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AI can also fly past black/red out thresholds. Even in current aircraft that would be add capability. But having that in the design phase may open up all sort

• fatbird 6y ago
  I'm sure someone in these programs has speculated what air combat would look like between AIs where body-based thresholds are removed and machine learning has developed new tactics that are only applicable in a pure AI arena. I'd be really interested in seeing those speculations.
  • AnotherGoodName 6y ago
    I can't help but think a drone aircraft is essentially the same as a guided missile except the exploding pieces are modular rather than exploding itself and thus the majority of it is re-usable. We already shoot missiles at other missiles. Drones will make that cheaper. In other words i think the biggest change will be in the economics of war. War will become much cheaper in the same way SpaceX's reusable rockets made space travel much cheaper.
    • mNovak 6y ago
      I agree war will become a numbers game even moreso than it already is, by taking out the 'incalculable' losses of human life on both sides of an engagement. But modern combat systems are definitely not cheap!
    • msla 6y ago
      So the enemy's goal is to convince people on our side that using drones in combat is utterly beyond the pale, something only a monster would do. This prevents them from being developed, lest the military feel severe backlash even from within its own ranks, and ensures we're committed to human-flown craft while the enemy gets to field drones.
      • imtringued 6y ago
        Just because drones make sense in a war between nations doesn't mean they can't be abused by governments against civilians. There is no shortage of governments that attacked their own citizens and with drones it becomes even easier.
      • salawat 6y ago
        ...it's not the enemy, it's anyone with any appreciation for the physical forces to which a warfighting machine is subject, and the economic factors at play that make production of those systems as disastrous to the nation employing them as not doing anything at all. Keep in mind, a large contribution to the collapse of the USSR was the incredible financial strain created by defense spending in response to the Star Wars defense system initiative. It was an economic victory for the U.S. more than anything else. There is always a balance. It's just like the hoopla over hypersonic cruise weapons. Sounds horrifying. Until you realize the trumpet bell makes countering them easier rather than harder as long as you detect them early, because there is simply no way to reorient quickly at those speeds without being torn apart. Further, no one is saying we should stick with manned fighter craft, only that they won't likely be the silver bullet everyone seems to think they will be, will be fraught with their own weaknesses, may not in the long run be cheaper than man operated, and may Coe with unforeseen doctrinal changes as the enemy adapts. War is complicated, and rarely does who has the cooler gun perfectly translate to who wins or loses.
    • bserge 6y ago
      Gee, I can't wait to see which poor country one of the big players will attack next /s
    • nippoo 6y ago
      Modern warfare is eventually just an economic game. How many missiles can you afford to launch, and how many missile defences can you afford to build? (/ how much can you afford to spend on military R&D?).
  • ThrustVectoring 6y ago
    I'd honestly be quite surprised if AI research discovers novel and useful dogfight tactics. The interplay between speed, height, position, and direction has been pretty thoroughly mined for ideas, there's been little in terms of updates since Boyd's 1964 Aerial Attack Study (I found a copy at http://oplaunch.com/resources/aerial-attack-study-1964.pdf http://oplaunch.com/resources/aerial-attack-study-1964.pdf if you're curious)
    • jrd259 6y ago
      Then again, the AI system Eurisko won the Trillon Credit Squadron game twice in a row, each time with novel strategies. You might say that dogfighting is more constrained by laws of physics we already know, and so this won't happen. But wouldn't you hate to be proven wrong?
    • jeffshek 6y ago
      I would bet the inverse. If the majority of tactics is spearheaded by one person from 1964 - that probably means there's a lot of innovation. I found reading Boyd's biography, so much effort was made before decision makers would use his tactics, even when they were clearly superior. Even board game like Go and Chess have experienced new and novel tactics from AI despite being much older, with lower barriers to entry. Inversely, dogfighting is new and the barriers to entry are so high its unlikely its close to optimal.
  • imtringued 6y ago
    If that's true then why has nobody invented a missile that is equipped with a metal storm [0] as its warhead? [0] https://youtu.be/wKlnMwuCZso https://youtu.be/wKlnMwuCZso
• woeirua 6y ago
  Probably not as much as you would think. Modern airframes are still not capable of sustaining as much acceleration as missiles. You just can't outmaneuver today's missiles.
  • solotronics 6y ago
    maybe this would lead to smart missiles or a platform to launch them that can loiter near the battlefield, directed by a pilot or controller nearby
    • nradov 6y ago
      Smart loitering munitions already exist.
      • salawat 6y ago
        Loitering in the sense of expending fuel load until a hypothetical target arrives? Or loitering in the sense it's there for reconissance and isn't intended to directly destructively interact with the target? There's a big difference between a Predator with Hellfires, a tomahawk, A Global Hawk, or a man portablerecon/kamikaze drone, and finally Project Pluto, the ultimate "F you" device likely ever contemplated.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • mullingitover 6y ago
    > Modern airframes are still not capable of sustaining as much acceleration as missiles. Are those limits what they are because there wasn't any point in designing stronger airframes if the pilot was just going to black out under higher G forces? If you take the vulnerable human body out of the equation I wonder if airframes strong enough to withstand that acceleration would actually be feasible.
    • berkut 6y ago
• sandworm101 6y ago
  High-G tolerance is not a dogfighting panacea. Even without the pilot, there are issues when you want to take a large aircraft into 10+g range. Structural strength is one thing but there are also aerodynamic limits. The higher the G the higher the stall speed. Superhuman or AI, trying to pull 10g in thin air will result in flow separation (ie stall) and departure from controlled flight... ie you lose control and drop like a rock. Missiles don't care about stalling. They are on a suicide mission to get as close to the target as possible for the nanoseconds necessary to detonate. Missiles, being small and dense, are much stronger than any aircraft.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    Pilots do black out during high G maneuvers and the planes seem to be fine, so this is already a limitation for a human+plane combo that a plane alone would not have.
    • stouset 6y ago
      Planes generally can't pull more Gs than the humans inside without needing to go through an extensive maintenance process. Even then, as has been said countless times in this thread, high-G maneuvers don't do shit against modern missile threats. They might be useful for dogfighting with guns, but given the range and accuracy of modern missiles, combined with proximity fuzes, it simply doesn't accomplish much. Against a weaker enemy, you'll never have the need to pull Gs in the first place. Against an equal or stronger enemy, it won't do a damn bit of difference anyway.
      • burfog 6y ago
        Dogfighting with guns is a great way to stop an incoming missile. You just need the ability to do high-G maneuvers and aim well. Shoot the missile. It helps that bullets as small as 12.7mm can be steered.
        • stouset 6y ago
          This comment is so far into Poe's law territory, I'm past the ability to tell if I'm being trolled or not. In case I'm not being trolled: the way to defeat a radar-guided missile is to beam (fly perpendicular to) the radar source. For an missile with active or semi-active radar guidance, this means you need to fly perpendicular to it. And, preferably, fire lots of chaff. This is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of flying straight at the missile trying to shoot it with guns. Head-on, a missile will close the last mile in under one second. During this second, you need to accurately track, predict the flight path of, and reliably put guns onto a target that's cold (all the fuel has been burnt) and has (in the case of an AMRAAM) a 7 inch diameter. And that very well may not even care about being shot up with bullets; at best, I think you'd kill the seeker, but within the last mile it's not changing course much to have to come close enough to kill you by the proximity fuze (of which I believe there are two, one in the nose and one in the tail). By the time the first of your slow-moving bullets has any shot of reaching it, it will easily be within a quarter of a mile. This is not even a remotely plausible way to defeat an oncoming missile. It runs directly counter to the actions you already be taking to maximize your chance of survival. And on top of that, bullets are only going to damage the leading-edge parts of the missile which aren't particularly critical to its ability to kill you, at least not within the distance it will be by the time your hail-mary bullet salvo hits it.