With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of U.S. airpower. But the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence, not a human pilot. And riding in the front seat was Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.
AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning for an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned warplanes, the first of them operating by 2028.
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The military’s shift to AI-enabled planes is driven by security, cost and strategic capability. If the U.S. and China should end up in conflict, for example, today’s Air Force fleet of expensive, manned fighters will be vulnerable because of gains on both sides in electronic warfare, space and air defense systems. China’s air force is on pace to outnumber the U.S. and it is also amassing a fleet of flying unmanned weapons.
Not if this is one of the first experimental f-16s.
True, but I wasn’t speaking of just this plane, but all planes and AI assisted flight in general.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Then no, absolutely not.
Those aren’t figured out for any vehicle; ai assisted driving is a very new technology, and it’s old compared to AI assisted flight.
We still encounter edge cases with human-controlled flight and we’ve been doing that for over 120 years.
Tru dat
Wow.
Time flies.