The F-22 and F-35 are two of the most cutting-edge and capable war machines in America's arsenal. They also cost $143 million and $75 million a pop, respectively. Facing increasing pressure from China, which has accelerated its conventional weapon procurement efforts in recent months, the Pentagon announced Monday a program designed to build out America's drone production base in response. As part of that effort, the United States Air Force has requested nearly $6 billion in federal funding over the next five years to construct a fleet of XQ-58A Valkyrie uncrewed aircraft, each of which will cost a (comparatively) paltry $3 million. The Valkyrie comes from Kratos Defense & Security Solutions as part of the USAF's Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator (LCASD) program.

Human drone pilots have always been more efficient than their robotic counterparts -- until now. Researchers at the University of Zurich created an algorithm that finds the quickest path for a drone navigating a 3D racecourse in an indoor flight arena. The algorithm beat two professional drone pilots' times, according to a study published in Science Robotics this past July. And it can replicate that ideal route exactly, which is something humans can't do. There's still one way that we have the upper hand over machines, though: Humans can think on the fly, while the algorithm currently needs about an hour to calculate its trajectory.

Drones controlled by humans may soon give in to ones flown completely using artificial intelligence, a new experiment by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has demonstrated. In the demonstration, NASA researchers pitted a human-controlled drone against one controlled by AI. The findings were published on NASA's website and a video of the race was uploaded on its YouTube website Tuesday. "We pitted our algorithms against a human, who flies a lot more by feel. You can actually see that the A.I. flies the drone smoothly around the course, whereas human pilots tend to accelerate aggressively, so their path is jerkier," Rob Reid, the project's task manager, said in a press release.