Air systems
Soon, fighter pilots could be flying into battle with AI co-pilots to help increase their lethality and effectiveness.
gained back in 1918: one where individual skill, and intensive teamwork, matter just as much as missiles and bombs. Quite aside from the latest Top Gun, that’s clear enough from the accounts of pilots themselves. Between boasting fantastic situational awareness, even at 1,300mph, and withstanding forces of up to 9G, contemporary pilots need to be as tough, disciplined and courageous as ever, even if their aircraft are infinitely more complex than an old Sopwith Camel. Soon, however, fighter pilots are likely to step into fundamentally different aircraft. Shadowing the automation revolution that’s transforming every facet of military life, the fighters of tomorrow seem destined to be supported by AI co-pilots, with engagement tactics and aerial manoeuvres left to ones and zeroes. At the same time, pilots may soon dispense with human wingmen, instead relying on a plethora of drone-like machines to beat the enemy down. Not that the airmen themselves are vanishing entirely. Particularly given the ethics of air combat, and perhaps also reflecting the intimate nature of old school dogfights, the knights of the sky are unlikely to vanish for good.
AI in the sky
Over the past few decades, a single word has been on the lips of military planners everywhere: automation. From robotic sentries to crewless submarines, this is clear across different services, with the Pentagon spending around $7.5bn on such platforms in 2021 alone. With this in mind – and reflecting a global sector expected to enjoy a CAGR of over 8% by 2032 – it makes sense that the US Air Force is moving in the same direction. As Stacie Pettyjohn at the Center for a New American Security puts it, pilots and officers alike “don’t want to miss out” on an opportunity that could “improve their ability to operate”.
Appreciate the technology involved here, and this argument is easy to understand. Thinking in a strikingly different way to humans, displaying more aggression, more situational awareness and faster
reactions than even veteran pilots, AI can fundamentally alter the balance of forces in air combat. An excellent example here involves the AlphaDogfight competition, run by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a wing of the US government. In a simulated dogfight, an AI-powered plane beat its experienced human foe by 16 hits to zero. Even more strikingly, the computer-powered plane employed so-called ‘forward-quarter’ gunshots, a manoeuvre where a pilot flies directly at the enemy before firing – and one banned by the Air Force for being too dangerous. Apart from the machinery itself, you get the feeling that military planners are equally adopting AI for another reason: to protect pilots. “Similar to drone warfare, autonomous technology is used to minimise operator workload,” is how a US Air Force spokesperson laconically puts it.
Pettyjohn agrees. “[In] the US, as a democracy and as a military, the services put a tremendous amount of value on people’s lives,” she says. “And so, at times, if there are ways that you can automate things, you can save costs, and you can potentially save lives as well.” Both these points feel fair. For if removing flesh- and-bone pilots from the equation can obviously do much to keep personnel safe, it’s equally clear that losing pilots poses challenges in hard-nosed financial terms. According to work by the RAND Institute, for example, it costs roughly $11m to train an F-22 pilot – and that’s before you factor in the cost of housing them, feeding them and providing their pensions when they retire.
Soaring, flying
Beyond these theoretical tests, what might a future shaped by AI pilots actually look like? One difficulty here involves the plethora of programmes currently in motion, both at the Pentagon and elsewhere. Launched by the US Air Force in March, for instance, is the ‘Collaborative Combat Aircraft’ programme. DARPA, for its part, is focused on the ‘Air Combat Evolution’ scheme, even as countries as varied as
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
$7.5bn
The amount received by the US Pentagon to fund unmanned systems in the Air Force, Navy and Army in 2021.
US DoD 41
Kyle Brasier / US Air Force
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