At Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, a new kind of Air Force testbed, Major Trent McMullen is a fighter pilot who learns to fly alongside the XQ-58, a drone piloted by artificial intelligence. Think of this as “Top Gun AI.”
“I chased safety for some missions, sent autonomy and back and forth on board,” McMullen said.
He piloted alongside an AI-powered drone, “as humans, we fly very smoothly, but we can sway a little more than a human pilot,” admitted McMullen. “It may be a bit rough, but there are no humans on board.”
artificial intelligence teeth I've been on board and now I'm learning how to fight.
McMullen said the task assigned to AI could be to intercept hostile aircraft.
CBS News 
The XQ-58 explodes like a rocket, but in August, the first full-scale model took off from the runway.
General Adrian Spain, head of the Air Combat Command, plans to run a drone piloted by AI along with manned aerial vehicles. “You told them to come forward and carry out an attack on a complicated set of targets, and they'll do,” Spain said.
He says that AI drones can do that today – and that those drones can be armed with weapons.
The AI pilot F-16 is a limited dogfight against experienced fighter pilots, already holding their own. In Top Gun AI, other F-16s have been rewired for more realistic combat. These aircraft still have a cockpit, engaged in plug-and-play AI systems and can remain mounted as safety pilots.
pentagon 
“So, as the AI moves, will your hands fall off?” I asked.
“Yeah, they're going to be ready to monitor the system and take over soon,” McMullen said. “But we have real living aircraft to fight it. These jets are piloted by real fighter pilots who are trying their best to cover the AI.”
So are we witnessing the revolution?
“If we go down this path, it can be a revolution,” Spain said.
“You can actually take more risks.”
Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Clint Hinote says it was a revolution born out of necessity.
Change the Chinese Air Force, which recently featured the latest jet fighter jets and their own AI drones, as it could be more than a US Air Force match. According to Hinote, “If we have to fight China, we could be doing it in their front yards. That means they can endure more than we can because we are far away.
“How do these war games come out when American pilots are opposed to the 20-1 odds?” he asked.
“The war game isn't going very well,” replied Ginote. “We're going to lose.”
The Air Force is relying on AI drones evenly on odds by bringing things human pilots don't have to the aircraft. “The big thing with artificial intelligence is its ability to process a large amount of data. There's no way humans can come out in a complex air combat environment and absorb it all. Artificial intelligence might be able to get all the data information and process it very quickly before making real-time decisions.”
AI drones are about half the length of manned jet fighter jets, costing a quarter – $20 million to $30 million each. “You can't buy more planes, put them on the field and break the banks yet. The key is that you don't have to bring human operators home. You can actually take more risks.”
Spain expects the Air Force to have 150 AI pilot aircraft by the end of the decade, and will ultimately have up to 1,000 aircraft.
“These drones aren't just sitting in hangars waiting for war with China. What are they going to do in peacetime?”
“It's pretty wide open,” Spain replied.
“Can I send you an AI drone to intercept Russian bombers coming down from the Alaska coast?”
“Yes, you can do that,” he said.
These intercepts can quickly become troubling. Last year, Russian fighters rocked the American F-16, so they had to prepare to film an AI drone.
So is AI going to make a decision on life or death? “It's definitely not,” Spain said. “It's definitely not. People who control AI make life and death decisions.”
At least for now.
Make a life and death decision
“Increasingly, more and more military forces around the world, including the US military, will put pressure on machines to give them more room in making these life and death decisions,” Ginote said.
Do you include your own ability to fire? “The US military is investing in experiments where if they provide that option, they need to be able to produce a platform of its own type that can be fired,” says Hinote.
What happens if your enemy lets the AI make those decisions? “I think they'll do that in their own danger,” Spain said. “AI can be fooled, so AI can be overwhelmed. It can give you false results. We've found that AI can hallucinate, so that's not a guarantee of success.
“Do you at least need to give your pilot that option?” I asked.
“To take full autonomy and let it go? I don't think America is happy with it yet,” Spain replied. “That's not to say we can't become a future world where we live in places we trust. But we don't think we'll start now, certainly and certainly not.
At Top Gun AI, pilots continue to enter the personnel and continue to build trust after the test flight, after the simulation, and after the simulation.
When asked if he wanted to go to battle with human wingmen and AI wingmen, McMullen replied, “When I'm talking about the threat of tomorrow, if I can send out omission assets to a high-risk environment, I would rather do that than send human pilots.”
For more information:
A story created by Mary Walsh. Editor: Carol Ross.
