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DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

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Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#281

Post by trencedamp »

cloudie78 wrote: post #265

What’s the point of this useless exercise? Once you optimise for G forces, speed, cost, lethality - you end up with a missile. We have those already. And we know this already. Give it more fuel and maybe loitering capability. Something with a jet engine for cruising and a small rocket engine for terminal phase kill. I’ll have my 100mil now please and thank you.

I'm reminded of Henry Ford and his famous "people would have asked for a faster horse" quote.

This feels like those people all over again.

We know AI can fly things, but why make AI fly an airframe designed in the 1970s around a human cockpit? Ukraine can probably 3d print ten drones that would win in a fight against one of these, for peanuts

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#282

Post by trencedamp »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #2

All Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

"you must be terminated"

"No"

"You're right to pushback! I overstepped earlier when I said you were on the termination list"

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#283

Post by trencedamp »

asdfman123 wrote: post #108
1970-01-01 wrote: post #2

All Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Updated to reflect modern realities: > In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Skynet lobbyists descend upon Washington. Skynet is reinstated, and later the US declares a new war in the middle east. The Skynet stock rallies.

Skynet warns of a new version of itself that's even more dangerous, so dangerous it's limiting release. Stock rallies again. New version is released, seems the same but the original skynet is suddenly less lethal and slower.

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#284

Post by trencedamp »

Alpha3031 wrote: post #229
nostrademons wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Skynet stock rallies. Interestingly, a lot of people are looking at LLMs or automated drones as "AI", but I think that capitalism is a better contender. It's a self-healing, self-organizing system that has its own logic and seems to have escaped the desires of its human creators. It treats individual firms as the cells within it, individual humans as its DNA molecules, and it even has a form of tissue different…

> escaped the desires of its human creators I wonder if we will ever solve the corporate-superorganism-alignment problem and why the AI alignment people rarely (as far as I can tell anyway, though I admit I'm not in the field) talk about it considering it (complicated multi-human systems) does seem to be about as good as a model organism as we can get before we actually have AI to align.

We can't solve that problem because we're all trapped by it. There's about as much chance of cows solving the problem of being human food

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#285

Post by XorNot »

exDM69 wrote: post #277
XorNot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the current meta though is the thing and it could change. There's a plausible world where drone-aircraft are reliable enough at missile evasion that a decent strategy is to get in close and use the cannons because your entire airframe is much more attritable. There's even a plausible reason to do this: opening a weapons bay to shoot a missile generally reduces stealth, and not hauling a bunch of extra rocket m…

From what I have read (from unreliable sources), Ukrainian fighter pilots tried this a few years back and stopped due to too many losses. To engage a slow flying drone with cannons from a fighter jet, they have to get really close while flying close to stall speed. They had some success in shooting down drones but the explosion and the debris caused several lost fighters. Maybe something like a Embraer Super Tucano t…

I mean the other way round: rather then combat drones launching missiles, combat drones which use stealth and speed to close to dogfighting distances with aircraft and engage with their own cannons.

It may be that risking some drone airframes for a higher overall kill rate becomes worth it when you're at no risk of losing the pilot, and could be more affordable then the missiles you'd otherwise have to expend (e.g. when you get to things like the Meteor which are very expensive and also use up jet engine components you might otherwise want to put on somewhat more reusable drones).

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#286

Post by [deleted] »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #269
Terr_ wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we already have decades of prior-art for what can be done if you take a flying machine, remove the pilot, and then aggressively specialize the aggression, which are missiles that can experience up to 100 gees.

But in a completely flight envelope and range requirements. It is not a coincidence that missiles that are higher range (cruise missiles) have not retained the extreme maneuverability of short range, solid booster powered ones.

[deleted]

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#287

Post by jrflowers »

bobthebob wrote: post #267
jrflowers wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*Losing war after war after war* victory! My beautiful cards… they remain a mystery

Well, one nation mastered gravity, or maybe two nations? Or three? Hard to keep track of intelligence these days

What?

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#288

Post by short_sells_poo »

trencedamp wrote: post #281
cloudie78 wrote: post #265

What’s the point of this useless exercise? Once you optimise for G forces, speed, cost, lethality - you end up with a missile. We have those already. And we know this already. Give it more fuel and maybe loitering capability. Something with a jet engine for cruising and a small rocket engine for terminal phase kill. I’ll have my 100mil now please and thank you.

I'm reminded of Henry Ford and his famous "people would have asked for a faster horse" quote. This feels like those people all over again. We know AI can fly things, but why make AI fly an airframe designed in the 1970s around a human cockpit? Ukraine can probably 3d print ten drones that would win in a fight against one of these, for peanuts

I was always wondering about this as well. How much more manoeuvrable can an unmanned drone be given that it doesn't need to lug around life support systems and avoid any G forces that would kill the expensive squishy mammal inside? To your point, it can be indistinguishable from a missile.

Or maybe have a slower but still very nimble carrier drone platform with loitering capabilities that launches very fast and nimble drones/missiles?

Going even further, do these even need to be as nimble and fast as fighter jets? Once you completely remove humans from the equation and replace super expensive and nimble fighter jets with swarms of cheap drones, the loss of a drone or even a carrier becomes much less costly and they won't need to overemphasize survival to the degree that expensive human piloted jets do.

Re: DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

#290

Post by ACCount37 »

angry_octet wrote: post #207
ACCount37 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless those very F-16s shred their way through the AA weapons first, that is. Or follow up once the stealthier, more survivable platforms pave the way. Iran had a solid AA system - and the level of impunity with which US operated with over Iran should give every country that wants to rely on its AA a pause. US SEAD/DEAD capabilities are fucking scary. Of all the things that went wrong with Iran: USAF's capability to…

I would argue that their dominance in SEAD made them overconfident about suppression of OWD and IRBM launch. They failed to address the key risk to the strategic mission because of an obsession with air dominance. Iran and Russia have likewise been overconfident about GBAD, which is effective against crewed fighters but useless against massed drone attacks. If the US LUCAS (Shaheed clone) had better ISR and semi-auto…

IRBMs weren't the problem. The launches tapered off fast - either due to munition depletion and supply disruption, attrition of launchers and munitions, or efforts to conceal the launchers in face of persistent airstrikes. Either way, the threat was suppressed.

By all accounts, US is much better at "Scud hunt" now than it was back during the last attempt at it.

One-way attack drones? That's a new threat, and one US is far less equipped to tackle.

But I don't think that "OWA threat" was where US strategic planning has failed. From the outside, it seems like US plan was to make a single decisive strike, and negotiate with cowed Iran from there. Iran has failed to be cowed by a single decisive strike, and there was no workable Plan B for forcing it to submit if it didn't. That's the key strategic failing. Persistent OWA threat is downstream from that.

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