LAST UPDATED: June 8, 2020, 10:45 a.m. EDT: United States Airforce is planning to launch an AI drone against fighter pilot in dogfight 2021. Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, head of the Joint Artificial intelligence center expressed his opinions via Airforce magazine. He admitted that he wants future defense systems to be smaller, cheaper, more disposable, swarming, and AI-enabled autonomous based.
“[Team leader Steve Rogers] is probably going to have a hard time getting to that flight next year … when the machine beats the human,” Shanahan said during a June 4 Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event. “If he does it, great.” — said, Jack Shanahan.
United States military has been using Artificial intelligence in surveillance, reconnaissance, and airstrikes but not for the air-to-air defense purpose. In 2017, the U.S. Air Force conducted an exercise of air-to-air drone defense with a missile (MQ-9) based on AI technique. This testing was successful and the military got a positive indication about their new AI defense system.
Jack Shanahan, also said that he is not in the position to tell if the dogfight is going to happen next year or not. He also doesn’t know about what AI-driven autonomous drones will look like. But he is sure that it will help saving pilots life whose life and death is based on just one decision. If the project becomes successful, there will be no need to take into consideration requirements to protect a human pilot.
““Our human pilots, the really good ones, have a couple thousand hours of experience,” explains Steve Rogers, the Team Leader for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Autonomy Capability Team 3 (ACT3).
The only thing that makes the AI featured combat, critical in making is “lag” in the system. “Lags” cannot be avoided 100% in artificial intelligence. Just a second of lag in making decisions by AI combat will decide the win or lose. Shanahan also said that “not everything happening with the futuristic technology is a success story. The military should adopt the lessons the self-driving car industry has learned”
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