After the simulator tests, the American Air Force will now include artificial intelligence in exercises and tests with real fighter jets (but of course not with real weapons), announced the Pentagon’s research and development agency, DARPA.
The AI was thrown into a classic “dogfight” situation against a human pilot – this is the combat situation when two fighter jets duel, chase each other in the air and try to use all available weapons and maneuverability to shoot the other one, approx. like in the Top Gun movies. The AI-led fighter was an experimental aircraft, the X-62A, dueling an F-16 piloted by a human pilot. For safety, there was also a human pilot in the X-62A, ready to intervene if anything went wrong, but this was not needed.
The Pentagon did not disclose which plane won the air battle, but it is clear that during the duel they were 600 meters apart and reached speeds well above the speed of sound, around 1,900 km/h. This suggests very intense fighting and maneuvering; in modern aerial duels, due to the extremely precise instruments and weapons, the parties rarely get closer than a few kilometers.
According to DARPA’s announcement, they have already completed 21 successful dogfight exercises, and the artificial intelligence learns a lot from each exercise.
