The U.S. military announced a groundbreaking test that involved air combat between a manned jet and a modified artificial intelligence-controlled F-16.
The heavily modified two-seat F-16D X-62A, also known as the Variable Stability In-Flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA), faced off against another F-16. The US military said the experiment showed how machine learning could change the way fighter jets fight.
Footage released by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on Wednesday showed two jets flying over each other at speeds of up to 1,200 miles per hour. The self-flying aircraft performed defensive and offensive maneuvers and approached manned aircraft up to 2,000 feet.
It was all part of a test launch last September from Edwards Air Force Base in Kern County, California. The U.S. military did not say which F-16 had the upper hand in the visual range dogfight, commonly referred to as a “dogfight.”
The test marks a major advance in DARPA's Air Combat Evolution (“ACE”) program, which has been developing autonomous combat systems with AI-controlled aircraft since its inception in 2019, The Debrief reported.
Lt. Col. Ryan Heffron, DARPA's ACE program manager, told reporters Friday that “things are progressing as fast as we expected, or faster than we expected,” but added that “no further details are available.” “I can't do it,” he said.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a video released by DARPA that the X-62A team demonstrated that machine learning-based autonomy “can be safely utilized to fly dynamic combat maneuvers.” Stated.
In the same video, Heffron said 2023 is the year “ACE makes machine learning a reality in the air.”
The ACE program, which began in December 2022, has conducted 21 test flights, resulting in more than 100,000 lines of flight-critical software changes.
Kendall told a U.S. Senate hearing in April that he plans to “fly an autonomous F-16 later this year,” and that pilots will simply watch as the technology works. “Hopefully, neither he nor I will ever have to fly a plane,” Kendall said.
Bill Gray, chief test pilot at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, said the X-62 Ace program is about more than just dogfights.
“Aerial combat was the problem we needed to solve to be able to start testing autonomous artificial intelligence systems in the air,” Gray said in the video, adding that the research “is a problem that needs to be solved to be able to start testing autonomous artificial intelligence systems in the air.” This applies to “.''
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