AI Has Crept Its Way Into Aerial Combat

After multiple incidents with it on the roads, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made its way into fighter jets and passed a trial dogfight. Should we be concerned?

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program has achieved the first-ever in-air tests of AI algorithms autonomously flying an F-16 against a human-piloted F-16 in within-visual-range combat scenarios. DARPA is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.

It has reportedly been exploring integrating AI into fighter jets to improve pilots’ capabilities in aerial combat. In flight, the ACE AI algorithms controlled a specially modified F-16 test aircraft known as the X-62A, or VISTA (Variable In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft), at the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, where all demonstrations of autonomous combat maneuvers took place in 2023 and are continuing in 2024.

“Being able to trust autonomy is critical as we move toward a future of warfare involving manned platforms fighting alongside unmanned systems,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Dan Javorsek (Ph.D.), ACE program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office (STO). “We envision a future in which AI handles the split-second maneuvering during within-visual-range dogfights, keeping pilots safer and more effective as they orchestrate large numbers of unmanned systems into a web of overwhelming combat effects.”

Later this year, United States Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall plans to climb into a modified F-16 trainer and take to the skies above Edwards Air Force Base in California. A safety pilot will join him, but if all goes as planned, neither will touch the flight controls — instead, AI algorithms will do the flying.

Kendall wants to witness one of the AI versus human dogfights that DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution, or ACE, program began conducting last year together with the Air Force Test Pilot School. In September, AI “agents”, meaning software written to autonomously carry out a specific task, for the first time piloted the modified trainer, designated the X-62A VISTA, against a conventionally piloted F-16.

“I want to get a sense of how the autonomy actually functions and get some feedback of how far that technology has come,” Kendall told reporters at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

AI’s Controversy

AI made waves, the ambitious billionaire embedded into his electric vehicles. Essentially hands-free, the car self-drives while the driver is “given the license”” to place his/her focus somewhere else.

This technology landed Tesla in hot water after its Autopilot and Full Self Driving got the brand into trouble for fatal crashes. The real earthshaker was Tesla settling the lawsuit — a crash that killed an Apple engineer in 2018.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reportedly examined at least 956 crashes in which Autopilot was initially reported to have been in use. The agency separately launched more than 40 investigations into accidents involving Tesla automated-driving systems that resulted in 23 deaths.

This similar technology by Ford is the latest to get into trouble with the same troubles. Federal investigators have launched a probe into Ford’s hands-free Advanced Driver Assistance System, Blue Cruise, involving two fatal incidents involving Ford Mustang Mach E models fitted with the technology.

The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) will establish to what extent Blue Cruise was involved in the accidents and “evaluate the system’s performance of the dynamic driving task and driver monitoring.” Both accidents took place in San Antonio, Texas and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

A Mustang Mach E operating Blue Cruise ran into a stationary vehicle, causing one fatality in Texas and two in Pennsylvania. The real question is: should humans trust a software to make quick and informed decisions based solely on algorithms? When it concerns safety, the risks and damages that accompany them are irreversible.

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