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I wouldn't trust an autonomous drone in many environments, but air warfare is pretty friendly to AI. And while humans are limited to 9 Gs of acceleration drone

I wouldn't trust an autonomous drone in many environments, but air warfare is pretty friendly to AI. And while humans are limited to 9 Gs of acceleration drone aircraft that can turn much more rapidly can and have been built. In the future I expect we'll see gaggles of drone fighters overseen but not piloted from a AWACs far back but still within visual range.

DougWebb 12y ago
Those drones are still flown by human pilots, remotely. I wonder what the maneuverability limit is with remote piloting. At some point the drone would be able to turn so fast that the human couldn't process the rapidly changing visuals. Maybe the drone pilots will need to be given a simulated "third person view" like a video game in order to keep up.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  It's an UX problem. The pilots might need to be given more indirect, goal-oriented interface. Instead of first-person view and direct flight control, they would mark waypoints on situation map and select maneuvering policies, akin to some RTS games.
  - ajuc 12y ago
    I think modern wars will be fought by tousands of pro-gamers using something like 3d rts ui. For example if we have 50 drones doing some task it's stupid to hire 50 people to manage them like pilots. Much better to hire 5 people and give them better ui (construct 360 degree view from all the drones feeds localy and send only the aggregated information.
vacri 12y ago
With current technology, humans can fly in worse weather than drones.
- touristtam 12y ago
  And still human errors seems to be directly involved in the worse crashes (see the AF 2009 flight to Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Human_factors_and_computer_interaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Human_fa...)
greedo 12y ago
AI isn't anywhere near being able to discriminate against an aircraft that is not exhibiting "aggressive" behavior. How will it work when it needs to visually ID an opponent, or when the opponent is flying aircraft that might be allied? Say our opponent is flying an F-16, or F-15? Lots of those out there, and in militaries that easily could become hostile. IFF is not always reliable, (hence the viz ID requirements). And creating an autonomous UCAS capable of conducting air to air combat isn't going to be cheap at all. The reason we like drones now is because they have the performance characteristics of a Cessna, and they don't put pilots at risk. To compete in A2A combat, they'll need performance (and avionics) that exceed what our best fighters currently have. That will be buku $$...
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  It's enough for the drones to be semi-autonomous. The controllers mark detected airplanes as friend/foe manually, and on-board AI does the maneuvering and shooting.
  - greedo 12y ago
    And what happens when the controllers are jammed? Or when they can't detect whether the bogey is friend or foe? The Air Force lost an RQ-170 to the Iranian Air Force because it relied on commlinks that are susceptible to jamming. If the comm links are vulnerable, how will the "controllers mark" the aircraft?
    - Symmetry 12y ago
      We don't currently have a problem with enemies jamming comms between AWACs and the F-15s or F-22s they direct. The RQ-170 was using a satellite uplink which is a lot easier to mess with than an airplane closer by. Using jamming against combat aircraft is also problematic because jamming platforms are impossible to hide and very vulnerable.
      - greedo 12y ago
        Correct. And that's because we're fighting an opponent that has trouble with high tech, and has limited resources. If we end up in conflict with Russia, or China or another opponent with better capabilities, your links are going to be severely degraded.

DougWebb 12y ago

Those drones are still flown by human pilots, remotely. I wonder what the maneuverability limit is with remote piloting. At some point the drone would be able to turn so fast that the human couldn't process the rapidly changing visuals. Maybe the drone pilots will need to be given a simulated "third person view" like a video game in order to keep up.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
It's an UX problem. The pilots might need to be given more indirect, goal-oriented interface. Instead of first-person view and direct flight control, they would mark waypoints on situation map and select maneuvering policies, akin to some RTS games.
- ajuc 12y ago
  I think modern wars will be fought by tousands of pro-gamers using something like 3d rts ui. For example if we have 50 drones doing some task it's stupid to hire 50 people to manage them like pilots. Much better to hire 5 people and give them better ui (construct 360 degree view from all the drones feeds localy and send only the aggregated information.

vacri 12y ago

With current technology, humans can fly in worse weather than drones.

touristtam 12y ago
And still human errors seems to be directly involved in the worse crashes (see the AF 2009 flight to Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Human_factors_and_computer_interaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Human_fa...)

greedo 12y ago

AI isn't anywhere near being able to discriminate against an aircraft that is not exhibiting "aggressive" behavior. How will it work when it needs to visually ID an opponent, or when the opponent is flying aircraft that might be allied? Say our opponent is flying an F-16, or F-15? Lots of those out there, and in militaries that easily could become hostile. IFF is not always reliable, (hence the viz ID requirements). And creating an autonomous UCAS capable of conducting air to air combat isn't going to be cheap at all. The reason we like drones now is because they have the performance characteristics of a Cessna, and they don't put pilots at risk. To compete in A2A combat, they'll need performance (and avionics) that exceed what our best fighters currently have. That will be buku $$...

TeMPOraL 12y ago
It's enough for the drones to be semi-autonomous. The controllers mark detected airplanes as friend/foe manually, and on-board AI does the maneuvering and shooting.
- greedo 12y ago
  And what happens when the controllers are jammed? Or when they can't detect whether the bogey is friend or foe? The Air Force lost an RQ-170 to the Iranian Air Force because it relied on commlinks that are susceptible to jamming. If the comm links are vulnerable, how will the "controllers mark" the aircraft?
  - Symmetry 12y ago
    We don't currently have a problem with enemies jamming comms between AWACs and the F-15s or F-22s they direct. The RQ-170 was using a satellite uplink which is a lot easier to mess with than an airplane closer by. Using jamming against combat aircraft is also problematic because jamming platforms are impossible to hide and very vulnerable.
    - greedo 12y ago
      Correct. And that's because we're fighting an opponent that has trouble with high tech, and has limited resources. If we end up in conflict with Russia, or China or another opponent with better capabilities, your links are going to be severely degraded.