The Loyal Wingman drone, pictured above, is controlled by a human fighter pilot who instructs the drone's AI to perform specific tasks. Boeing
NBC: Military AI vanquishes human fighter pilot in F-16 simulation. How scared should we be?
Artificial intelligence can master difficult combat skills at warp speed, but the Pentagon’s futurists must remain mindful of its limitations and risks.
From the outside, the simulated aerial dogfight the Pentagon held two weeks ago looked like a standard demonstration of close-up air-to-air combat as two F-16 fighter jets barreled through the sky, twisting and diving as they sought an advantage over the other. Time and time again the jets would “merge,” with one or both pilots having just split seconds to pull off an accurate shot. After one of the jets found itself riddled with cannon shells five times in these confrontations, the simulation ended.
From the inside, things seemed very, very different.
“The standard things we’re trained to do as a fighter pilot aren’t working,” lamented the losing pilot, an Air Force fighter pilot instructor with the call sign Banger.
That’s because this wasn’t a typical simulation at all. Instead, the U.S. military’s emerging-technologies research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, had staged a matchup between man and machine — and the machine won 5-0.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: Concerned or not the US Air Force is already embracing this future .... Air Force’s ‘Skyborg’ Robotic Wingman Will Revolutionize How Air Warfare Is Waged—And How Weapons Are Bought (Forbes).
