The USA simulates the first air combat between real fighters and AI fighters
Details of what could be the first in-flight dogfight simulation between an artificial intelligence (AI) and a living human pilot have been made public .
Conducted last year by the United States Air Force (USAF), a modified F-16 (called the
The 'TO THE. The test also culminated years of development at this historic moment.
The artificial intelligence in simulated combat easily beat the human pilot in the simulation
It has been claimed that this development could revolutionize the future of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) initiative.
The combat footage was released in a video about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program.
The ACE program has made notable progress in 2023, with the United States Air Force Test Piloting School (USAF TPS) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) playing crucial roles in its success.
Here is a video of the X-62A in action
The first “real” AI-human dogfight in history
ACE involves several industrial and academic partners, including Shield AI, which acquired Heron Systems in 2021. It was they who developed an AI “pilot” that won DARPA's AlphaDogfight trials in 2020, which took place entirely in a digital environment.
However, these “victories” were somewhat “artificial,” to borrow a phrase, as the AI pilots did not have to comply with flight regulations. These regulations include ensuring the safety of the aircraft and the well-being of the pilot. This is where the latest dogfight differs, making it more realistic.
“2023 was the year ACE made machine learning a reality in the air,” says Air Force Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron, ACE program manager, in the newly released video (which you can see below).
The new dogfight was also part of DARPA and USAF's mission to make AI-enabled aircraft more 'reliable' for human crew.
The AI fighter derived from the F16
The X-62A , also known as the Variable-stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA), is a heavily modified two-seat F-16D. Its flight systems can be tuned to replicate those of almost any other aircraft, making it an exceptional surrogate for a wide range of tests requiring a real platform.
This feature makes VISTA an excellent platform to support work like ACE. “So we have a space built into VISTA in the flight controls that allows AI agents to send commands to VISTA as if they were sending commands to the simulated model of VISTA,” explains Que Harris, chief flight commands engineer at VISTA. 'X-62A at Lockheed Martin, in the film.
The X-62A VIEWED at Edwarrds
More details coming soon
Harris also described this as an “autonomy sandbox” inside the jet. In support of ACE, the X-62A aircraft completed 21 test flights from Edwards Air Force Base, California, over three separate test periods between December 2022 and September 2023.
During these flight tests, the “agents” required reprogramming almost every day, resulting in over 100,000 lines of code modified in some way. AFRL has previously highlighted the ability to further assist this type of flight testing by rapidly training and retraining algorithms in all-digital environments.
The US Army has stated that human involvement will always be necessary to operate autonomous weapons systems in the future. However, the extent of their participation in decision-making is expected to change over time, and this has already been a topic of discussion and debate.
Over the course of the week, The War Zone will reveal further details about the use of the X-62A in support of ACE and the program's achievements.
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The article The US simulates the first air combat between real fighters and AI fighters comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gli-usa-simulano-il-primo-combattimento-aereo-fra-veri-caccia-contr-caccia-ai/ on Fri, 19 Apr 2024 08:41:48 +0000.