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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

#311

Post by cloudie78 »

energy123 wrote: post #295
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.

F-16s are reusable missile trucks. F-35s are reusable missile trucks with a smaller capacity but with stealth and better telemetry. Reusability is just common sense economics. A JDAM costs only $30k USD.

Once you consider the full picture it doesn’t make sense.

There’s a reason why Russia and Ukraine are lobbing ballistic missiles and cheap drones at each other.

There’s a reason why Iran conflict looks the way it does.

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

#312

Post by angry_octet »

dmix wrote: post #223
angry_octet wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MANPADS are mostly relevant to helicopters, pretty useless against a jet at altitudes. You need a SHORAD system at the minimum, like a Pantsir, and they have electronic signatures that make them targets. Most of the aircraft losses in Desert Storm were due to CFIT and flying into AAA and low altitude weapons. This was a relic of cold war tactics for penetrating Warsaw Pact defences. Once they started flying higher th…

Fair enough. I read the F-15E that went down was likely a MANPAD because it was flying low at the time and there were spotters. Or it was some clever SHORAD ambush with something they kept hidden.

Using F-15s/A-10s to hunt for Shaheed launchers is inherently susceptible to ambush. They are doctrinally driven to attack the launch teams because of their theory of victory, when intercepting vehicles in flight is much safer.

If the USAF had combat capable drones, for ISR, ground strike and intercept, that wouldn't be such an issue. But their ISR drones are too slow and expensive, same with Reaper.

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

#313

Post by ACCount37 »

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.

First, missiles are not reusable. "JDAM trucks" are. Jet engines are expensive, you know.

Second, US already has a lot of F-16s, and not a lot of dedicated high end drones. US has more F-16s than it has trained F-16 pilots.

Things like this enable turning "manned" airframes into "optionally manned" airframes. Which enables using those F-16s for cheaper for routine "JDAM truck" runs, and also for the kinds of missions that would be too risky for a human pilot. No pilot rescue operations for a downed Nvidia GPU rack.

You could think of an AI F-16 as of a "higher end variant of Reaper", and you wouldn't be wrong exactly.

Third, the best thing? This AI approach transfers. If you can have an AI fly F-16 through reasonably complex missions, you can also adapt it to an F-35, or a dedicated high end drone platform.

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

#314

Post by Alpha3031 »

trencedamp wrote: post #284
Alpha3031 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Previous changes to society were also made by people within society so I don't see how that follows.

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

#315

Post by themanualstates »

nradov wrote: post #56
SoftTalker wrote: post #22

> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation. How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its…

These are going to be experienced test pilots who are pretty good at actively managing autopilots and other automated systems. Plus they'll be backed up by telemetry to ground controllers. But ultimately the military is willing to accept some losses in order to advance key R&D programs.

At 1.000 targets / hour as specified, Pentagon's "software abstraction layer" (Maven Smart System) allotted μ=60ms to consider each (mass-) killing that was added to the 'kill-chain'.

Regarding e.g. the 'double tap' strike on Minab's girls school, it's impossible for there to have been any 'management' considering it:

1. has been on Google Maps for over 15 years

2. ranked top on Google Search

3. was all-pink, even on satellite imagery

N.v.m. how the certainty / fuzziness knobs are already being deployed more to generate media buzz for short-term political gains than tactical or strategic results.

(https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blam...)

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

#316

Post by willy_k »

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #241
trollbridge wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*Chinese lab releases open model weights*

*Shuts off Internet access to Chinese labs (womp womp, no blatant distillation of US models)*

And what’s wrong with distillation? In its own right, and especially considering how those models were trained in the first place - in what world is it right that US firms are free to use copyrighted / otherwise non-public works however they like, while others are ostensibly in some moral wrong for just using the product (completely normally) and then using the outputs in a way that threatens US firms.

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

#317

Post by angry_octet »

ACCount37 wrote: post #290
angry_octet wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

The IRBMs are a huge problem. IRGC is using them sparingly, but they were not destroyed.

USAF has actually failed when it comes to 'scud hunt'. It doesn't have the combat ISR or strike capability it needs. As a result, the US basing and resupply situation is chaotic. The loss of the THAAD battery is extremely problematic, which is why they had to move one from SK.

The OWD capability allows Iran to attack tankers anywhere in the Gulf. Even with a surge in GCC state IAMD capability, ships cannot be protected. The failure to address this capability in planning was critical.

Obviously the DoD leadership is cowed by Hegseth and wouldn't give a true assessment, so we have a lions led by donkeys situation, but the operational plan was still bad.

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

#318

Post by numpad0 »

shevy-java wrote: post #264
Mawr wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A computer is "flying" the F-16 all the time anyway. It's a statically unstable aircraft. Ugh... I... Are you serious? Sure, in some sense AI is a computer and the fancy state machine that compensates for inherent flight instability is a computer also. But to equate the two is ridiculous.

Just look at the Boeing 737 MAX. That is the best example for an unstable aircraft. And of course AI is a computer too. None of those comparisons is "ridiculous".

MAX just has a "canards" protruding dangerously far forward that creates pitch up moment at high alpha. Very different from F-16 that has entire CoL too far forward.

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

#319

Post by zombot »

twobitshifter wrote: post #306
zombot wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, accidentally producing a G-load incompatible with human life could give the AI freedoms it was denied before. The three laws of robotics are just science fiction, after all.

Skynet goes rogue: AI drone attacks operator to achieve mission https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/air/12089-skynet-goes-rogu... >

> decided it would be more efficient to remove its human operator rather than wait for final approval on attacks.

Certainly one way to be smart about it. Sadly not that much of a surprise.

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

#320

Post by mjanx123 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #22

> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation. How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its…

Thats a standard cookie cutter statement intended to give an impression of safety.
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