Farmer.

This is coolbert:

Farmer = NATO code name for MiG-19.

The Russians do it. The Chinese do it too.

Used and obsolete warplanes converted to drones. Mission apparently SEAD. Suppression Enemy Air Defense.

Chinese J-16 warplane given new life.

"China shows off drones recycled from Soviet-era fighter jets"

Article from defensenews.com By Mike Yeo Oct 20, 2021.

"MELBOURNE, Australia – China has for the first time showed off retired 1950s era fighter jets that have been converted to unmanned drones, with satellite photos of two of its east coast bases near Taiwan showing a large number of the jets on site."

"The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command published the photos of two Shenyang J-6s on its Weibo social media account during a post about the ceremony marking the start of the training cycle for the second half of 2021 for a training brigade."

[....]

"The J-6 is a Chinese copy of the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19 interceptor, whose manned version was officially retired from PLAAF service in 2010. By that time, the type was regarded as obsolete by all measures, with the basic J-6 not even equipped with a radar."

[....]

"Reports emerged from 2013 that China had converted the type into unmanned aircraft, for use either as a decoy to overwhelm adversary air defenses by their sheer numbers or as a rudimentary unmanned combat aircraft."

Russians in the current Ukraine Conflict already using aged, expendible and rather used An-2 single-engine transport aircraft as drones to divert Ukrainian air defenses.

Read that wiki entry the SEAD mission. Called "Wild Weasel" in the American context. Go volunteer if you are game. Better to have the robot do the same?

coolbert.