A self-driving fighter jet powered by artificial intelligence took on a human pilot in a dogfight for the first time last year over California, a major development in the Pentagon’s effort to safely load AI onto its platforms.
Who came out on top? Officials wouldn’t say. But the AI agents “performed well” in a variety of scenarios throughout the tests, said Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron, the program manager for DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution program, called ACE.
“We had lots of test objectives that we were trying to achieve in that first round of tests. So asking the question of, I'll say, who won? It doesn't necessarily capture the nuance of the testing that we accomplished. But what I will say is that the purpose of the test was really to establish a pathway to demonstrate that we can safely test these AI agents in a safety critical air combat environment,” Hefron told reporters Friday.
DARPA revealed this week that an X-62A VISTA aircraft, which is an F-16 fighter jet modified to test and train AI software, engaged in a dogfight against a human pilot in another F-16 during a September test at Edwards Air Force Base. Through DARPA’s ACE program, the agency is developing trusted “combat autonomy” using human-machine collaborative dogfighting. The team flew 21 test flights from December 2022 through September 2023.
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