Dogfighting" has subtly changed its meaning along the years. What it's always meant, however is situational awareness of the pilot enabling maneuver to tactically advantageous positions to prosecute successful attacks. I don't think that's ever going to go away, whether or not pilots are sitting in the cockpit or if the weapons are guns, missiles, or lasers and particle beams.
My point here is that whether or not they ever actually wind up sending some trainees up against a drone, the claim is so absurd that one wonders why they bothered saying it: of course this research is for making fighter drones which can be used in combat, a five-year old child (who reads the NYT and is a prodigy) could see this.
Still, it's interesting to see the progressive powerlessness of fighter pilots and open testing of fighter drones.
