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Manned fighter to face autonomous drone next year
- ape4 6y agoThe drone can take way more G-force.
- dghughes 6y agoSo can a missile.
- baddox 6y agoAnd missiles tend to fair well in combat against manned aircraft.
- saberdancer 6y agoUntil it is jammed.
- analognoise 6y agoA missile isn't generally reusable - they're designed to operate at a region of performance within their engines that would not even allow for sustained flight. If it only has to "live" for a few minutes, you can get a LOT more performance out of it, which is exactly what they're designed around. But it's a trade-off. You could invest in a (practically) infinite supply of global capable missiles to be launched from the literal center of America, and to get 24 hour coverage you just launch one every 30 minutes. But that's extremely expensive and stupid. But a missile which is carried to be closer to the battle can be smaller, and cheaper. Then you need some kind of vehicle to get it there. This kind of thing is that vehicle.
- Etheryte 6y agoJust as a heads up, at least on mobile, the site hijacks your back button.
- thepangolino 6y agoWorks fine on Safari mobile.
- dsun179 6y agoYes. Hijacked on chrome android.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- BatFastard 6y agoLets just hope the entrenched pilots don't find some way to handicap the drone's ability to keep it "fair". Why the US is spending a trillion dollars on the F-35 program is an exercise in pork politics.
- casefields 6y agoWhatever happens, I bet it ends up like the Millennium Challenge. Contested, with both sides claiming victory with caveats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
- analognoise 6y ago100% think this is the way this is going to go. For a year or two. Finally the fly boys will realize they're totally outmatched and that the F35 will be our last fighter. In my wildest dreams it gets cancelled and a bunch of smaller defense companies spring up to bring prices way down and competition in the space increases. Then overall defense spending goes down and we get more money for services - while being still being armed to the absolute teeth.
- mbrodersen 6y agoThe USAF will do everything in its power to keep human pilots in the loop. It would take a credible opponent (Russia/China) switching to drones and/or a third world oil country putting up a real fight with drones to change that.
- arthurcolle 6y agoStealth is a 2005 movie that explores this concept. It didn't do too well in the box office but I definitely enjoyed it although the AI is a little forced. It looks like the drone in question here is the following (quoted from Aerospace Testing International), also mentioned in the linked source: 'The “fighter-sized” 5th Generation Aerial Target (5GAT) is 12.2m (40ft) long, a 7.3m wingspan and a maximum gross weight of 4,350kg (9,600lb). It is designed to be launched and landed using a conventional runway. The drone features two afterburning jet engines and a 95% carbon fiber airframe.' It seems to be designed specifically to stress test our own flights as target practice and doesn't seem like it's actually going to be going into combat anytime soon.
- cheschire 6y agoIf you enjoyed that, be sure to check out Macross Plus. The rivalry is between a traditional pilot and pilot who controls using a neural interface. A little less hand wavey than what sci-fi thought AI was 15 years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macross_Plus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macross_Plus
- cellularmitosis 6y agoI love how Macross Plus was inspired by the real-life rivalry between Northrop's YF-23 and Lockheed's YF-22, competing in the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23
- arthurcolle 6y agoI have a hard time getting into animated stuff but I'll definitely try to download a decent quality version of it and watch it. Sounds like its right up my alley! Since this was created in 1994 and Stealth was created in 2005, I'm wondering how you arrive at your third sentence! Haha :)
- cheschire 6y agoI was referring to Stealth, which attempts to depict AI 15 years ago. Macross Plus being much older doesn't attempt to get into AI for the opponent, and instead uses something a little more down to earth at the time which was neural interfaces.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago"[AI] would be able to make key decisions faster and more accurately" That's a statement nobody here will have problems to accept right? I expect nobody can think of any example that makes "more accurately" a problematic claim.
- casefields 6y agoSame stuff we heard with the early self-driving vehicle evangelists. Spoiler. It's much harder than they portrayed.
- nbardy 6y agoI don't think that's the case at all with flight vs vehicles. Autonomous driving is complicated because you have to take into account a wide range of scenarios and wide range of human behaviors, and a complex environment to understand. And then make very fuzzy choices on how to react to those scenarios. Combat is a simpler zero sum game, pick and target and destroy. Based on how AI plays top games right now(Starcraft and Dota), very fast quick reflexes and pin point accuracy of their attacks I think the AI drones are going to crush humans.
- blackoil 6y agoIMO the stakes are different. Often quoted is self driving cars must be 10x safer then humans before society accepts them. For drones we'll take 10% worse performance, we are OK to some extant of misfires particularly in a remote village in a 3rd world country. If drones cost 1/10 of a plane it will be a obvious answer for any general.
- 1e-9 6y agoIt seems like an entirely valid statement. AI can certainly make faster decisions than a human and it can utilize accurate 6DoF calculations and multi-sensor fusion that humans can only roughly approximate in an intuitive way during battle. I'm sure there will still be areas where humans will be better, such as analyzing complex visual information or predicting high-level reasoning of an enemy pilot, but I see human-versus-drone encounters as a clear loser for human pilots in the relatively near term.
- cheez 6y agoAny chance these have already been in testing and account for UFO sightings recently declassified?
- simonh 6y agoThe recently declassified 'UFO' sightings have been pretty thoroughly debunked as spurious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs&t=986s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs&t=986s
- cheez 6y agohmmm, so trained pilots misclassified a bird?
- simonh 6y agoTurns out humans are fallible, even expert one. If we assume a very, very tiny chance that a trained pilot will misidentify a target, multiply that by the millions of hours of pilot flight time in the US military, and out pop some rare extreme outliers on a fairly regular basis. But that isn't even speculation. We know the pilots misunderstood what they were seeing, because the telemetry data refuting their misunderstanding is right there on the recording. To argue their case though, how often does the target tracking system they were using pick up a bird? They may never have seen it do something like that before, and may not even have known it was possible. Also it's one thing for a knowledgeable expert to calmly review and decode the telemetry data at a desk, but the pilot was a little busy also flying an airplane at the time.
- cheez 6y agoBut it could be a UFO from alpha Centauri!!!! Just kidding, I gotcha.
- saberdancer 6y agoIf you are talking about navy videos like tictac and gimbal, those videos are probably showing ordinary things through IR camera which makes it look strange. Gimbal videos is even named "gimbal" as the effect seen in the video is cause due to gimbal rotation. I'm sure US has some kind of secret programme, but I doubt they released the videos showing their own top secret programme. It's much more likely that they released it to throw a bit of a smokescreen and cause their peers like China to expend resources trying to research it. They are releasing some kind of strange patents as well, that seem to be type of pseudoscience which could be a similar play.
- IdontRememberIt 6y agoWhen I am watching Battlestar Galactica or most of the other scifi, I am always puzzled to see that the scenarists never take AI to fully operate a spaceship (piloting during landing/takeoff, firing, targeting enemies, etc).
- akiselev 6y agoThe series starts right after the Cylons, an artificial intelligence created by humans, destroys several planets. Decades before they fought another war when the machines first rebelled. By the time BSG tolls around, any artificial intelligence is taboo and Adama refuses to even enable digital communication between ship subsystems except in one scenario where they had to hard reset all systems to flush a Cylon virus.
- leetcrew 6y agoto add to this, it's implied (or maybe stated explicitly, I forget) that one of the reasons galactica survived the initial attack is because it's an older warship without the sophisticated computer systems of the newer ships. the newer ships were trivially compromised by the cylons.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago> the newer ships were trivially compromised by the cylons. No.... Caprica six slept with Baltar who gave her access to the defense mainframe. She modified a version of the new fleet control system with the vulnerability that allowed the cylons to take over the fleet. Galactica survives because she's a museum ship and would never get the update and was built in a time where computer systems were not networked inside battlestars. Another battlestar (spoilers) survives because it was shut down and getting the upgrades.
- 013a 6y agoThere are definitely several lines which suggests that Galactica is older than most of the fleet. I recall one line where they say something about how everything is hardwired, and there's no central computer, or something. Something about how it was built during the Cylon wars, which was different than the newer ships which were built after Cylons weren't a threat so they relied on more centralized computer systems. You can both be right.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MrTortoise 6y agomost one sided fights ever. Just look at G forces. drone could have higher max speeds, higher max acceleration. fighter was designed ... what 20 years ago? Cost of drone? Cost of loss of either? total cost of ownership is vastly different. There is real cause to be very afraid.
- cheeze 6y agoYeah. I have no idea how a human would compete at all with g-forces alone. Add the fact that you no longer have to design a plane around a human and that definitely gives you a pretty hefty advantage against an f18
- chongli 6y agoWhy even put the drone in a fighter? Just put it in a SAM. AI-based guidance system with a multitude of sensors that’s been trained to defeat countermeasures. Seems difficult for a pilot to do much against that.
- United857 6y agoPerhaps cost? 1 reusable AI platform controlling multiple missiles, vs multiple expendable one. Also I'm guessing maneuverability of a fighter aircraft is much better than a SAM which is more or less ballistic.
- chongli 6y agoAlso I'm guessing maneuverability of a fighter aircraft is much better than a SAM which is more or less ballistic. Not at all. Missiles are far faster and more maneuverable than aircraft. The only chance a fighter plane has against them is with countermeasures such as chaff and flares as well as electronic countermeasures (ECM). All of these are designed to fill the missile’s tracking and guidance systems. Without them, the plane is helpless against the faster and more maneuverable missile. Missiles are also far cheaper than aircraft. There’s no need to sustain the life and health of a pilot and no need to carry fuel for return trips. This makes missiles very small and light (and thus cheap) compared to a plane.
- Zenst 6y agoIf it's like early AI logic, fly as high as possible, say 40km which turns out is a higher flight ceiling than the attacker in many instances. But the key was the missiles had a ceiling hight of say 20 km, though if launched at 40km, they would still work upon targets flying upwards and the AI logic wouldn't think of them as a threat as those missiles don't work above 20km. Though that means they can climb to that height. Also means if they fire a missile, it won't climb to hit you. Great tactic using the limitations of the missiles to your advantage. Things like that will be were a pilot will have an early edge, pushing those limits by fully understanding the mechanics of those limits and how they play out. Be that pushing a sonic boom shockwave to effect a small pursing drone. Those for unmanned autonomous system will be the achilles heal in much the same way early Chess AI was able to be beaten by humans thru not doing the obvious most logical move. But if they want to tune AI for autonomous system, then doing a FTP simulator game, running the NPC drones on a server will get you lots of unique free testing and tuning of that AI done. Be much cheaper and we get a cool game to play.
- spullara 6y agoThat doesn't sound like an AI at all. Sounds like poorly written static rules created by a human who doesn't understand what they are doing.
- nitrogen 6y agoThe goalpost of what is considered "intelligent" just keeps moving.
- Zenst 6y agoMaybe, though AI start of somewhere and will it think the missile can fly higher than it thought and change that or learn that launch altitude comes into play. But will always be some hard coded stuff, though the prospect of a drone learning the laws of physics does intrigue me.
- amphitoky 6y agogot more info on those chess games?
- 4636760295 6y agoSounds like someone just made a huge pile of cash by selling magic computer codes to the government. Your tax dollars at work.
- taftster 6y agoI mean, yes. That's how it works. It sounds like you're implying that this is a bad thing, a waste of tax dollars and government spending. I can assure you, there are plenty of other things that the US Gov has wasted money on, probably quite a few more egregious than this. So even if you believe this was wasted spending, at least that money will hopefully go back directly to the US economy. The military generally prefers to "buy American" when possible, so hopefully at least this tax payer money is flowing back to the country at some level.
- 4636760295 6y agoI would be less bothered by it if someone was building something other than killing machines. And I really don't care what flag someone waves, nationalism is dumb.
- varjag 6y agoPlenty people build something other than killing machines. And not caring about it is a convenience perspective, afforded by circumstance of living in a well-defended nation.
- 4636760295 6y agoThat's what they want you to think. The war machine is a jobs program, but they could just as easily spend the same money on something more useful like infrastructure projects or social programs.
- RaptorJ 6y agoWell, you're both right. In that the purpose of all this military spending is to make the world safe for Dow, Exxon, and US Fruit, and people who live in the imperial core get cheaper prices because of it.
- ourmandave 6y agoI've seen a lot of AlphaZero chess replays where a move seems weak. But when you run the lines it's a really sneaky trap or very strong combo. I hope for Maverick's sake aerial combat and chess are two different things.
- Jugurtha 6y agoI guess they'll be very careful with the objective function, not to produce a Kamikaze drone: - Drone: Less than $10 million. - Fighter: Almost $100 million and human on board. It's not far stretched to treat the drone as a new type of missile. Air-to-Air, Air-to-Surface, Surface-to-Surface, Surface-to-Air, and the new generation: Anywhere-to-Anywhere missile.
- saltedonion 6y agoI don’t see how this will work in a real battle. If the ai is fully self contained with no communication to central command, then it’s like a dumb missile. Once you press fire, you’ve lost control. If the drone does require connectivity to central command, then shouldn’t it be fairly easy to jam this signal?
- varjag 6y agoRadio spectrum is vast, and you need to focus your jammer energy on the narrow bands used in actual communication. Frequency hopping makes that non-trivial, and that's before you consider directed beams and satellite uplinks.
- saltedonion 6y agoVery interesting
- stoneman24 6y agoIn addition to frequency hopping, there are spread spectrum techniques to smear the signal across a wider range of frequencies with lower energy in each frequency. Once asked permission to switch on military radio on a project, the answer was “go ahead, we’ll never notice”
- _0ffh 6y agoThat was really just a question of time. Wait a few decades, and see the first warships specialised for carrying drones and missiles (which are essentially kamikaze drones) exclusively.
- rrmm 6y agoThey have them basically just missile frigates with new dispensers.
- _0ffh 6y agoThey will probably need a runway, for landing at least.
- rrmm 6y agoI can think of ways around that, but depends on what sort of missions you want to optimize for I guess.
- _0ffh 6y agoWell, yeah, you could do vertical landing or water landing. Both have precedent, but water landing probably implies craning the drones on board, which is slow. Vertical landing on the other hand might work well. You'd still need a flight deck for that, but a much smaller one.
- rrmm 6y agoI guess something helicopter-carrier sized? I would think the main thing would be to avoid supercarrier sorts of ships. Smaller ships with similar capabilities would mean you'd be able to field more groups.
- jerrysievert 6y agoI would think that the salt from a water landing (ocean) might be prohibitive.
- nmstoker 6y agoPresumably designers are just scratching the surface jettisoning all sorts of current design assumptions that could be removed based on differences in the acceptability of loss, ability to work cooperatively and handle inhuman conditions. You can position the control systems differently, split some of them up, strengthen the airframe by binning almost everything from the cockpit & getting rid of landing gear completely. The gear adds weight and breaks holes in the structure and it's dead weight during most of the key operational tasks - instead use a cooperating "lander" drone to help it land and the risk of that failing isn't as serious without humans. The ability to act with coordination across a group of drones that the article mentions will be hard to beat unless you use a similar array of drones. Seems like the pilot in the plane can't last much longer. Now we just need to see if the budgets involved bring this into being faster than self driving cars!
- dfsegoat 6y agoRe: ditching landing gear, As I understand it, the Gremlins UAV swarm platform uses a ‘live capture’ system from to launch/recover from a C130 - no gear. You basically turn cargo aircraft into aircraft carriers. https://www.darpa.mil/program/gremlins https://www.darpa.mil/program/gremlins
- 7thaccount 6y agoMy only concern is with drones being hacked and turned against the deployer.
- JadoJodo 6y agoI have to wonder when it will switch to small, inexpensive drones instead of the larger, jet-type ones. Imagine fighting against a swarm of 10,000 drones (each with a small explosive, EMP, etc). Similar to the Fire Bats[0] in WWII. [0] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bat_bomb https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bat_bomb
- jonas21 6y agoThere was a discussion on HN a few days ago about classifying autonomous drone swarms as WMD: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23423240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23423240
- redis_mlc 6y agoMilitaries use cluster bombs and area artillery, so that ship sailed decades ago.
- throw1234651234 6y agoNever. Those things will get burnt by laser weapons if they are too small to be efficiently targeted by cannons and missiles. They also won't have range, payload for missiles with range, etc.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThey can be useful for other roles. Surveillance, ECM, flying in formation and coordinating to simulate a larger aircraft, tricking passive radar sites to go active, etc.
- throw1234651234 6y agoMainly these two out of your list - surveillance and tricking passive radar sites to go active. The former is being done today, the latter is being solved by loitering munitions that hang around until a site does go active.
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- ww520 6y agoWould an airship based carrier hosting dozens of drones cruising at high altitude become a reality?
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt's being explored. https://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2014/11/10/aircraft-based-drones-sought-by-pentagon/18779017/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2014/11/10/aircraft-ba...
- adamfeldman 6y agoLots of great content on this blog. Relevant here: "The Alarming Case of the USAF’s Mysteriously Missing Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles" https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-case-of-the-usafs-mysteriously-missing-unmanned-combat-air-vehicles https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-case...
- blarg1 6y agoFascinating!
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoWhat’s the difference between a Tomahawk cruise missile and a drone? Tomahawk is already (2015) available with reconnaissance camera and loiter mode. Is the distinction that drone can return to base, or otherwise land and be reused?
- Eridrus 6y agoA tomahawk is not an anti-air weapon.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoThat can't be the defining feature. I suspect 'drone' is a catch all term for things that don't have more specific names.
- nordsieck 6y ago> What’s the difference between a Tomahawk cruise missile and a drone? With human pilots, there is a bright line separating aircraft and missiles (although even that line wasn't completely firm - see Kamikazi attacks). Taking the pilot out of the equation, that line dissolves into a gradient. > Is the distinction that drone can return to base, or otherwise land and be reused? That's probably the most useful distinction.
- 1e-9 6y agoA Tomahawk is a drone, just not the kind discussed in this article. A Tomahawk is subsonic missile designed to attack land and sea targets. The drone they are talking about here would be able to attack land, sea, and air targets. It would be vastly more maneuverable, faster, reusable, have AI specific to air-to-air combat, and I assume it would have greater versatility in selection of its munitions during an engagement.
- kosmischemusik 6y agoThe Tomahawk is intended for a single target whereas a drone would be able to have multiple engagements. Further, the drone may not necessarily used for combat, it could be used as a decoy.
- throwaway287391 6y agoIs this incredibly obvious or did I miss the part where they specified the rules of the game? I assume they're not actually going to have the drone fire actual missiles at the manned fighter...right?
- 1e-9 6y agoHits can be simulated.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway287391 6y agoSo it's basically laser tag in the sky? Neat. Is it more or less a perfect simulation or is it just enough to get an idea?
- 1e-9 6y agoI would expect them to use statistical models to estimate probability of kill given the state of the target, drone, and environment at the time of a simulated weapon firing. Certainly not perfect, but you probably won't find many test pilots willing to have a live missile fired at them. Instructors are able to judge pilot effectiveness from simulated firings, so it should be good enough to evaluate a drone.
- pcstl 6y agoSeems interesting, but all I can think of right now is the video game Ace Combat 7.
- xwdv 6y agoIt will be great if in the future war is simply a function of how much money you’re willing to spend to destroy a target. Probably not much anyone can do to defend against a swarm of drones that never gets tired, never misses targets and doesn’t even care about death.
- phkahler 6y agoThis sounds like a really cool project to work on. I dont think beating a human will be terribly difficult. Ground targets? Easy for fixed targets at known location. Should such technology be created? That's question is above my pay grade. Bad guys could do things like this today so it seems prudent to work on countermeasures.
- dfilppi 6y agoIt doesn't need to be created if you don't mind being dominated by an adversary that does create it.
- vpribish 6y agoshouldn't this have happened about 20 years ago?
- gridspy 6y agoYes, but now we are talking about autonomy Predator - entered service in 1995 25 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator
- baybal2 6y agoLook how it folds out in Libya: 1. Kaftar has all fancy jet fighters from Russians, and Egyptians. $50m apiece, tear Turkish drones left, and right. 2. The government has Turkish drones, $2m apiece. By the time Kaftar's Mig inflicts a single loss, a swarm of 5 drones already bombed that Mig's airfield to smithereens. Government forces can expend all of their drones to get an enemy airfield, and they would still win the trade.
- redis_mlc 6y agoFYI: Most Russian military aircraft don't need much of an airfield - grass or gravel is fine.
- steelbrain 6y agoSource?
- kwhitefoot 6y agoNot sure where one would find definitive information on it but it seems to be 'common knowledge' that the Russian air force has to have such a capability because of the lack of development in distant parts of the country. Anyway there are videos of aircraft doing it like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVJWm0lf9v4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVJWm0lf9v4. And this one is on a proper runway but illustrates the toughness of Russian/Soviet designs: a landing gear failure where the aircraft was apparently flying again after two or three days https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a18021/su-27-landing-no-landing-gear-video/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a18021/su-27-landing... Of course the A10 can also use dirt runways.
- rimliu 6y agoАН-2 is not exactly a military aircraft.
- C1sc0cat 6y agoSo 5 drones big ones which will be sub sonic - lets say so 5x 500kg - you might do some damage - but not that much - and who Is painting the targets for the drones
- yters 6y agoSoon all our future wars will be fought by eight year old script kiddies controlling robots over the internet.
- golem14 6y agoI feel a good or maybe the best way to eke our an edge for the US, China or whoever would be to create a good simulation platform and offer a great SaaS platform, maybe like kerbal space program, and let anyone compete. Then learn from the simualations.
- hindsightbias 6y agoThey can just do what the Navy did. Get it carrier qualified and turn it into a tanker.
- graycat 6y agoAt least the one-on-one case of that battle is supposed to be a special case of differential games from R. Issacs and as in Avner Friedman, Differential Games, ISBN 0-471-28049-6.
- GhostVII 6y agoI don't really get the hype/fear surrounding drone warfare, at least not when it comes to combat. It sounds super scary to have these drones that can outperform pilots, until you realize that guided missiles are already able to destroy pretty much anything from tens of kilometers away already. It doesn't matter if pilots are slower than drones when they are able to fire off missiles before the drone even detects them. The main benefit of drones is surveillance imo, since they can just circle an area for hours. For combat I think we will have pilots for the foreseeable future, they can react more quickly and have a better view of the situation than a drone operator. Also I would imagine having a pilot can also be useful if you don't want other countries shooting down your planes (or if you want to start a conflict) - Iran would have been much more resistant to shooting down a US predator drone if it was a manned aircraft instead. I don't really know though.
- nexuist 6y agoThe key to understanding where aerial warfare is going is understanding that next generation fighter jets aren't meant to be soldiers, they're generals. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that most of the time, the F-35's purpose is not to go up against MiGs or other foreign fighters. The F-35 is a flying eye-in-the-sky that can scan surfaces, oceans, mountains, etc. to identify and classify targets. It has ordinance to take out those targets, but that's secondary to its main mission of basically being a one-man Google Maps team. Could the F-35 get into a dogfight? Sure, but a lot would have to fail for that situation to ever happen - given its sensor suite it should be able to detect and fire upon an enemy fighter before it is ever in visual sight. You can also tell this intention from the way pilots are trained: they must first reach the rank of Officer and learn abstract combat tactics in a classroom setting before they ever step foot in an aircraft. This is not by mistake. Personally I think the future is squadrons of autonomous drones assisting human pilots. You come in with an F-35 and a dozen Predator drones and send in the drones to do your dirty work (close air support, recon, remote bombing, etc.) while you command the battlefield and drop a few guided bombs 40,000 feet up.
- trashtester 6y agoI remember reading, maybe 10 years ago, that the F35 was designed from the start to have the capicty to lead a drone swarm. Furthermore, there was also a plan for how to remove the pilot from the F35 itself when the AI became strong enough. When the "Loyal Wingmen" become mature, the F35 can be turned into stealthy AWACS planes, with most ordanance replaced by more electronics and/or more fuel.
- johhnybegood 6y agoWorld police sucks or rocks
- nanna 6y agoHow far off are other countries - China, Russia, any others? - from these kinds of autonomous fighter drones?