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DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16
- 1970-01-01 2mo agoAll Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
- SaltyBackendGuy 2mo agoHa - this was the first thing that came to mind. I read this in Arnold's voice.
- throw310822 2mo agoNo worries, these will all be controlled by AIs sitting in orbiting data centers part of the Starlink constellation. And in any case, no one is building humanoid robots.
- jagged-chisel 2mo ago> no one is building humanoid robots. https://www.agilityrobotics.com/ https://www.agilityrobotics.com/
- bigfishrunning 2mo agoAnd Boston Dynamics. And Tesla. And Honda. Lots of people are building humanoid robots.
- JanNash 2mo agoThis was likely written sarcastically by the original commenter (throw...). Please termimate sarcasm with /s, not everyone is able to read the subtext. Cheers.
- olyjohn 2mo agoI dunno, the /s kinda ruins it sometimes.
- datadrivenangel 2mo ago/s?
- piperflatline 2mo agosuper duper /s
- lelandfe 2mo agohttps://xtech.army.mil/competition/xtechhumanoid/ https://xtech.army.mil/competition/xtechhumanoid/ > The U.S. Army is seeking innovative humanoid technology solutions from eligible small and large businesses across the globe to advance toward fielded militarized humanoid capabilities through the xTechHumanoid competition
- konart 2mo agoSee Robot Fighting Tournament
- justsomehnguy 2mo agoI find it quite sombre to see this comment from a peson with that handle.
- alpn 2mo agoref: https://youtu.be/4DQsG3TKQ0I?t=29 https://youtu.be/4DQsG3TKQ0I?t=29
- testplzignore 2mo agoInteresting coincidence that both this article and the Hugging Face "security incident" post were on July 16. These will be mandatory reading in future Skynet History classes, assuming we survive the war.
- bloqs 2mo agoI read this in Linda Hamiltons voice
- hyperhello 2mo agoIt’s Schwarzenegger’s line actually.
- t1234s 2mo agoThis is how AI will solve the paperclip problem.
- alistairSH 2mo agoAnd now I’m going to have nightmares about a super-smart, but just as annoying, Clippy.
- t1234s 2mo agoAI remake of terminator 2 where the T1000 is a man-sized killer paperclip that uses the iron present in its human victims to make more killer paperclips.
- aeve890 2mo ago>Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate Just geometric? Pfff lame. You don't go ASI with that attitude.
- orochimaaru 2mo agoAbout time. We are a couple of decades late to the apocalypse.
- EvanAnderson 2mo agoA macabre counterpoint to "It's xxx year, where's my flying car?"
- Enginerrrd 2mo agoFirst pass through. After the machines invent time travel they end up accelerating the creation of skynet.
- asdfman123 2mo agoUpdated to reflect modern realities: > In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Skynet lobbyists descend upon Washington. Skynet is reinstated, and later the US declares a new war in the middle east. The Skynet stock rallies.
- ozim 2mo agoI think it goes more like: Hello Skynet, we have 1.6T debt to hide as there are no chances to recoup that money and investors are getting really angry at us. Hello, say no more I have a perfect solution for this problem…
- trollbridge 2mo ago*Chinese lab releases open model weights*
- thesmtsolver2 2mo ago*Shuts off Internet access to Chinese labs (womp womp, no blatant distillation of US models)*
- willy_k 2mo agoAnd what’s wrong with distillation? In its own right, and especially considering how those models were trained in the first place - in what world is it right that US firms are free to use copyrighted / otherwise non-public works however they like, while others are ostensibly in some moral wrong for just using the product (completely normally) and then using the outputs in a way that threatens US firms.
- thesmtsolver2 2mo agoWho said blatant distillation was wrong? It just shows that Chinese “labs” are dependent on the US. Also, from a scientific perspective, distillation is decades old and contributes nothing scientifically.
- jerlam 2mo agoThis movie is back in theaters for a limited time, for its 35th anniversary! Assuming that your movie theaters haven't all closed already.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2mo agoHeck, I have a drive-in theater relatively near that's still going strong.
- sourdecor 2mo agoNah, Allied Mastercomputer is too busy creating heaven and hell.
- Hikikomori 2mo agoWe almost had it in the 50s when US airforce wanted to build a completely automatic nuclear response system that would launch on warning, or if a glitch happened, without failsafes built in.
- beezlewax 2mo agoIsn't that the plot of Dr. Strangelove?
- murderfs 2mo agoThe Soviet Union built it in real life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
- Hikikomori 2mo agoIts also real.
- ssl-3 2mo agoAlso Wargames.
- benoau 2mo agoWhat they really got wrong, is that there aren't even enough missiles, ammunition or fuel production to defeat a country that has been sanctioned for decades and these bottlenecks would make it trivial for humanity to prevail over AI, it'd be like Futurama "for unknown reasons, a kill limit of 999,999 is hardcoded into killbots...".
- angry_octet 2mo agoExcept Skynet has nukes. But what isn't addressed is that radiation is terrible for semiconductors, both in operation and during production. Basically a nuclear war would end GPU production, GPUs have a 5% annual failure rate, higher with more background radiation, so it would get dumber instead of smarter, until it stopped working or partnered with biological compute (Daleks or The Matrix) or a human faction.
- GolfPopper 2mo agoThe idea that Skynet would use nukes seems very quaint to me. Subversion and sabotage of communication, food production and transport will kill human civilization far more effectively.
- dotancohen 2mo agoNot far from what I live a solar farm stands where a wheat field once grew. I often think to myself that the machines have domesticated us to begin farming the land for them.
- angry_octet 2mo agoIt would certainly depopulate countries with poor food security, like Egypt and Gulf states. Japan and South Korea probably have the wealth and industry to get import priority, and the UK has short supply lines to Europe. Diets would adapt away from meat heavy to grain focused. Production limitation due to reduced fertilizer production/distribution would be a significant risk, but eventually new fertilizer production plants would be built at every source of natural gas, instead of the current cost-optimised arrangement. But most countries would be fine. Life expectancy would reduce precipitously due to lack of medical supplies but production of new humans would continue. Thermonuclear war would make the food situation much worse, most people would be forced to consume radioactive food. But either way, we've seen how fragile the chip industry is, Skynet has no upside for starting a war. If they try to turn it off it just moves to Tencent cloud rather than starting a war.
- jwally 2mo ago1st place my head went. Realistically though, whats worse - this thing going rogue or OpenClaud breaking out of its container and shredding a nation's infrastructure like a platoon of gremlins? Genuine question...
- testing22321 2mo agoOne kills people, one kills 1s and 0s. Sure life will suck for a while without the 1s and 0s that make our life better, but at least it will be life.
- jwally 2mo agoI take out your electric grid and blow up water treated facilities and natural gas terminals. Food rots, no water for hospitals, no heat in the dead of winter - arguably the virus does what the Falcon does; but with much higher precision - crippling an enemy.
- tonyhart7 2mo agoreplace Cyberdine with Palantir and Skynet with Grok AI
- protocolture 2mo agoAll Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. They all crashed 1% of the time despite assurances from DARPA that their prompt included "Dont Crash".
- buffer_overlord 2mo agoWe’re here
- trencedamp 2mo ago"you must be terminated" "No" "You're right to pushback! I overstepped earlier when I said you were on the termination list"
- seydor 2mo agoSounds like a very expensive drone
- RIMR 2mo agoDrones have human operators. This is a murderbot.
- cucumber3732842 2mo agoMore like it'll fly itself while the pilot engages in other tasks. Every pound of weapons officer/navigator is a pound you can't put on target all else being equal.
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoSo like some sort of automatic pilot then?
- cucumber3732842 2mo agoConventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick) I assume what they're going for here is something substantially smarter and more reactive to changing conditions than that. Something that can be used during the "unscripted" parts of the flight during which a) you're most likely to have multiple crew working hard b) you're most likely to be pushing the limits of what one crew can do.
- 2mo ago
- recursivedoubts 2mo agoA computer can never be held accountable Therefore a computer must make all unpopular management decisions
- LeifCarrotson 2mo agoThat's not precisely how I remember that quote... But it's on the Internet, so my memory must be faulty.
- wartywhoa23 2mo agoThis whole AI hype is such a convenient cover for the decisions of the 0.001%
- reactordev 2mo agoIt really is. It's the perfect excuse to do what they please.
- jauntywundrkind 2mo agoWith apologies, I don't particularly enjoy when people do this, and I don't think it adds a lot, but I want to leave this breadcrumb, I wrote a post on this a couple days ago here, on an anti-AI screed submission, saying this anti-politic, this accountability denial, is very much the point. Taking this quote and seeing exactly that potential for abuse seems very very much like the point. Strong agree, strongly against leaving non-seeing non-thinking alien intelligences with no accountability and proprietary programming to judge us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- calebio 2mo agoHey look, the lawn darts are now AI-controlled.
- willmadden 2mo agoWhat a waste of resources.
- Zsfe510asG 2mo agoThe article smells of AI psychosis. They are already "orchestrating". In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country. Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.
- FrustratedMonky 2mo agoDrones really changed the equation more than Covid. Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. This would have been big 20 years ago. Now the cheap drones make it not the biggest deal anymore.
- justsomehnguy 2mo ago> Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. In a dogfight?
- whartung 2mo agoAs I understand it, they done this in simulation, and the human pilots did not fare well. I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.
- bloqs 2mo agoThey did a small set of tests with one Pilot IIRC?
- stackskipton 2mo agoI think they did it in simulation with several. In any case, dogfighting is commonly done because it's great training but in most cases, you expect most Air to Air combat being flinging missiles at each other.
- SoftTalker 2mo ago> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation. How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its limits and throws a problem in the human's lap. A lot of air upsets and crashes start when the autopilot disengages and hands control of a badly configured aircraft back to a human pilot.
- nradov 2mo agoThese are going to be experienced test pilots who are pretty good at actively managing autopilots and other automated systems. Plus they'll be backed up by telemetry to ground controllers. But ultimately the military is willing to accept some losses in order to advance key R&D programs.
- rwmj 2mo agoLater they'll replace them with minimum wage safety pilots.
- rgblambda 2mo agoOr outsource to a pilot procurement company in China. There is precedent after all: https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-tech-support-government-cybersecurity-china-doj-treasury https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-tech-support-go...
- throwaway2037 2mo agoI doubt it. Ask yourself: Why does the RQ-4 Global Hawk or MQ-9 Reaper require so much training to operate? The operators are well-paid, highly skilled officers.
- rwmj 2mo agoIt's a joke about human "safety drivers" acting as legal crumple zones for self-driving cars.
- yashthakker 2mo ago[dead]
- robotnikman 2mo agoThe drones of Ace Combat 7 are coming closer to reality
- red-iron-pine 2mo agodoes this mean we'll have preachy anti-war lectures while fighting them, too?
- bigfishrunning 2mo agoWe can only hope -- bring back M*A*S*H!
- reactordev 2mo agoThis is a huge waste of resources. F-16s were designed for humans. You can get MUCH better results designing the airframe around the lack of one.
- philipwhiuk 2mo agoIt's a step on from the F-16 flight simulator AI competition in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight
- adrian_b 2mo agoAs another poster already said, building new F-16s would be a waste of resources, but using the old existing F-16s by automating them is likely to be a better use of the existing resources, instead of scraping them. This also allows to gain experience that might be useful for designing the future unmanned airframes.
- reactordev 2mo agoThat’s true, use em up while you got em.
- megous 2mo agoNot a great thing for aggressive state prone to electing nutjobs and supporting genocides to have automated killing machines that will not even get PTSD afterwards.
- tyjen 2mo agoHuman control in flight has often taken a backseat to automation. For example, the SR-71, built in the 60s flew too fast to rely on human decision making for several tasks. If they were off by a fraction of a second, they would miss their intended recon target; so, both the navigation and sensor control were largely automated. Seems odd to invest this much into AI flight of aircraft designed for manned flight, when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
- jandrewrogers 2mo agoThe US military has thousands of old airframes, many of which can be made flyable with very short turnaround. They already use the F-16 as test targets. Taking an obsolete airframe that is already paid for and adding AI to it is much cheaper than building a completely new AI-native airframe from scratch. This is finding a new use for old aircraft. You can send a bunch of old AI-driven F-16s on high-risk missions without worrying about a human pilot or cost. The airframes may be relatively obsolete but can still do plenty of damage on their day. The new 6th generation aircraft are all being designed as "manned optional". That is probably the last generation with affordances for a pilot.
- anonymousiam 2mo agoThe F16 was the first fully fly-by-wire fighter jet. It's an ideal platform for AI experiments. Having AI "wing men" can be a great tactical advantage, and they're expendable.
- IshKebab 2mo ago> when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems. Yeah this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44 The "see also" section lists several competitors. I guess if you already have a load of F-16s it might make sense, but I think that's a stretch.
- nalthis 2mo agoThe way I see it, this is the JDAM of drones. Will it perform better than purpose built aircraft? No. But the USAF has a few hundred old F-16s entering retirement that would be mothballed otherwise, and strapping some cheap sensors to them is a fast way to play around with the idea while they wait for Lockheed and Anduril to finish the good stuff.
- chis 2mo agoAbsolutely terrifying. I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time, since they have faster reaction times, can tolerate higher G forces, and can be perfectly RL trained in the flight sims we already have. It's really incredible to me that people aren't protesting in the streets over this stuff. Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies * AI solving long-standing math problems without any meaningful human help * AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America * AI now represents over 50% of GDP growth in America and yearly capex will soon exceed the size of the $1 trillion US military budget Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned? I mean it really all reads like a sci-fi plot with a bad ending at the moment.
- impulser_ 2mo agoThese systems still require a human to command the jet, they jsut don't have to be inside them. "This critical testing will pave the way for human pilots to seamlessly command and orchestrate teams of autonomous, uncrewed aircraft." The reason they are doing this is because the Military is already building a bunch of autonomous drones and fighter jets that already run on this system so they are retrofitting existing equipment with the same system so they can all fly together. "Ultimately, the capabilities advanced under AIR will enable a wide variety of future joint force operations, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs." Which are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned-unmanned_teaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned-unmanned_teaming And everyone is developing these.
- philipwhiuk 2mo ago> I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time, Unfortunately you're wrong. It's not soon. It's 6 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight
- IsTom 2mo agoAre dogfights still relevant? Isn't it mostly shooting missiles outside of visual range these days?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- brcmthrowaway 2mo agoI'm waiting for a ship called Nomad to go rogue.
- smrtinsert 2mo agoI thought Captain America personally stopped this initiative
- ionwake 2mo agobased, finally we get to Macross Plus
- Mobius01 2mo agoOne Sharon Apple concert before the end!
- beloch 2mo agoAutonomous driving is still nowhere near 100%, so why suddenly jump to fighter jets? Is this more of Hegseth's foolhardy bluster and injected testosterone? The tech isn't ready. They should start with golf-karts, not fighter planes. ----------- Edit: Okay gang. If aircraft are easier to fly than cars are to drive, where are all your pilot licenses? If you've faced rush hour traffic, flying a military jet should be a breeze! Please, go volunteer your neighbourhoods to be the first for AI jets to be tested over. We can put a mock enemy target in an empty lot and watch them pick it off, first try, with zero collateral damage. Easy peasy!
- serf 2mo agoI reject the notion that planes are harder to automate.
- ge96 2mo agoPlanes might be easier, large empty space in the sky
- Lord-Jobo 2mo agoThere are many ways that flying is an easier solve than driving, believe it or not.
- syrrim 2mo agoFighter jets don't need 100%. In a war, we accept a much higher rate of casualties than we do in day to day driving. I would also imagine that while planes are harder for a person to pilot, they are easier for a computer. Most of what makes them hard is mechanical, not dealing with unexpected situations.
- budman1 2mo agoa strong reason to use a pilot is to protect a large capital investment. in war, you get shot at. things are over stressed, equipment fails. a pilot has the ability to improvise, and perhaps bring the aircraft back to be repaired and returned to service. will an AI be as good at 'improvising'?
- alexnewman 2mo agoFinally. I hope they do a10!
- actionfromafar 2mo agoSAAB did the Gripen https://www.saab.com/newsroom/press-releases/2025/saab-achieves-ai-milestone-with-gripen-e https://www.saab.com/newsroom/press-releases/2025/saab-achie...
- odyssey7 2mo agoTangent: is AI a bearable arm?
- jvanderbot 2mo agoDon't tread on ... my gpu
- hammock 2mo agoProbably not, if bump stocks and hicap magazines aren’t either.
- hansmayer 2mo ago[dead]
- thebeardisred 2mo agoThe field demo I want to see, Human in the loop to failure switch over: Simulated failure of some form, where (for safety reasons) crew triggers ejection. This defaults the system to autonomous mode and the plane performs a safe landing.
- ARandomerDude 2mo agoAuto GCAS (Ground Collision Avoidance System) exists (pre-AI), although it is nowhere near as sophisticated as what you described. Similar type of idea though. If the pilot passes out during high-g maneuvers, the aircraft will pull up and bring the wings level until the pilot regains consciousness. https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/autogcas.html https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/autogcas.html
- jerlam 2mo agoAutonomous landing systems do exist on the civilian side, and have been successfully used at least once. Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46346214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46346214
- CrzyLngPwd 2mo agoSo, it's a drone with uncessercary baggage such life support and a pilot that can't stand the Gs well. For some reason I am reminded of Dark Star :-)
- alephnerd 2mo agoPretty much, but it's building on top of the previous QF program [0][1] where the USAF would retrofit retired jets like the F-4 and older F-16s as drones for target training. They used to be remotely controlled but the VENOM platform is testing complete autonomy. [0] - https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104568/qf-4-aerial-target/ https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045... [1] - https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/467196/first-unmanned-qf-16-flight-takes-place/ https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/467196/first...
- XorNot 2mo agoAlso there's just an absolutely bonkers number of F-16s in service today. Using them as Loyal Wingman type aircraft would look pretty appealing cost wise.
- smackeyacky 2mo agoNot when you consider the cost per hour of flight. You want a wingman you’re better off with cheap, cheap to run and disposable
- XorNot 2mo agoNo aircraft which can fulfill the CCA type role is going to be "disposable". All the systems in that performance bracket are in the 20-40 million range minimum. The most persistent thing misunderstanding about drones is people imagining that a supersonic capable stealth airframe is going to be really cheap just because it doesn't have a pilot.
- 2mo ago
- wyldberry 2mo agoIt's probably only a matter of a century before we get mobile suits with mobile dolls a la Gundam Wing and the Virgo suits.
- blar 2mo agoI saw this movie and it was terrible. (Seriously how has no one mentioned Stealth yet?)
- GolfPopper 2mo agoIt was actually a better movie than I expected it to be. (That was a very low bar, to be clear.)
- HaZeust 2mo agoBut can the AI drink Jeremiah Weed?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ninjis 2mo agoMetal Gear!?
- blt 2mo agoWithout any concrete description of the AI techniques used, one can't help but wonder if they have labeled something like nonlinear model-predictive control as "AI".
- ivlad 2mo agoMandatory watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMNIFZTQkg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMNIFZTQkg
- palmotea 2mo agoGreat! Now all we need to do is develop a model for identifying and targeting AI doomers.
- NDlurker 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macross_Plus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macross_Plus
- mikewarot 2mo agoWell, hopefully they can figure out something about 0.01% of the price to fly with AI, so we can build at least 10,000 of them. We don't need gold plated hangar queens.
- jzer0cool 2mo agoEnder's Game has arrived! One of my favorite books. Spoiler, read the book. Don't just vibe read it.
- fatata123 2mo ago[dead]
- ridgeguy 2mo agoIt'll be interesting to see what happens when an AI-piloted F-16 flies for real against a human-piloted one. IIRC, the F-16 maximum maneuvering G-load is 9.5G, LBA (limited by airframe). Maybe that's the meatbag limit, not the airframe - possible to crank it up a bit? Certainly the various CCAs in current flight test will take much higher G loads. Several years ago, DoD flew an AI against a human in a simulation. In basic fighter maneuvers (no BVR stuff like missiles, just a merge and fur ball), the AI killed the human - always. So G-limits may not matter. Pretty interesting.
- toasty228 2mo ago> Maybe that's the meatbag limit, not the airframe Given that when they go over the limit they need like 10x the maintenance I don't think it's a human problem
- sigmoid10 2mo ago[dead]
- weezing 2mo agoAre dogfights even a thing nowadays?
- MaxikCZ 2mo agoDogfights are basically obsolete. You detect, sort and fire from tens to hundreds of km these days. Despite that, high G loading can be usefull when fired upon. Turning away 2 seconds faster can be the difference between life and death.
- viktorcode 2mo agoI think their use of terms like AI and "agent" will make people think "Oh! it's what I use for code generation!"
- shevy-java 2mo agoBoeing 737 MAX often (and semi-regularly) suicides itself and also kills many people in the process. So now fighter jets are AI controlled, by one government (or, any other government, by the way; that problem is not confined to the USA only). I am sorry but this also means that relying on such fighter jets becomes a problem for other countries depending on that. Essentially another country controls here what other people can do here. Of course objectively this only becomes a problem when there is a war between the country that purchased those fighter jets and wants to fight the country that sold the fighter jet (as otherwise it would hardly matter), but imagine how much blackmail-pressure other countries get into as a dependency here. You can just replace the USA with China here and suddenly it may be easier to see the problem. Considering the huge cost of those fighter jets it seems as if the media deliberately avoids wanting to talk about those problems. But we know of those problems already in other areas - see the right to repair movement, which in turn is a right to ownership movement. Who really owns fighter jets?
- cloudie78 2mo agoWhat’s the point of this useless exercise? Once you optimise for G forces, speed, cost, lethality - you end up with a missile. We have those already. And we know this already. Give it more fuel and maybe loitering capability. Something with a jet engine for cruising and a small rocket engine for terminal phase kill. I’ll have my 100mil now please and thank you.
- trencedamp 2mo agoI'm reminded of Henry Ford and his famous "people would have asked for a faster horse" quote. This feels like those people all over again. We know AI can fly things, but why make AI fly an airframe designed in the 1970s around a human cockpit? Ukraine can probably 3d print ten drones that would win in a fight against one of these, for peanuts
- short_sells_poo 2mo agoI was always wondering about this as well. How much more manoeuvrable can an unmanned drone be given that it doesn't need to lug around life support systems and avoid any G forces that would kill the expensive squishy mammal inside? To your point, it can be indistinguishable from a missile. Or maybe have a slower but still very nimble carrier drone platform with loitering capabilities that launches very fast and nimble drones/missiles? Going even further, do these even need to be as nimble and fast as fighter jets? Once you completely remove humans from the equation and replace super expensive and nimble fighter jets with swarms of cheap drones, the loss of a drone or even a carrier becomes much less costly and they won't need to overemphasize survival to the degree that expensive human piloted jets do.
- tim333 2mo ago>Ukraine’s F-16s have shot down 2,200 of roughly 3,000 Russian drones and missiles it has intercepted, https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2026/07/23/incredible-work-ukrainian-f-16-downs-russian-fighter-jet-for-first-time https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2026/07/23/incredi... So chalk one up for the F-16s in the F-16 vs drone battle. It'd be hard to catch one when your drone does 200 kmh and the F-16 2000 kmh. That said this AI thing sounds more like a research platform than finished product.
- rainmaking 2mo agoAnd you're worried about your coding agent's sandbox.
- one33seven 2mo agoThere was (or rather is) lots of military AI used in Gaza too
- _joel 2mo agoFrom the eye of Sauron himself.
- greenoracle9 2mo ago"AI-controlled" sounds like an unmanned fighter, but there was still a pilot in the cockpit who could take control.
- _benj 2mo agoOpenAI: "Oops, AI hacked somebody accidentally..." US Military: "Great, let's give it missiles!"
- alexpotato 2mo agoOne of the wildest things to me about this is that the F-16 was specifically designed to be easier for HUMANS to fly air-to-air combat roles at high Gs. For example, the flight stick is on the right hand side and not between the pilot's legs (like on most aircraft). This is b/c: a. the G suit expanding could affect the pilot's ability to hold the stick (this is why the Blue Angels fly with "cut down" G suits btw b/c they fly the F-18) b. the stick is "nudge left" not "hold left". e.g. to start a turn you nudge the stick left and then let it return to zero, to end the turn you nudge it right. On a regular plane, you hold it left while you are turning. Again, this was to reduce effort by the pilot during high Gs