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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

#331

Post by FrustratedMonky »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #209
XorNot wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which cheap drones? Specifically which systems are currently out-competing F-16s in air to air combat in either trials or combat?

You don't need F-16s at all if you have cheap drones. Why send an expensive plane with a pilot to bomb some country if you can send a drone that costs as little as a basic SUV instead?

Exactly, that is the point. Not that a drone is outcompeting an F-16. But a hundred cheap drones can definitely get by a F-16 and hit their targets.

An F-16 can't get them all. The goal of war isn't to dog fight, its to bomb, and the F-16 can't stop them.

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

#332

Post by ACCount37 »

cloudie78 wrote: post #324
ACCount37 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

F-16s are reusable until they get shot down and you need to be within 30km of the target to drop a JDAM. Any SAM from 60s onwards can deny entry to F-16/F-35. As soon as F-35 opens hatches to drop a bomb it’s on the radar. Small jet engines are 20-25k/unit One F-16 gets you 20-30 ballistic missiles, or cruise missiles. Math doesn’t math in your case, volume and saturation over high tech gadgets that barely work. So m…

Have you actually seen what happened in Iran? Were you paying attention? Any attention at all?

US rolled in, convinced Iran's AA to stop doing its thing, and proceeded to bomb targets with impunity. And I mean "impunity" when I say it. When you see B-52s take off with JDAMs under their wings, you know someone's AA is not picking up the phone.

If a B-52 with JDAMs is somehow survivable, an F-16 is not even a question.

The bulk of US losses in Iran in the air were: MQ-9 Reapers, with 10-20 airframes lost reportedly. That's an aging low/slow turboprop platform that's highly vulnerable even to MANPADS.

No F-16s or B-52s were lost to Iran in the air. Zero. One F-15 was shot down by Iran. One F-35 was damaged - and that specific airframe has crawled back to the nearest airbase under its own power and landed gracefully. Clearly, the jets involved were having a good time overall.

(Except over Kuwait. No airspace is more hostile than an incompetent friendly airspace, it seems.)

Now: a (manned) F-16 flight hour is 20-30k, and a single F-16 can truck 2 to 4 GBUs or JDAMs. An unmanned F-16 can shave a few thousands off that. Trucking cheap bombs with an expensive aircraft is quite a lucrative gig if you can reliably get that aircraft back. And the possibility of using those aircraft in SEAD/DEAD missions that are a bit too spicy for meatbag pilots, but can keep airspace open for other platforms? There's considerable value in that too.

Going "full missile" makes sense at extreme standoff distances, or in extremely low survivability scenarios. That, as Iran shows, isn't at all a given when US levels of SEAD/DEAD are in play. Missiles and OWA drones had a place there, but so did high end SEAD jets and jet-powered missile carriers.

MQ-9 might have underperformed, but that seems to be as much of an argument for more cheap missile/OWA hybrids as it is for cheaper strike/loiter drones, and more expensive, more survivable drones. An "F-16D" and even "F-35D" unmanned conversions might make economic sense, given the prices of MQ-9, F-16, F-35, and what we've seen happen in Iran.

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

#333

Post by budman1 »

numpad0 wrote: post #301
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.

The point is that it is well known that all control inputs on F-16 are electronic(not digital, but still electronic, on earliest variants), so it's "easier" to rig it for full computer control than some of other planes that use partially assisted mechanical controls like A-10A or F-15E or whatever.

even with mechanical controls, there is an autopilot / flight director. which has a mechanism for inserting control inputs into a mechanical flight control system.

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

#334

Post by budman1 »

cloudie78 wrote: post #329
energy123 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been zero sorties over Iran in the last two months because the war aims in the current round of fighting are narrowly scoped to Hormuz. That's not a commentary on the capability of the F-35. You mention MANPADs as if it is a significant vulnerability, but there's been only one or two shootdowns of jets by Iran during the previous two rounds of fighting. I encourage you to look at the number of jets shot down…

“Narrowly scoped to Hormuz” yeah because anything more than that apparently is too great of a scope for the US military. Check the latest reports on stocks in Washington Post. What air superiority? In the Middle East? With what, let me guess F-35? With 25% operational readiness and 13h of maintenance for every 1h of flight? With gym plates in the nose instead of actual radars? And don’t quote Vietnam as some sort of…

US lost a lot of aircraft to the soviet provided air defense network. SAM's were all over the country.

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

#335

Post by budman1 »

syrrim wrote: post #86
beloch wrote: post #76

Autonomous driving is still nowhere near 100%, so why suddenly jump to fighter jets? Is this more of Hegseth's foolhardy bluster and injected testosterone? The tech isn't ready. They should start with golf-karts, not fighter planes. ----------- Edit: Okay gang. If aircraft are easier to fly than cars are to drive, where are all your pilot licenses? If you've faced rush hour traffic, flying a military jet should be a…

Fighter jets don't need 100%. In a war, we accept a much higher rate of casualties than we do in day to day driving. I would also imagine that while planes are harder for a person to pilot, they are easier for a computer. Most of what makes them hard is mechanical, not dealing with unexpected situations.

a strong reason to use a pilot is to protect a large capital investment. in war, you get shot at. things are over stressed, equipment fails.

a pilot has the ability to improvise, and perhaps bring the aircraft back to be repaired and returned to service.

will an AI be as good at 'improvising'?

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

#336

Post by ghaff »

idiotsecant wrote: post #235
ghaff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can disagree about aspects of corporate financing of elections etc. while also accepting that everything doesn't get thrown up in the air if a corporate officer leaves for another company. Corporations are established entities that effectively act as a person for certain purposes--though one is welcome to disagree about the extent of those purposes. I expect most people here wouldn't, for example, be opposed to c…

This is a strawman. Why do you have to be a person to donate to charities?

Corporations donate to 501(c)3s as entities and even have matching gifts. In fact, a lot of charities have corporations/foundations as some of their largest contributors.

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

#337

Post by ozim »

ghaff wrote: post #199
ozim wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we already embraced this way of thinking since introduction of „corporate personhood”.

One can disagree about aspects of corporate financing of elections etc. while also accepting that everything doesn't get thrown up in the air if a corporate officer leaves for another company. Corporations are established entities that effectively act as a person for certain purposes--though one is welcome to disagree about the extent of those purposes. I expect most people here wouldn't, for example, be opposed to c…

There is a world of difference between supporting open source software or any pro bono foundation

and

supporting election candidacy.

I think a 2yo will get the distinction and you are asking for clarification?

Besides that go read up on 80’s literature on corporations. Like Gibson or Stephenson.

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

#338

Post by trollbridge »

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)*

They can simply host the models somewhere like Singapore and then sell the service from there. I mean, my Xiaomi account gets routed through Singapore.

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

#339

Post by t1234s »

alistairSH wrote: post #201
t1234s wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how AI will solve the paperclip problem.

And now I’m going to have nightmares about a super-smart, but just as annoying, Clippy.

AI remake of terminator 2 where the T1000 is a man-sized killer paperclip that uses the iron present in its human victims to make more killer paperclips.
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