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 was Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.
AI represents one of the biggest advances in military aviation since stealth was introduced in the early 1990s, and the Air Force is actively collaborating. Although the technology is not fully developed, the service plans to introduce more AI-enabled aircraft. More than 1,000 unmanned combat aircraft are expected to be in operation 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 watch AI fly in real time and publicly express his confidence in its 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 learned enough during the flight that he could trust the still-learning AI to decide whether to fire the weapon.
There is a lot of opposition to that idea. Arms control experts and humanitarian organizations are deeply concerned that AI may one day be able to autonomously drop bombs and kill humans without human consultation, and are calling for restrictions on the use of AI. Seeking reinforcement.
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.”
The military's transition to AI-powered aircraft is driven by security, cost, and strategic capabilities. For example, if the United States and China were to end up in a conflict, advances on both sides in electronic warfare, space, and air defense systems would make today's air force fleets of expensive manned combat aircraft vulnerable. 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 base's pilots recognize that, in a sense, they may be training their successors or shaping a future construction where fewer pilots are needed.
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.