Manned Fighter To Face Autonomous Drone Next Year In Sci-Fi
Movie-Like Showdown:
"The Air Force is hoping to pit an autonomous drone equipped with an artificial
intelligence-driven flight control system against a fighter jet with a human pilot in a
little over a year. The service has described this effort in the past as a "big moonshot"
that could revolutionize air-to-air combat in ways that have so far been limited to the
realm of fiction - at least as far as we know.
Air Force Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, head of the Joint Artificial Intelligence
Center (JAIC), revealed that the Air Force had set the goal of holding the faceoff in
July 2021 during a remote event that the Air Force Association's Mitchell Institute for
Aerospace Studies held on June 4, 2020. The Pentagon established the JAIC in 2018
to serve as a central point of focus for AI developments and related activities across
the U.S. military.
Shanahan did not offer any details about the design of the unmanned aircraft that is
supposed to take part in this in this future aerial duel or specifics about its planned
capabilities. He did say that Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Autonomy
Capability Team 3 (ACT3), led by Steve Rogers, was still in charge of the effort, which
Inside Defense first reported the existence of in May 2018. AFRL created ACT3 that
year to focus on AI developments.
Regardless, the general concept of a fully-autonomous unmanned combat air vehicle
(UCAV) capable of air-to-air combat, as well as air-to-ground strikes, hold great
potential to fundamentally change the character of aerial warfare, something The War
Zone has explored in great depth in the past. At its most basic, a UCAV would be able
to perform many of the same functions as manned aircraft, but would be able to make
key decisions faster and more accurately, taking into account much more information
in a shorter period of time, without any concern about being distracted or confused by
the general chaos of combat. They can also be networked into swarms that work
cooperatively to maximize their combat effectiveness at any given time far beyond
what a human-piloted formation could."
See:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-like-showdown