Defense companies exploring artificial intelligence will help the U.S. military "keep up" with rivals like China, a former fighter pilot told Fox News. American defense startups developing artificial intelligence systems are crucial to helping the U.S. armed forces keep up with rivals like China, a military tech executive told Fox News "There [are] massive amounts of effort going into innovation in China, and we shouldn't be naive to that," said Red 6 CEO Dan Robinson. "Be under no illusion: the threat from China, specifically the [Chinese Communist Party], is real." Weapons equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities are a key focus for the U.S. and Chinese militaries. "What we're understanding as a nation is that a lot of innovation now is coming from nontraditional pathways," Robinson, who was previously an F-22 pilot for the Air Force, continued.

A collective digital combat space where soldiers can interact in real-time using augmented reality will shift the way the U.S. military trains. A video game-like training simulator for Air Force pilots will give them a major advantage in real-life combat campaigns, a former F-22 pilot told Fox News. The military metaverse is a virtual space where soldiers interact and train with their comrades using artificial intelligence and augmented reality, which overlays digital content on the real world, former U.S. Air Force pilot Dan Robinson said. His company, Red 6, builds augmented reality training tech and can simulate campaign-length combat in digital displays that pilots see while flying their aircraft. WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?

Training a single fighter pilot could cost the Air Force over $10 million. So this company is using augmented reality headsets with AI to give U.S. airmen an edge. Visors that allow pilots to simulate dogfights while they're actually flying will give the U.S. military a "transformational" advantage, a former Air Force aviator told Fox News. "When you combine the power of AI with the power of augmented reality, now you are capable of creating synthetic worlds that are living, breathing, digital worlds that will think and fly and act for themselves," Dan Robinson, CEO of the military tech company Red 6, told Fox News. "Now you can put a really representative training together at scale outdoors in dynamic environments, which is a transformational value proposition for the Air Force and how we think about training."

"We must do something about the investment China is making in cyber and AI, as well, because in certain spheres, I believe they are much ahead of us," said Daniel Robinson, CEO and founder of Red 6. FORMER PENTAGON OFFICIAL'NOT SURPRISED' BY CHINESE LAUNCH, SAYS US IS RUNNING OUT OF TIME IN AI RACE Robinson and his team developed what they call a "revolutionary approach" to augmented reality – a technology that enables fighter pilots to go up in real airplanes and train against virtual enemies. "The whole reason I started this company is pilots must fly," Robinson, a former F-22 pilot, told Fox News. "We can't do this in simulators." "The beautiful thing with this technology is it's reset, reset, reset," Robinson continued. He said a traditional flight hour may give a pilot three looks at a problem set.