EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) —
As the midday sun beat down, an experimental orange-and-white F-16 fighter jet took off with the familiar roar that is the hallmark of U.S. air power. However, the air battle that followed was unlike any other. This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence, not a human pilot.and sitting in the front seat It was Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.
AI is one of the biggest advances Since stealth was introduced in the early 1990s, it has been a promising development in military aviation, and the Air Force has been actively involved. Although the technology is not yet fully developed, the military is planning an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned combat vehicles. It is scheduled to be operational by 2028.
It was fitting that the dogfight took place at Edwards Air Force Base. Edwards Air Force Base is a vast desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and where the military has secretly carried out aerospace development. Inside classified simulators and buildings protected by layers of surveillance, a new generation of test pilots is training his AI agents to fly in war. Kendall was here to see the AI fly in real time and publicly express his confidence. Future role in air combat.
“There’s a security risk not having it. At this point, we have to have it,” Kendall said in an interview with The Associated Press after landing. The Associated Press, along with NBC, was granted permission to witness the secret flight on the condition that it not be reported until the flight was completed due to operational safety concerns.
The AI-controlled F-16, known as Vista, flew Kendall in super-high-speed maneuvers exceeding 550 miles per hour, applying pressure on his body five times that of gravity. Both planes raced within 1,000 feet of each other, twisting and looping to force the other into a vulnerable position, almost in a close encounter with a second human-piloted F-16.
At the end of the hour-long flight, Kendall emerged from the cockpit grinning. He said he’s seen enough during the flight that he can trust the still-learning AI to decide whether to fire a weapon in a war.
There is a lot of opposition to that idea. Arms control experts and humanitarian organizations deeply concerned AI may one day be able to autonomously drop bombs that kill humans without human consultation, they want better. Restrictions on use.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that there are “serious concerns about relying on sensors and software to make life-or-death decisions.” Autonomous weapons “are a cause for immediate concern and require an urgent international political response.”
Kendall said there will always be human oversight in the system whenever a weapon is used.
The military’s transition to AI-powered aircraft is driven by security, cost, and strategic capabilities. If America and China collideFor example, today’s Air Force’s expensive manned combat aircraft will become vulnerable to mutual interests in electronic warfare, space and air defense systems. China’s air force continues to outpace that of the United States, and it is also expanding its fleet of flying unmanned weapons.
Future war scenarios envision swarms of U.S. drones proactively attacking enemy defenses, allowing the U.S. to breach airspace without significant risk to pilots’ lives. But this change is also driven by money. The Air Force remains hampered by production delays and cost overruns on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which costs an estimated $1.7 trillion.
Kendall said smaller, cheaper AI-controlled unmanned jets are the future.
Vista’s military operators say no other country in the world has an AI jet like this, and the software first learns millions of data points in a simulator and then draws its conclusions during the actual flight. They say they will test it. That real-world performance data is fed back into the simulator, where the AI processes it and learns more.
China has AI, but there is no evidence that they have found a way to run tests outside of simulators. And like junior officers learning tactics for the first time, some lessons can only be learned in the air, Vista test pilots said.
Until it actually flies, “it’s all speculation,” said lead test pilot Bill Gray. “And the longer it takes you to figure it out, the longer it will take you to build a useful system.”
Vista flew its first AI-controlled dogfight in September 2023, but has only conducted about 20 similar flights since then. But the program is learning from each battle so quickly that some AI versions being tested in Vista have already defeated human pilots in air-to-air combat.
The pilots at this base realize that they may be, in a sense, training their successors or shaping future construction. fewer required.
But they also say that if the United States does not have its own fleet, it does not want to fight in the skies against an adversary with AI-controlled aircraft.
“We have to keep running. And we have to run fast,” Kendall said.
