Self-flying fighter jet takes off, fights against other aircraft and lands - without ANY human help

A modified F-16 fighter jet has successfully flown and fought another aircraft while being entirely controlled by artificial intelligence (AI). During test flights, the jet, known as'X-62A' or'VISTA', performed takeoffs, landings and combat manoeuvres without human intervention for a total of over 17 hours. They took place in December 2022 at the Edwards Air Force Base in California, USA, and showed that it is possible to completely hand over the reigns to AI in battle. The algorithms which powered it were developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - the research branch of the US Department of Defense. This marks the first time AI has been used on a tactical aircraft as, prior to this milestone, it had only been used in computer simulations of F-16 dogfights.