AI-Operated F-16 Jet Carries Air Force Official Into 550-MPH Aerial Combat Test

The Associated Press reports that an F-16 performing aerial combat tests at 550 miles per hour was 'controlled by artificial intelligence, not a human pilot.'
And riding in the front seat was the U.S. Secretary of the Air Force...

AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning for an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned warplanes, the first of them operating by 2028.
It was fitting that the dogfight took place at [California's] Edwards Air Force Base, a vast desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and the military has incubated its most secret aerospace advances. Inside classified simulators and buildings with layers of shielding against surveillance, a new test-pilot generation is training AI agents to fly in war. [U.S. Secretary of the Air Force] Frank Kendall traveled here to see AI fly in real time and make a public statement of confidence in its future role in air combat.

'It's a security risk not to have it. At this point, we have to have it,' Kendall said in an interview with The Associated Press after he landed... At the end of the hourlong flight, Kendall climbed out of the cockpit grinning. He said he'd seen enough during his flight that he'd trust this still-learning AI with the ability to decide whether or not to launch weapons in war... [T]he software first learns on millions of data points in a simulator, then tests its conclusions during actual flights. That real-world performance data is then put back into the simulator where the AI then processes it to learn more.
'Kendall said there will always be human oversight in the system when weapons are used,' the article notes.
But he also said looked for to the cost-savings of smaller and cheaper AI-controlled unmanned jets.

Slashdot reader fjo3 shared a link to this video. (More photos at Sky.com.)

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