The Air Force has made a strong push into artificial intelligence (AI), which represents one of the largest developments in military aviation since the advent of stealth in the early 1990s.
The sun was shining in the middle of the day when an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with the distinctive roar that represents American airpower. However, this F-16 was not piloted by a human pilot; instead, it was operated by artificial intelligence, making the subsequent aerial conflict unique. Frank Kendall, the secretary of the Air Force, was seated in the front seat.
The Air Force has made a strong push into artificial intelligence (AI), which represents one of the largest developments in military aviation since the advent of stealth in the early 1990s. The agency anticipates that by 2028, an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned warplanes will be in operation, despite the fact that the technology is not yet completely matured.
It was appropriate that the dogfight happened at Edwards Air Force Base, a huge desert complex where the military has developed its greatest top-secret aeronautical innovations and where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound. A new generation of test pilots is training artificial intelligence (AI) agents to fly in combat inside top-secret simulators and structures with multiple levels of cover against monitoring. Kendall came to witness AI in action and to publicly express her faith in the technology's potential for use in air combat.
“It’s a security risk not to have it. At this point, we have to have it,” Kendall said in an interview with The Associated Press after he landed. Because of operational security concerns, the AP and NBC were allowed to see the covert flight, provided they would not report on it until it was finished.
With an AI-controlled F-16, named Vista, Kendall was able to perform quick maneuvers at over 550 miles per hour, applying pressure to his body that was five times greater than the force of gravity. It was almost a head-to-head match against another human-piloted F-16 as they raced to within a thousand feet of one another, swerving and looping to try to push their rival into weak spots.
“After the one-hour trip, Kendall emerged from the cockpit beaming. He claimed to have witnessed enough throughout his trip to be confident in this AI's ability to make decisions, including whether or not to launch weapons.”
That concept is met with a lot of resistance. More limitations on AI's usage are being sought by arms control specialists and humanitarian groups, who are gravely afraid that AI may someday be able to launch bombs that kill people on its own without additional human input.
“There are widespread and serious concerns about ceding life-and-death decisions to sensors and software,” the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned. Autonomous weapons “are an immediate cause of concern and demand an urgent, international political response.”
Security, affordability, and strategic capabilities are the main drivers behind the military's transition to AI-enabled aircraft. For example, advances by both sides in electronic warfare, space, and air defense systems will make today's Air Force fleet of costly, manned fighters vulnerable if the United States and China were to engage in combat. In addition to rapidly surpassing the United States in size, China is building up a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles.
In future war situations, the United States will be able to breach enemy defenses without putting pilots in grave danger by using hordes of unmanned American aircraft to launch an advance attack. However, money is a major factor in the change. Production delays and cost overruns of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is expected to cost the Air Force $1.7 trillion, continue to be a hindrance.
Smaller and cheaper AI-controlled unmanned jets are the way ahead, Kendall said. No other nation in the world, according to Vista's military operators, has an AI plane like it. The software aboard the jet learns from millions of data points in a simulator before putting its conclusions to the test in real flights. After that, the AI analyzes the real-world performance data in the simulator to gain additional knowledge.
China possesses AI, but it doesn't seem to have figured out how to conduct experiments outside of a simulator. Additionally, Vista's test pilots stated that some lessons are best learnt in the air, much like a junior officer learning tactics for the first time.
Until you actually fly, “it’s all guesswork,” chief test pilot Bill Gray said. “And the longer it takes you to figure that out, the longer it takes before you have useful systems.”
Only roughly two dozen AI-controlled dogfight flights have occurred since Vista's September 2023 debut. But certain AI versions being tested on Vista are now outperforming human pilots in air-to-air combat because the algorithms are picking up new skills so quickly with every interaction.
The pilots here at the base know that in some ways they might be molding future generations of pilots or training their successors.
However, they also state that if the United States did not also own a fleet of its own, they would not want to be in the air against an enemy who possesses AI-controlled aircraft.
“We have to keep running. And we have to run fast,” Kendall said.
