An AI Fighter Jet Outperforms a Human Pilot and How Drones Changed the War in Myanmar
This week's big story covers an AI-powered fighter jet outperforming a human-pilot in a dogfight in front of cameras.
The second story explores how drones have changed the war in Myanmar, but also how technology links rebels across the world together.
But first, the retired General Mark Milley and Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp discussed what technology can do for civilian casualties in conflicts at the second annual Ash Carter Exchange. Karp was sure that tech can reduce “civilian deaths to the smallest amount humanly possible.” Milley took a different stance, focusing on that wars are increasingly dense and urban, and even if AI-powered technologies work well in Ukraine, they won’t work in urban environments:
The Big Story
AI-Powered Fighter Jets Outperforming Human Pilots
Last Thursday, the AI-powered X-63 VISTA went into a dogfight with a human-piloted fighter jet in front of cameras for the first time. The test flight was held at Edwards Air Force Base and the X-63 VISTA, an AI-powered experimental aircraft derived from the F-16, had the US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in the passenger seat. The X-63 VISTA outperformed the human pilot.
The dogfight is probably the most dynamic flight program in aviation - it is three-dimensional, nearly at the speed of sound, and as close as 300 meters from the target. An AI-powered fighter jet can take tighter turns, greater risks, and get off better shots than human pilots.
“The computer is not going to get tired, not scared; it is going to follow its rules and do as close to a perfect manoeuvre as it can do. Whereas humans will always have some variability in how they perform,” said Kendall.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, right, and Maj. Ryan Forystek, climb into the cockpit of the X-62A VISTA aircraft on Thursday, May 2, 2024. Source: Damian Dovarganes/AP.
The systems are learning very quickly — Vista flew its first AI-controlled dogfight in September 2023, and there have been only about two dozen similar flights since.
The idea is that the unmanned fighter jets will be able to fly ahead, like drones, conducting strikes too dangerous for human pilots.
“We can put them in places where some of them are sacrificed, in order to draw fire or find out where the enemy is,” Kendall explained.
Even though the technology is not fully developed, the plan is to have the first of an AI-enabled fleet that eventually will reach 1,000 unmanned warplanes operating by 2028. The motivation behind the developments is the race for technological superiority.
“I don’t have confidence that we are 100% ahead, or certainly not ahead by a large margin. We have to keep running, and we have to run fast,” Kendall said.
An AI-enabled Air Force F-16 fighter jet, left, flies next to an adversary F-16, as both aircraft race within 1,000 feet (304 metres) of each other. Source: AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
How Drones Changed the War in Myanmar
In Myanmar, rebel drone units have challenged the power balance. Using 3D printers and parts from agricultural Chinese-made drones, a dozen drone units scattered across Myanmar have managed to uphold the military that has Russian fighter jets and Chinese missiles.
“They had a tech disrupter-type mindset,” said Richard Horsey, a senior Myanmar adviser at the International Crisis Group to The New York Times. “A lot of innovation happened.”
The Center for Information Resilience has verified 1,400 online videos of drone flights, the majority being attacks, carried out by groups fighting the Myanmar military between October 2021 and June 2023. By early 2023, CIR said it saw about 100 flights per month.
All over the world, consumer technology is changing conflict: cheap drones, the Starlink internet connection, and 3D printers that can mass produce parts. Last year, Hamas used low-cost drones to blind Israel’s surveillance-studded checkpoints. In Syria and Yemen, drones fly alongside missiles. On both sides of the war in Ukraine, drones have become human-guided missiles.
In Myanmar, drone pilots turn to groups on Discord and Telegram to download 3D printing blueprints for fixed-wing drones and gain insight into how to hack through software on commercial drones that could give away their locations. Often, the original use of drones is also utilised: in both Ukraine and Myanmar, kill videos set with music have been spread on social media to help raise awareness and money.
Read the full story at New York Times.
A drone unit in Myanmar. Source: New York Times, retrieved on 07/05/2024
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