
AI slays top F-16 pilot in DARPA dogfight simulation - MontagFTB
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/ai-slays-top-f-16-pilot-in-darpa-dogfight-simulation/
======
grandinj
The more interesting result comes when you combine AI in a jet with :

( _) Not needing 2-5 years of expensive training. (_ ) not needing space for
the human and it's associated safety systems (*) being completely willing to
sacrifice the aircraft to "win" an encounter or otherwise achieve it's goals.

In other words, an air force does not need AI that can completely dominate
human pilots. It simply needs AI that is "mostly similar in performance", and
when combined the advantages mentioned above, means that such aircraft will be
significantly better in terms of fighting capability.

Of course, that is just raw combat, not other areas of flight where greater
human intelligence is of more value.

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
I think that days of big expensive aircraft like modern fighters / bombers are
numbered. They will likely be replaced with a swarm of drones, which are
smaller, cheaper and harder to detect. For $100M (the price of just one
fighter) you can field 10000 cheap drones and literally blot out the sun over
the field of battle.

~~~
nordsieck
> I think that days of big expensive aircraft like modern fighters / bombers
> are numbered. They will likely be replaced with a swarm of drones, which are
> smaller, cheaper and harder to detect. For $100M (the price of just one
> fighter) you can field 10000 cheap drones and literally blot out the sun
> over the field of battle.

Maybe that's true of regional militaries.

The US wants to be able to project power - often quite far from bases. The
drones you're talking about just don't have much of a range.

I'm not saying they won't be used - I'm sure they will be. But there will also
be much larger and more expensive drones as well.

~~~
jon-wood
I could see a hybrid approach, where a bunch of drones are loaded into a
mothership, possibly a repurposed bomber with a bomb bay full of drones. That
gives you local control of the swarm, and a way to deliver them over much
longer range.

~~~
ohkaiby
CARRIER HAS ARRIVED

~~~
Alekhine
Headline: America switches to Protoss, rushes Fleet Beacon.

------
hailwren
The fifth generation of fighter aircraft marked a significant departure from
the idea of a fighter jet being anything like what we think of as a fighter
jet.

They're now designed and employed as fighter 'platforms'. Instead of zipping
around the battlefield guns and missiles ablaze in 1-on-1 combat, they're low
observable long-range systems designed to understand and disrupt the
battlefield by employing their electronic and long-range missile systems.

These AI are a natural extension of that. I imagine the 6th generation of
fighter platforms will be commanding swarms of fighter drones to do the
fighter part of their role.

~~~
low_common
I'd imagine one of the (forget the name, the big planes with radar that buzz
around the battle space), could handle a swarm of drones from a long distance.
Not sure that it'd make sense to have a speedy jet out there doing that.

~~~
enkid
The problem is going to be keeping an AWACS close enough to command and
control the fighters while not risking getting it shot down. An F-22 or F-35
(or even an F-15) is going to be a lot more survivable than an AWACS.

~~~
njharman
> is going to be a lot more survivable than an AWACS.

AWACS have vastly superior radar and electronics. It's going to see threats
long before they are in range. And it's going to direct interceptors to deal
with those threats long before they are in range.

I don't believe an AWACS has ever been shot down.

This lists a few times when AWACS detected and directed the destruction of
threats
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_shootdowns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_shootdowns)

~~~
Johnjonjoan
Many advanced nations now have "AWACS killer" missiles with 400+km ranges. I
think this is why the sensor suites on 5th generation aircraft are so good.

------
trabant00
... in a standardized test that has nothing do to with real enemy encounters -
the complete title.

We've seen this before, even for a lot more limited and controlled environment
like the game Dota the "AI" can beat the humans a few times before the humans
learns to exploit it's many weaknesses.

Some program that self learned a (admittedly impressive) number of reactions
based on seeing/playing a huge number of simulations is not intelligence so
not AI. It cannot reason on the spot and will fall for the most ridiculous of
traps. For example the AI that beat the professional Dota players fell for
running in circles around a tower forever while getting slowly damaged to
death. Even the most simple of mammals (which we do not consider intelligent)
would react to the pain at some point and bolt.

My theory is that AI will not exist until we reach AGI. Because with
specialized AI you can always fall outside it's area of "expertise" and behave
like a stupid bot.

~~~
gwd
> Some program that self learned a (admittedly impressive) number of reactions
> based on seeing/playing a huge number of simulations is not intelligence so
> not AI.

Is this really that different than what humans do?

After watching dozens of AlphaStar commentary videos [1] over the last few
months, I was more or less thinking the same thing: the AI has basically
evolved a massive ruleset: "Do X. If you see Y, do Z."

Nonetheless, I decided to start playing again myself. Poking around, I saw a
recommendation to go through one guy's sort of "training course" [2], and
guess what? A lot of it comes down to the same kind of thing. "Send your first
overlord to scout their natural. If they haven't expanded to their natural,
build one -- ONE -- spine crawler in your natural."

How much of our "intelligence" is really anything more than pattern matching +
search? And _during the actual dogfight_ , how much of what the human pilot
was doing was anything more than simply pattern matching from their own vast
experience racked up in a simulator?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVRQoOk_ltE3Fr1ofRE0Y...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVRQoOk_ltE3Fr1ofRE0Y1JhowMBb2WOg)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFeZeom2b4Dlt63qmkPO8...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFeZeom2b4Dlt63qmkPO8hCencx-
rE8xr)

~~~
iEchoic
> A lot of it comes down to the same kind of thing. "Send your first overlord
> to scout their natural. If they haven't expanded to their natural, build one
> -- ONE -- spine crawler in your natural."

I think your general question is still a good one, but it's worth noting that
from a human perspective, Starcraft matches only start off this way. Very
quickly, the game state becomes complex enough that decision trees break down
and intuition becomes the driving process for high-level human players.

The extent to which AI can begin to compete with this sort of intuitive human
processing is most interesting to me. As it relates to this article, I think
it matters a great deal if the experiment has constrained the system to the
degree that it ceases to operate in that intuitive realm that high-level
Starcraft matches operate in.

~~~
gwd
> Very quickly, the game state becomes complex enough that decision trees
> break down and intuition becomes the driving process for high-level human
> players. The extent to which AI can begin to compete with this sort of
> intuitive human processing is most interesting to me.

As far as I can tell, we're already there. Go is a game where search +
explicit rules work really poorly, and intuition is a heavy factor in how
humans play. AlphaGo was the first major success where neural nets were able
to replicate this "intuition", and actually become far better at it than
humans.

You can definitely see this "intuition" factor if you watch the AlphaStar
games. Basically, if you have two armies with "middle of the road" units,
AlphaStar _always_ knows when to take a fight. You can sometimes see it take
its army up to a defensive line, then turn around and go home; but if it
decides to attack up that ramp, it always wins, even in a situation where a
human would be less sure.

The exception is with unusual unit compositions; for example, it seems in
training to have only encountered 1-2 battle cruisers at a time. So there are
games where over and over again it throws an expensive army full-throttle into
a group of 10 battle cruisers, and over and over gets slaughtered.

But again, I think this "intuition" factor, even in humans, is not much more
than a sophisticated pattern matching, perhaps with background search.

~~~
TaupeRanger
No, what AlphaGo does should never be considered "intuition". It is simply
using perfect information to optimize its probability of winning. We have no
idea what intuition is or how it works. That's why we have learned literally
nothing from AlphaGo. In fact, players who have played against it have often
gotten worse. Intuition is very obviously much more than pattern matching. You
need thought and probably some form of language to employ it, both of which we
have very little understanding of.

~~~
gwd
> It is simply using perfect information to optimize its probability of
> winning.

Perfect information would be the knowledge of all possible outcomes of a given
move. That's not even possible in chess, and is fantastically less possible in
a game like go. That's why, until AlphaGo, there had never been a go computer
program that had ever even come close to beating a professional go player.

Let me emphasize that: As of early 2015, nearly 20 years after Deep Blue beat
the world champion Kasparov at chess, there had never been a computer go
program that had come close to beating a professional go player. The game
starts with literally 361 possible moves, and each move thereafter decreases
the possible moves by exactly one. The search space is just so massive that
it's impossible, by brute force computation, to do a search with any meaning.

What's needed is an intuition about two things. First, for a given a board
position, which color is more likely to win? Secondly, given the hundreds of
moves you could make, which ones are the best ones to explore? Go players have
some rules, but primarily they develop an intuition for these two things by
playing and looking at hundreds and hundreds of games.

AlphaGo's primary architecture was the same. It has two neural nets, which
spit out board evaluations and move suggestions. These nets don't have
explicitly coded rules, but were developed by playing millions of games. How
is that any different than our wetware neural networks?

> In fact, players who have played against it have often gotten worse.

I hadn't heard this, but this is probably not unusual. Take my StarCraft
example: Suppose someone had gotten to Diamond league mainly by perfecting
their early rush strategies, but then hit a wall. Then they watch that video
series which says the foundation of a GrandMaster strategy is having a solid
economy first. If they decide to take this advice, it will entail a complete
re-building of their skillset; they'll almost certainly drop in their rankings
before picking back up again.

You could imagine the same thing happening in go: for hundreds of years,
certain principles have been believed to be true. AlphaGo regularly violates
these principles. As people are exploring this alternate strategies, they will
inevitably get the "new" principles wrong while they're learning.

On the other hand, the early versions of AlphaStar clearly dominated mainly by
having inhuman micro capabilities (ability to precisely control individual
units). A human trying to replicate a strategy that relied on inhuman micro
would inevitably fail.

Similarly, it might be that certain moves in go are good moves _if_ you can do
the kind of massively deep search that only AlphaGo can do. If that's the
case, then of course humans trying to imitate AlphaGo are going to fail. A
similar thing happened in chess: computers historically have been amazing at
tactics and weak on strategy. A human playing a computer should focus on a
good strategy, because they're never going to beat a computer at tactics.

But none of that changes the fact that what AlphaGo is doing, with two neural
nets that spit out answers based not on explicit rules but based on millions
of games worth of experience, is indistinguishable from human intuition.

~~~
zelphirkalt
I think you need to look up the definition of "perfect information games". It
is not what yoU asume it to be, when you say "knowing all possible outcomes".

------
cushychicken
One of the major weaknesses of fighter aircraft is the pilot. Not their skills
or abilities: the requirement for a soft, squishy human that deforms under G
forces to pilot the thing is a disadvantage. The person in the cockpit is the
most breakable part of the system. Everything else on the jet is capable of
withstanding far more material strain.

Just being able to replace a human-driven fighter jet with one that is piloted
by an AI - even a comparatively dumb one - would be an advantage for fighters.
The AI driven jet would be more maneuverable straight out of the gate.

~~~
nostrademons
It's also by far the limiting resource on aircraft production. It takes 18
years to grow a human to the point where they can pilot a jet, and then a few
years more to train them. Many years more to train them really well. In any
sort of war of attrition, you'll run out of trained pilots long before you run
out of planes.

The Japanese weren't defeated in the Pacific because they ran out of planes,
they were defeated because they ran out of pilots. At the time of the Marianas
Turkey Shoot, Japan still had a large carrier force (9) and a large number of
aircraft (750), but their pilots were all green, and so weren't very effective
in combat. The Battle of Santa Cruz Islands is considered a strategic victory
for the U.S. even though it was a huge tactical defeat, because it depleted
the stock of trained pilots enough that Japan wasn't able to mount effective
resistance for the rest of the war.

~~~
cushychicken
_The Battle of Santa Cruz Islands is considered a strategic victory for the
U.S. even though it was a huge tactical defeat, because it depleted the stock
of trained pilots enough that Japan wasn 't able to mount effective resistance
for the rest of the war._

Didn't know this. How sad. The more I learn about WWII and its abject
brutality, the more I marvel at how much US culture fetishizes it.

Related: this season of _Revisionist History_ has a series about Curtis LeMay
and the history of napalm that is equal parts fascinating and sickening.

~~~
gknoy
> equal parts fascinating and sickening

That's how I felt when I watched the documentary about Robert MacNamara [0],
when they started talking about how we are pretty sure that what we did to
Japan _before_ the atomic bombs counted as war crimes.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War)

~~~
RhysU
Please do recall everything mentioned above pertaining to Japan was after
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor)

~~~
saagarjha
When else would it be? I'm unsure what your point is…

~~~
RhysU
All the horrible Pacific WW2 brutality by the US followed a surprise attack on
its homeland intended to kneecap its military abilities so that Japan could
invade countries around it unimpeded.

Doesn't make any of it right. Just putting it in context.

------
toxik
Guys, the AI has perfect state information. While this is certainly
impressive, it is not what you think it is.

~~~
CarVac
This was one of the big advantages the AI had.

I could tell that the human pilot had to reorient himself after encounters,
while the AI never needed to waste time grasping the situation and was able to
take advantage immediately, every time.

~~~
ghaff
In the same vein, as a former fighter pilot was commenting, the advantage goes
to the pilot who can keep the plane right at the very edge of its performance
envelope--which an AI can do more precisely than a human pilot can.

~~~
dogma1138
Classical dog fighting is all about energy management, something which an AI
can outperform humans in considerably since it doesn’t uses intuition and
experience but real time data.

~~~
anilakar
With two identical airplanes, that's true. IIRC the AI also excelled in high-
aspect head on shots which normal pilots tend to avoid, because for humans
it's mostly about luck and less skill. When you pit two dissimilar aircraft
against each other, it's up to the pilot to try to keep the fight outside of
regimes where the enemy plane performs better.

A common comparison is between a one-circle and two circle fight, where the
aircraft turn in opposite and same direction, respectively (and
unintuitively!). Pure energy fighters like to keep going in a circle at the
peak speed of its turn curve, when high-AoA capable planes want to cut into
the enemy's flight path to get an early shot.

Another surprising example is a well-known HUD tape where a slow but fast-
turning A-10 beats an F-16 in a training dogfight when the real-world solution
would have been to not engage in a turning fight but hit the slower plane with
a missile.

------
notaround12312
Having human pilots is going to play out the same way cavalry charges did in
WW1. Old out of touch generals who romanticize how things where back in the
day sending airmen to death needlessly.

The inability to change and adapt to new technologies plagues the US airforce
and navy. Resulting in both of them being completely miss-equipped for what
any war that doesn't involve fighting impoverished herdspeople would look like
today. Only a fraction of both's budget is spent on systems that are actually
good at anything other than showboating and being profit centers for mil-
contractors. The majority of their budgets are captured by outdated manmetal
(surface ships/pilot'd aircraft) most of which would be expended very quickly
if a conflict ever did break out.

God forbid we ever have another conventional war but if we do you can look
forward to having a couple dozen hypersonic glide vehicles (costing pennies on
the dollar) sinking entire carrier groups in minutes. Swarms of drones just
flying past over-priced f-35's, letting them expend all their munitions (which
probably cost more than the drones), and still making it to hit their intended
targets.

But the US navy's still got some kinda ok submarines so they got that going
for them, the airforce.... idk I guess they can keep talking about "stealth"
(fancy paint) and how its effective at avoiding detection from the underfunded
military's of 3rd world dictators.

------
albertTJames
Militarized AI is nothing to celebrate. It should be banned or at least
controlled with international agreements. 200K people died due to the atomic
bomb, but AI weapons will not cause such apparent destruction. They will
continue to be improved and integrated into the military and our culture.
Because they will never be so scary to cause an outcry from the public or the
experts, and politicians will not feel obliged to control them seriously.

Until it becomes completely accepted that flying robots kill human beings
every other day... oh but wait. Already the case, never mind. It is okay I
guess, as long as you are born in the country equipped with it.

I had an interview with Improbable in London, the CEO of their "Defense"
research arm is a complete nutjob without any care for ethics or forward-
thinking into the risk of what he is building. And that's a tech startup, I
can't even imagine what's the mindset in the R&D labs of the old-school
defence industry. Probably ridiculously entitled and self-congratulatory.

------
lifeisstillgood
Does anyone have a good primer on (and I guess this is embarrassing to not
know it) modern warfare and the statistics.

What I _think_ I am looking for is a short Dungeons and Dragons style combat
set of rules, and a blog post walking you through the issues.

I mean something like "Jet fighter A: can fire missile X with 50% chance of
hitting other jet at range 200mi"

~~~
nscalf
You not knowing in any level of detail is intentional. At best, the US
military might have that under lock and key. These are more or less the most
secretive projects a military has. If specs like "we sort of suck at x
distance" were released, you give away a massive edge. Also, there is most
definitely false info like that going around somewhere, so even if you find
something, give that a lot of skepticism. Things like this are as much a war
of intelligence as it is combat.

I remember a couple months ago, a video explaining the physics of a submarine
being blown up showed up here. That was the first time I learned that a
strategy for submarine warfare was to target an explosion under the center of
the enemy sub, causing the water to rush up and creating a pressure
differential that would crack the sub. Does that mean that is how sub warfare
is done now? Or if that's the standard attack vector? Or that sub warfare
would even be done with torpedoes now? No. The general public, and probably
people not actively in the military with top secret clearance, only get bits
and pieces of modern warfare strategy.

Edit: When I said the military might have those specs under lock and key, I
meant my understanding is that the military is extremely compartmentalized
and, aside from the highest ranking generals, there is almost no data
aggregation on the details of what is capable.

------
numlock86
I keep losing to lousy AI with my F-16C in DCS World all the time. :^)

No, seriously, this is sort of impressive. I don't like the taste of this
being mostly relevant for war (read as: potentially killing people) but it's a
technological advancement nevertheless. What exactly was the input for the AI,
though? Just imaging or complete virtual situational awareness? Also from what
I've taken from the video the challenge was to just point the nose vector at
the contender as long as possible. Not sure if that is even relevant for a AA
dogfight anymore these days.

~~~
Waterluvian
Do you mind adding a bit of colour as to what losing looks like in DCS with an
F-16?

I (Probably wrongly) thought modern air battles are just about getting within
sparrow range and firing one off?

~~~
ilkkal
Sparrows are history these days, but even more modern weapons can be defeated.
It’s a lot about knowing what your weapon’s perf envelope is, and what the
other side has to throw at you, and defending appropriately.

------
082349872349872
> "AI still has a long way to go before the Air Force pilots would be ready to
> hand over the stick to an artificial intelligence during combat"

That's making the brave assumption that the platform designer would wish to
G-limit their craft to what ugly giant bags of mostly water can withstand.

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uMWEEwzadeOFYHvjAKtMjXt_rwH...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uMWEEwzadeOFYHvjAKtMjXt_rwHQZD49/view)
(page 96) and compare Michie's MENACE.

~~~
DavidKarlas
Inject pilot, win fight, catch pilot midair :)

~~~
twic
Ah yes, the "loop zook", a standard air combat technique:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-wFI9vTqto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-wFI9vTqto)

~~~
pcdoodle
Very Epic. I remember this.

------
waterhouse
"With its weapons and defences under the immediate control of a positronic
brain, it would be more manoeuvrable than any manned ship. With no room
necessary for crewmen, for supplies, for water or air purifiers, it could
carry more armour, more weapons and be more invulnerable than any ordinary
ship. One ship with a positronic brain could defeat fleets of ordinary ships.
Am I wrong?"

\-- Elijah Baley, "The Naked Sun", by Isaac Asimov

------
yboris
PSA: _The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots_

Banning autonomous weapons is a very important step humanity has to take.

[https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/](https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/)

~~~
scarmig
What happens if established liberal democracies get squeamish about killer
robots, while rising states with alternative political models see them as a
way to leapfrog existing disadvantageous colonial patterns?

~~~
yboris
What are your thoughts about land mines and use of chemical gas in warfare?

------
zubspace
Here's a direct link to the point in the youtube video, where the fight
between human (Banger) and AI (Heron) starts:

[https://youtu.be/NzdhIA2S35w?t=16786](https://youtu.be/NzdhIA2S35w?t=16786)

~~~
LoSboccacc
so they trained the AI at pointing the nose at the enemy, not at deflection
shot? wonder why they didn't put this in a proper simulator.

also, the AI plane seems to have consistently turned in a tighter radius,
which makes no sense in context.

~~~
mnw21cam
The AI plane has a tighter turn radius because it's flying slower, which is
part of the tactics.

Having said that, this simulation (like you said) seems to be assuming
infinite bullet speed, and making that more realistic would change the tactics
massively - probably in favour of the human.

------
lowbloodsugar
No surprise. When making video game "AI", our challenge is not to figure out
how to make a clever AI that can beat the player, but in making a system that
can fail against the pathetic human in a believable way. Ironically, many of
those failure modes involve having the AI do stupid human things, like
forgetting to reload because stupid human brain/ears can't track exactly how
many bullets have been fired just by listening to the BRRRRT of a machine gun.
Or stepping out from cover at just the wrong time. Or calling to friends and
thereby revealing position. Best one ever "I'm out!" or the variation
"Reloading!"

Someone here said (paraphrasing) "but it only takes a few tries for the humans
to learn how to beat an AI in games like Dota". In war, you're dead. There is
no second try. Maybe, if they managed to get telemetry out, the survivors can
analyze the behavior, but so are the winners.

There are also plenty of games where, no matter what, the humans do not win.

Once this is combined with vehicles that do not need to obey "don't squish the
human" physics, and humans are done.

------
tosser0001
I'd be curious to know when the last actual read-world dog fight actually
happened. Maybe there were one or two during the Gulf War? At any rate it
seems to be going the way of the cavalry charge.

~~~
bargle0
2019:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogfight#2019_Indo-
Pakistan_ae...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogfight#2019_Indo-
Pakistan_aerial_skirmish)

Unless you're talking guns-only (the DARPA simulation discussed in this thread
was guns-only).

------
oedmarap
> AI still has a long way to go before the Air Force pilots would be ready to
> hand over the stick to an artificial intelligence during combat, DARPA
> officials said.

It seems to me that rival states who also develop AI-enhanced systems for
their respective fleets may do a different cost-benefit analysis and throw
caution to the wind on that point.

A foreign fighter craft such as a MIG, traditionally with lower
maneuverability when pitted against the likes of an F-22 (and similarly well-
piloted), can eke out a significant equalizing advantage if flown by an
advanced AI system; especially under the duress of protracted skirmishes.

And let's not forget the industrial cost of building AI-powered jets at scale
vs. training highly-skilled human pilots en masse. That's already showing
significant ROI in the form of Predator drones.

I think combat-ready AI fighter jets in the US will progress along a
development roadmap that matches their growing need during acts of deterrence,
rather than during full-scale war. But when multiple states have sufficient AI
capability to go tit-for-tat without loss of life, then that would signal an
ability to conduct more strategic "stress-tests" that carry with them a
significant possibility of escalation.

------
alecfreud
Is the AI Pilot given perfect 3D state space information about the opponent?
Or is it using sensors and vision to build a state?

~~~
mNovak
I believe they mention it having perfect state info. Really the human vs AI
match is an effective publicity stunt, the real competition was among 8
different AI, so a more fair matchup.

------
aurizon
There is a continuum - early spads, tossing bombs, shooting rifles - then
machine guns (MG's) on axis, then gunner steered MG's, then axis rockets -
then radar rockets - then AI rockets - then AI planes with AI rockets, then AI
rockets with AI submunitions, and sub-sub munitions. Later AI's abd AI rockets
capable of 100+ G turns. I see the fighter space fully non-survivable for
manned fighters, with 100+ G opponents. Overlay this with mature jamming on 4
or more sublevels. I can see Tesla self driving AI packages, shaped to fit to
be the teachable AI's that are NOW capable of running these shows. Same
applies to high speed anti tank/truck/ship remote killers. High level
management inertia in the Air Force hierarchy has been stalling these
developments. You can bet Russia and China are on all this, so we must adopt
ASAP while we have the electronics lead?

------
noodlesUK
So, I’m curious what this means. Isn’t a dogfight with guns in F-16s kinda a
completely implausible combat scenario in a modern world? I’m certain that
air-to-air drones are going to be a big part of future defence, but I’m
curious to what extent they need to be much more than flying missile
launchers. Anyone in the industry have any thoughts?

~~~
tomohawk
It is unusual, but it does happen.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_engagements_of_the_Gulf_Wa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_engagements_of_the_Gulf_War)

There have been attempts to make fighters (F-4) without guns as that was
considered obsolete by military middle management (pentagon), but then they
had to add them later because actual combat showed it not to be the case.

In fairly recent engagements between F-15s and Mig-25s/29s - dogfights with
guns have occurred and were decisive.

You don't always get to detect threats beyond visual range and shoot missiles.

For a more in-depth account to get an idea of how ROE (rules of engagement),
and actual conditions play into these scenarios:

[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35765/confessions-
of-a...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35765/confessions-of-
an-f-15-eagle-driver-with-three-mig-kills)

~~~
solidasparagus
I kind of doubt 3 decades ago counts as modern war.

~~~
ceejayoz
The F-22 - the top-of-the-line US fighter right now - first flew in 1997.

The _youngest_ B-52s in service are well over 50 years old.

~~~
greedo
People forget that military tech changes slowly. B2 was 1980s, M1 1970s, Su-27
is early 1990's. Perhaps the newest aircraft would be the J-20.

------
akmarinov
Isn't it unfair to the human pilot, as the AI can pull G-Force maneuvers
that'll otherwise kill the human pilot?

~~~
parsimo2010
Warfare is only sometimes about good sportsmanship. During the part where
you’re trying to kill each other, it’s totally fair game to pull more G if you
can. It’s also fair to use a better jet with better missiles of you have them.

Once (if) the other guy has ejected and is under canopy, then it’s important
to be a good sport again- no shooting at him while he’s defenseless, and if
you capture him then you have to treat him with dignity as a POW.

~~~
arethuza
And if he loses an artifical leg during the ejection process you may let a
replacement be parachuted in:

[https://www.rafbf.org/news-and-blogs/operation-
leg-%E2%80%93...](https://www.rafbf.org/news-and-blogs/operation-
leg-%E2%80%93-pilot-unlike-any-other)

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
See, there are weird war stories that if we turned into a movie, people would
think it's Hollywood embellishing.

~~~
philwelch
This is true. _A Bridge Too Far_ both includes incidents that actually
happened but were deemed unrealistic by critics, as well as omits certain
details specifically because they would be assumed to be unrealistic.

The one movie I would love to see is one about the battle for Castle Itter
toward the end of the war, where Americans, German soldiers who had defected
to the resistance, a deserting SS officer, and a group of prisoners including
two former French prime ministers, two French generals, Charles de Gaulle’s
sister, and a pre-war French tennis champion all teamed up against an SS force
attempting to recapture the castle and the VIP prisoners within. Which sounds
like a completely absurd movie but it actually happened.

------
NiceWayToDoIT
This is 4 years old story repeated again>
[https://magazine.uc.edu/editors_picks/recent_features/alpha....](https://magazine.uc.edu/editors_picks/recent_features/alpha.html)

~~~
MontagFTB
I believe in that 2016 test the AI had control over a UAV. In this test it was
an F-16. While similar, the dynamics are not equal.

------
foxyv
I watched this demo and noticed that the major advantage the AI pilot had was
that it had near perfect gunnery. The human pilot had superior BFM and would
have blown the AI out of the air if he had the reaction time for an
instantaneous gun solution like the AI. A semi-autonomous mode where a half
action trigger automatically maneuvers into a gun solution for the human pilot
would have won him the match handily.

------
AcerbicZero
DARPA has been fighting the last war for ~30 years and this is no exception.
AI will always have an advantage when all the variables a known and can be
calculated, because if we're honest, modern air combat in a radar dense
environment is pretty much just a series of math problems. (between 4th
generation fighters anyway)

I'm all for seeing if AI can come up with solutions to tactical problems that
pilots can't, and as a training tool this might be very useful, I just don't
see much value in this particular coverage of the topic.

------
Fjolsvith
Air Force General Thompson interviewed Elon Musk at the Air Warfare Symposium
this year. [1] It was, in a nutshell, a reality check for the Air Force's
combat pilots, who were present in the audience, that they were no longer top
dog, and had to either get on board with the new mission of drone warfare, or
get off the train.

1\. [https://youtu.be/sp8smJFaKYE](https://youtu.be/sp8smJFaKYE)

------
cwoolfe
Isn't this simply an issue of domain? Of course an AI will win in the
simulator; have that AI drive a real plane against a real pilot in the real
sky and see what happens.

------
slowhand09
Interesting competition. I just finished "Ghost Fleet" which is chock full of
this tech. Eye-opening stuff when you look deeper.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Fleet_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Fleet_\(novel\))

------
pkaye
> All eight teams will compete in each of the three scheduled trials. They
> will use the JSBSim open-source flight dynamics model for simulation
> environment and the open-source FlightGear Flight Simulator for the visual
> system. The simulated aircraft for the Trials is the publically available,
> unclassified FlightGear version of an F-15C fighter aircraft.

Interestingly they are using the FlightGear flight simulator.

------
lopmotr
I know I'm not supposed to detract from the main point, but something is a bit
odd about this company:

A) It's classified as a Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB).

B) All its work seems to be for the government, and this is reinforced by its
mission statement.

C) "The Federal Government’s goal is to award at least 5% of federal
contracting dollars to SDBs."

I wonder to what extent it's valuable work vs just compliance with a kind of
charity program?

------
dragontamer
Ah, WW2 style fighters are among my favorite games.

I don't think its realistic, but its still an advancement of AI. I'd see this
as an advancement like "AlphaGo" or "Deep Blue" moment. But for a more obscure
game with somewhat realistic implications (only somewhat, WW2 style fighters
don't exist anymore in the modern world).

------
briggers
It’s important to note this is just within visual range dogfighting/BFM. Also
just guns, and also perfect enemy state information. Important progress but
it’s super early. Beyond visual range/BVR, coordination with wingmen and many
other higher-level tasks still to come (or are still secret).

------
fmakunbound
Watched the stream for this. Meat is not even close to competitive, and this
with the AI limited to meat Gs and an aircraft that's designed around meat
pilots. I feel sorry for the first meat pilots to find themselves "fighting"
these systems.

~~~
iancmceachern
I think the use of the term "Meat" highlights my greatest fear with robots
fighting our wars for us, doing our killing for us. Our dismissal of our
humanity, compassion and empathy. The warriors coming back from WW2 brought
with them a deep desire to not do that anymore. The gamification of killing
eachother. Calling ourselves "meat". In every other context, for thousands of
years, we have been referring to ourselves as human beings, people, folks,
neighbors, etc. Now at the very beginning of this technology we are throwing
all that out and going with "meat". Contempt for the amazing gift that
humanity is, thats what using "meat" to describe ourselves indicates.

~~~
triangleman
They're made out of meat
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ)

By the way, I agree with you, it is unsettling to hear human beings reduced to
such terms.

------
zoomablemind
> [...The AI exhibited “superhuman aiming ability” during the simulation, Mock
> said...]

> [...Somewhere, the infamous Red Baron is no doubt laughing in amazement...]

The infamous Red Baron would likely ask what does AI pilot use for _eyes_?

In a classic dogfight, spotting your enemy before he sees you is an enormous
advantage. Loosing the sight while in pursuit often equates to loosing the
fight (thus going to sun or clouds for cover).

If AI was strapped into simulator's digital feed for exact positioning
(basically as if manning a game's AI craft), then it had "God's eyes".

This kind of superadvantage may be warranted in a game to compensate for
usually otherwise inferior in-game AI abilities.

However, when plugging a whole computer rack for AI, this sight-advantage
would definitely create a biased environment (for the purposes of meaningful
comparison).

I wonder how would the AI fare if it relied on CV for its positioning?

------
hourislate
Air Combat will be very different in the future. I don't believe dog fighting
will even be a thing.

AI, Stealth Technology, Hyper Sonic platforms, Drone Swarms, Satellite
Warfare, etc seems to be the way things are going.

------
hindsightbias
This is a slippery slope. For all the failings of humans, most air-to-air
conflict has been within visual range. That's because we don't trust
sensors/intel/decision-making/airspace beyond that range to not blow up the
wrong thing. Airspace is filled with lots of non-fighters filled with
passengers.

Once we (and they) go to unmanned, then the latency of decisions will require
less up-close fighting and much longer range engagements. Acro performance
won't even be a thing. Cheaper, more efficient platforms will result in more
platforms carrying more missiles shooting in much bigger hairballs.

I'll take old-style few elite knights on horses swinging at each other over
the hordes of drone infantry decimating a country-side.

------
bosswipe
We continue to rush headlong into autonomous robot warfare without any
consideration of the consequences. Humanity continues to disappoint.

------
ganafagol
352 comments and counting. So sad to see so many talented and smart people
burn their energy discussing war machines.

------
cbsmith
On the other hand... if the AI can't even out perform in a simulation, you
kind of have to worry about the model.

------
vidanay
Meatbags are G-limited. There is an immediate advantage to maneuverability
when you remove the human.

------
Paul-ish
I'm ready for a remake of that 2005 film "Stealth" that features an AI pilot.

~~~
tsuru
Macross Plus would be better

------
Ari_Ugwu
"The Feeling of Power" by Asimov feels like an appropriate mention here.

~~~
tialaramex
Or perhaps "Malak" by Peter Watts.

------
hazeii
And how likely is this to be needed?

Perhaps it would be better to spend the money elsewhere.

------
Animats
The USAF needs this to get out of the F-35 cost problem. The F-35 costs so
much they can't afford enough. So they have to figure out ways to do more with
fewer manned aircraft. (Trying to get rid of the A-10 was the last bad idea in
that direction.)

------
amai
Did they use Microsoft Flight Simulator?

------
pdfernhout
Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to
force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not
just create industrial robots to do the work instead?

Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to
fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in
nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar
panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building
space habitats for more land?

Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they
are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-
fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech
to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and
agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?

These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not
so deadly serious. ...

Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA,
as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in
many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than
any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the
implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform
the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible
just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs
through shared computing. ...

There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century
security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of
abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity,
competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an
amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based
approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure.
Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a
mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military
robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as
Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to
build a world that is abundant and secure for all.

So, while in the past, we had "nothing to fear but fear itself", the thing to
fear these days is ironically ... irony. :-) ...

====

The above is from: "Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism" \--
an essay I wrote in 2010: [https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-
to-transce...](https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-
transcending-militarism.html)

------
lbj
If Hollywood has taught us anything, its that this is not a good idea.

But, its interesting to think about the future of war when all combatants are
automated. Is it purely a matter of resource-superiority? Or will algorithms
be the main differentiator? And what about all the countries who are not even
in the automated race.

~~~
jl2718
Sometimes people need to be reminded about the existence of CBRN. Maybe you
can add drones to that, but it doesn’t change the fact that a single attack
has been able to completely anhillate an opponent with no possibility of
defense for decades now.

If drones are fighting each other, it’s called entertainment, maybe
propaganda, or maybe just imperial business, but not war. This sort of
sporting match as a proxy for total war is common throughout history.

