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AI Downs 'Top Gun' Pilot In Dogfights (dailymail.co.uk)
schwit1 writes from a report via Daily Mail: [Daily Mail reports:] "The Artificial intelligence (AI) developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate was recently assessed by retired USAF Colonel Gene Lee -- who holds extensive aerial combat experience as an instructor and Air Battle Manager with considerable fighter aircraft expertise. He took on the software in a simulator. Lee was not able to score a kill after repeated attempts. He was shot out of the air every time during protracted engagements, and according to Lee, is 'the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date.'" And why is the US still throwing money at the F35, unless it can be flown without pilots. The AI, dubbed ALPHA, features a genetic fuzzy tree decision-making system, which is a subtype of fuzzy logic algorithms. The system breaks larger tasks into smaller tasks, which include high-level tactics, firing, evasion, and defensiveness. It can calculate the best maneuvers in various, changing environments over 250 times faster than its human opponent can blink. Lee says, "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed."
It was only a matter of time, computers are able to keep complete situational awareness while analyzing what the target is doing. The only question is how long until we can trust them to work totally autonomously. THAT probably won't come for a while.
So maintaining air superiority now becomes an IT security issue.
...it doesn't end well.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Translation: he took on the software in its version of reality, with it either being omniscient or having a perfect model of its sensors' deficiencies. While having to work with its presentation of its reality filtered through its presentation devices, limiting the information available to everything the simulator builders considered important enough to bother with and which are actually physically presentable (good luck with proper accelerations, for example).
Because when we automate war and remove the risk of losses on our side, it becomes too easy to just throw more robots into a situation. War is not something that should be automated, we need to retain the potential of real losses to restrain our desire to engage in war. Even extensive use of drones is taking us dangerously down that path. We can kill those who oppose or offend us without risk of our own losses and thus we have little cause for showing restraint in using such equipment to conduct our foreign policy.
Oh and Skynet!!!
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
This is probably old data, but few pilots in special, elasticated suits can get beyond 10g without blacking out. As we approach our limit, our peripheral vision goes, so even if we don't black out, we are not working well if we keep this up for long. It is possible to make conventional airframes that can take 25g if you don't have to cut big holes in the airframe for the cockpit. So, a computer in a plane built for a computer ought to rule.
It's worse than that: the AI in this test won when piloting evenly matched planes. But the weak point in modern fighter jet design is the squishy fragile thing in the cockpit, which can't take more than 8 g-s or so, and not even close to that for negative g-forces. Get rid of the pilot, and you can design a plane whose performance is vastly better than a piloted plane. Now put that AI in it and send it head-to-head against an F-35. No contest.
He took on the software in a simulator.
So he was fighting in a computer game, not in a real jet and certainly not in real combat conditions. This is a limited scenario with limited conditions. Keep this in mind.
And why is the US still throwing money at the F35, unless it can be flown without pilots.
See above. There is a HUGE difference between a computer game and flying a real jet in combat conditions. We've had computer "AI" (using the term loosely) that could beat people at games for a long time. That isn't the same thing as having an AI that is ready for real world combat and it is even further from having an AI that is trustworthy on decisions of whether to shoot or not. To the best of my knowledge we do not presently nor are we likely to any time soon have an AI that we can or should trust to make judgements about what to shoot or when to shoot it. It's not clear to me that we ever can or should take humans out of that loop. It might be necessary to take them out of the vehicle physically (what with us being bags of fluid and all) but we'd be idiots to trust any current AI with complete control of combat.
Furthermore an F35 does a lot more than just dog fighting. In fact its primary role is likely to be air to ground combat far more often than air to air. That's why they call it a Strike Fighter. I'm not moving the goal posts here either. Yes it is reasonable that a computer AI could outperform a human in air combat maneuvering. Especially when the jet doesn't have a human on board with the physical limitations of a human, particularly in relation to G forces. We've had jets for decades that can generate more g forces than a human can handle and we've had to artificially limit them. The problem is that we still need humans in the loop for decision making and for the most part that is a good thing. Even our drones don't shoot automatically because we cannot trust them to make appropriate firing decisions in most cases.
More like Macross Plus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Since the first world war, most air to air kills were scored against opponents that did not see their attacker. The preferred tactic was to come out of the sun or attack from a blind spot. The Red Baron stated, "I get real close, pull the trigger, and he blows up", or something to that effect. An AI- piloted airplane would have this same limitation, as it would only be aware of what its sensors tell it. If you jam its on board sensors and data-link capability, all that AI won't be worth anything. What this has to do with the F-35, I don't know? Unless it's just to flame an airplane that a lot of arm-chair experts don't like. There are lots of missions for a manned airplane, and "dogfighting" (or BFM) is a tactic and not not a mission.
Part of the whole point of the F-35 is that it's just the opposite, that it requires significantly less support than aircraft like the Raptor. Which is part of how it's justified its high pricetag - that it'll be cheaper to keep going in the field. To pick an example, all of the Slashdotters that complain about it not being as fast as various other aircraft due to its single engine design. But that single engine design, in addition to helping keep its radar and thermal signatures down, also reduces maintenance.
I find it funny how Slashdot tries to drag jabs at the F-35 into every conversation related to airpower, even if the topic at hand has nothing to do with the F-35. Neither of the linked articles mentioned the F-35 at all. One could perhaps reach conclusions about humans vs. drones in general, but even that's a stretch, as dogfighting is only a small fraction of what an aircraft is there for. The most realistic conclusion from these articles is "an automated dogfighting system looks like it would be a good idea for future aircraft that may be involved in aerial combat"
Part of the reason that you have humans in aircraft is the same reason that ATGMs are often wire-guided. You can't jam or spoof a wire. Likewise, you can't jam or spoof a pilot. That's not to say that drones aren't important - they are, and they'll be increasingly important in the future. But it does not mean that pilots are obsolete.
Which is again why it's funny to see pro-drone Slashdotters hate on the F-35 while being seemingly fine with legacy manned aircraft. Among the F-35's biggest selling points is its high degree of automation, situational awareness, communication, etc versus other combat aircraft. It's the most "drone-like" manned combat aircraft to date.
It's common here to evaluate the F-35 by a philosophy it was not designed for, and using "as it stands" hardware for comparisons rather than "as it's designed to be when development completes". The latter case was really put on display back in the "it's not a good dogfighter" articles Slashdot was running with a while back (never mind the followup from other pilots who found it to dogfight well which Slashdot never covered); they were comparing a half-developed F-35. But beyond that, in terms of philosophy, F-35 is designed to be able to project power long before others can reach it. It's designed to be able to detect and engage targets at long distances without those targets being able to detect and engage it. Yes, it had to sacrifice in various aspects for that - but it's hard to argue that this is some sort of pointless design philosophy not worthy of some degree of sacrifice. Criticizing it in these regards is sort of like criticizing a sniper for choosing a sniper rifle - "Meh, you've got a terrible rate of fire on that thing, you're going to suck in close combat". It's missing the whole point of what a sniper is used for. And even that analogy is unfair to the F-35, as it's designed to also be good in close combat as well - just not to the degree of a craft specifically designed for that purpose.
Could the huge amount of money spent on the F35 have been used better? Quite possibly. But it's spent, and they have something interesting coming out of it. It's certainly worth giving it a fair shot and letting it finish evolving to its design potential.
Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?
The article (and the research paper) overstates Col Lee's credentials, and his words shouldn't carry that much weight. The "top gun pilot" listed in the article isn't even a pilot, let alone a fighter pilot. He was- before retiring several years ago- an air battle manager. His job was to sit in a chair, look at an air surveillance picture (radar screen) and talk to the real pilots over the radio giving them information on where the enemy is and what their formation looked like and how many there were. He never went to IFF (Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals, the first school USAF pilots go to become fighter pilots), which is huge because the research paper stated that the planes in the simulators were only armed with short range missiles, which means that this guy was merged with red aircraft and he's never trained for that. Being a fighter weapons school graduate and adversary tactics instructor doesn't mean that he's a pilot, he stood in classrooms and taught pilots what they can expect Chinese and Russian pilots to do in a fight. His time in "fighter aircraft" is almost certainly back seat incentive rides, which people sometimes get to do as a "good job" reward. It's like saying you're an expert F1 driver because you've watched a lot of races and have ridden in the passenger seat of a Ferrari.
I'm not blasting Col Lee himself (I'm sure he's a nice guy), I'm blasting the journal article (that he didn't write) for being intentionally misleading about his credentials and all the media journalists that are jumping on the hype train. Yes, I'll go out on a limb here and say that the journal article knew he wasn't a pilot and purposely didn't clarify that to make his words sound stronger. A quote about how "aggressive" the A.I. is sounds a lot better when you assume the guy is a fighter pilot and not so much when you find out that the guy just knows a bunch of pilots.
I've yet to see any form of public transit without windows. People wouldn't ride it.
Windows will become virtual. Your display can show you a movie, news, stock charts, etc or the outside world. And to be honest, imho, if the windows don't open to let in some air then virtual might not be that bad. Well, assuming, you are only a passenger and are not expected to take control of the vehicle at some point.
A lot of people overinterpret the lessons of the Korean war where missiles were overstressed versus the technology of the time... and have taken it as some universal lesson which will apply forever into the future, that close-range dogfighting will always be the most critical aspect of aircraft design.
Vietnam not Korea. Personally I expect the AI to go into the missiles not the aircraft. Fighters becoming a romantic anachronism, like horse cavalry. And like horse cavalry they will last longer than people expect. My local National Guard unit is cavalry, reconnaissance, and had horse as late as the 1930s. In certain terrain guys sneaking around on horse was still more effective than vehicles. They were just the eyes for armored formations and not expect to fight themselves. Sort of like modern Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols, if you are firing your weapons something has gone terribly wrong. Note some US Special Forces briefly operated as cavalry in Afghanistan. I believe the US Marines sometimes use dirt bikes. Recon may also be a role for repurposed fighters. Actually it has been such a role, removing guns an armor and adding cameras. Sometime there are gaps with satellite and drone coverage and a fast mover flying low and masking its approach with terrain fills that gap. A role not unlike that 1930s horse cavalry role, eyes, not direct combat.
The big advantage of a pilot over a drone is that you can't jam or spoof a pilot. Same reason that wire-guided ATGMs remain a major player in modern battlefields.
Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?
he big advantage of a pilot over a drone is that you can't jam or spoof a pilot.
How does that apply when you're engaging outside of visual range? Even in a "dogfight with guns" the HUD is showing the pilot where and when to shoot. For other missions, sure, that's relevant, but not so much for air-to-air.
The main thing the pilot adds is judgement that can't be jammed or spoofed in a situation short of war. Is that incoming plane attacking, or an airliner on an unfortunate approach? You need eyeballs on the target, and humans are better than cameras for that in a situation when hostility is unlikely.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Fighters becoming a romantic anachronism, like horse cavalry. And like horse cavalry they will last longer than people expect. My local National Guard unit is cavalry, reconnaissance, and had horse as late as the 1930s. In certain terrain guys sneaking around on horse was still more effective than vehicles. They were just the eyes for armored formations and not expect to fight themselves.
The Soviets used horses very effectively during WW2. More of a mounted infantry role than a cavalry one, of course, with troops dismounting to fight. The horses apparently worked out quite well given the vast distances and poor roads - better in some situations than mechanized units. Cavalry was used to exploit breakthroughs achieved by regular infantry and armor units.
Ivan Yakushin's book (2005) describes his experiences in one such unit (the 24th Guards Cavalry Regiment), as a junior officer in charge of a platoon of anti-tank guns.
The USA went mechanized as WW2 approached, only to find out that mules were more useful than trucks in the mountains of Italy. Today that role would typically be replaced by the helicopter, but a mule has the advantage it can't be shot out of the air, doesn't make a lot of noise, and has no radar signature, so perhaps there will someday still be a role for pack animals in war, under special circumstances.
The US Marine Corp used horses during the Korean War. Famously:
"She served in numerous combat actions during the Korean War, carrying supplies and ammunition, and was also used to evacuate wounded. Learning each supply route after only a couple of trips, she often traveled to deliver supplies to the troops on her own, without benefit of a handler. The highlight of her nine-month military career came in late March 1953 during the Battle for Outpost Vegas when, in a single day, she made 51 solo trips to resupply multiple front line units. She was wounded in combat twice."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Marines still train to use pack animals in mountain warfare. I believe the US Army also has some training in the use of pack animals. I'm not sure if it is just for Special Forces or if "regular" Mountain Warfare units also have the training/capability.