Presumably designers are just scratching the surface jettisoning all sorts of current design assumptions that could be removed based on differences in the acceptability of loss, ability to work cooperatively and handle inhuman conditions. You can position the control systems differently, split some of them up, strengthen the airframe by binning almost everything from the cockpit & getting rid of landing gear completely. The gear adds weight and breaks holes in the structure and it's dead weight during most of the key operational tasks - instead use a cooperating "lander" drone to help it land and the risk of that failing isn't as serious without humans. The ability to act with coordination across a group of drones that the article mentions will be hard to beat unless you use a similar array of drones. Seems like the pilot in the plane can't last much longer. Now we just need to see if the budgets involved bring this into being faster than self driving cars!
I have to wonder when it will switch to small, inexpensive drones instead of the larger, jet-type ones. Imagine fighting against a swarm of 10,000 drones (each with a small explosive, EMP, etc). Similar to the Fire Bats[0] in WWII.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bat_bomb" rel="nofollow">https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bat_bomb</a>
I don't really get the hype/fear surrounding drone warfare, at least not when it comes to combat. It sounds super scary to have these drones that can outperform pilots, until you realize that guided missiles are already able to destroy pretty much anything from tens of kilometers away already. It doesn't matter if pilots are slower than drones when they are able to fire off missiles before the drone even detects them.<p>The main benefit of drones is surveillance imo, since they can just circle an area for hours. For combat I think we will have pilots for the foreseeable future, they can react more quickly and have a better view of the situation than a drone operator. Also I would imagine having a pilot can also be useful if you don't want other countries shooting down your planes (or if you want to start a conflict) - Iran would have been much more resistant to shooting down a US predator drone if it was a manned aircraft instead. I don't really know though.
Lots of great content on this blog. Relevant here:<p>"The Alarming Case of the USAF’s Mysteriously Missing Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles"<p><a href="https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-case-of-the-usafs-mysteriously-missing-unmanned-combat-air-vehicles" rel="nofollow">https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-case...</a>
Look how it folds out in Libya:<p>1. Kaftar has all fancy jet fighters from Russians, and Egyptians. $50m apiece, tear Turkish drones left, and right.<p>2. The government has Turkish drones, $2m apiece. By the time Kaftar's Mig inflicts a single loss, a swarm of 5 drones already bombed that Mig's airfield to smithereens.<p>Government forces can expend all of their drones to get an enemy airfield, and they would still win the trade.
most one sided fights ever.
Just look at G forces.<p>drone could have higher max speeds, higher max acceleration.
fighter was designed ... what 20 years ago?<p>Cost of drone? Cost of loss of either?
total cost of ownership is vastly different.<p>There is real cause to be very afraid.
When I am watching Battlestar Galactica or most of the other scifi, I am always puzzled to see that the scenarists never take AI to fully operate a spaceship (piloting during landing/takeoff, firing, targeting enemies, etc).
What’s the difference between a Tomahawk cruise missile and a drone?<p>Tomahawk is already (2015) available with reconnaissance camera and loiter mode.<p>Is the distinction that <i>drone</i> can return to base, or otherwise land and be reused?
Stealth is a 2005 movie that explores this concept. It didn't do too well in the box office but I definitely enjoyed it although the AI is a little forced.<p>It looks like the drone in question here is the following (quoted from Aerospace Testing International), also mentioned in the linked source:<p>'The “fighter-sized” 5th Generation Aerial Target (5GAT) is 12.2m (40ft) long, a 7.3m wingspan and a maximum gross weight of 4,350kg (9,600lb). It is designed to be launched and landed using a conventional runway. The drone features two afterburning jet engines and a 95% carbon fiber airframe.' It seems to be designed specifically to stress test our own flights as target practice and doesn't seem like it's actually going to be going into combat anytime soon.
I've seen a lot of AlphaZero chess replays where a move seems weak. But when you run the lines it's a really sneaky trap or very strong combo.<p>I hope for Maverick's sake aerial combat and chess are two different things.
If it's like early AI logic, fly as high as possible, say 40km which turns out is a higher flight ceiling than the attacker in many instances. But the key was the missiles had a ceiling hight of say 20 km, though if launched at 40km, they would still work upon targets flying upwards and the AI logic wouldn't think of them as a threat as those missiles don't work above 20km. Though that means they can climb to that height. Also means if they fire a missile, it won't climb to hit you. Great tactic using the limitations of the missiles to your advantage.<p>Things like that will be were a pilot will have an early edge, pushing those limits by fully understanding the mechanics of those limits and how they play out. Be that pushing a sonic boom shockwave to effect a small pursing drone. Those for unmanned autonomous system will be the achilles heal in much the same way early Chess AI was able to be beaten by humans thru not doing the obvious most logical move.<p>But if they want to tune AI for autonomous system, then doing a FTP simulator game, running the NPC drones on a server will get you lots of unique free testing and tuning of that AI done. Be much cheaper and we get a cool game to play.
I feel a good or maybe the best way to eke our an edge for the US, China or whoever would be to create a good simulation platform and offer a great SaaS platform, maybe like kerbal space program, and let anyone compete. Then learn from the simualations.
"[AI] would be able to make key decisions faster and more accurately"<p>That's a statement nobody here will have problems to accept right? I expect nobody can think of any example that makes "more accurately" a problematic claim.
Lets just hope the entrenched pilots don't find some way to handicap the drone's ability to keep it "fair". Why the US is spending a trillion dollars on the F-35 program is an exercise in pork politics.
That was really just a question of time. Wait a few decades, and see the first warships specialised for carrying drones and missiles (which are essentially kamikaze drones) exclusively.
I guess they'll be very careful with the objective function, not to produce a Kamikaze drone:<p>- Drone: Less than $10 million.<p>- Fighter: Almost $100 million <i>and</i> human on board.<p>It's not far stretched to treat the drone as a new type of missile. Air-to-Air, Air-to-Surface, Surface-to-Surface, Surface-to-Air, and the new generation: Anywhere-to-Anywhere missile.
This sounds like a really cool project to work on. I dont think beating a human will be terribly difficult. Ground targets? Easy for fixed targets at known location.<p>Should such technology be created? That's question is above my pay grade. Bad guys could do things like this today so it seems prudent to work on countermeasures.
I don’t see how this will work in a real battle. If the ai is fully self contained with no communication to central command, then it’s like a dumb missile. Once you press fire, you’ve lost control.<p>If the drone does require connectivity to central command, then shouldn’t it be fairly easy to jam this signal?
It will be great if in the future war is simply a function of how much money you’re willing to spend to destroy a target. Probably not much anyone can do to defend against a swarm of drones that never gets tired, never misses targets and doesn’t even care about death.
Is this incredibly obvious or did I miss the part where they specified the rules of the game? I assume they're not actually going to have the drone fire actual missiles at the manned fighter...right?
At least the one-on-one case of that battle is supposed to be a special case of <i>differential games</i> from R. Issacs and as in<p>Avner Friedman,
<i>Differential Games,</i>
ISBN 0-471-28049-6.