So far, ACE has demonstrated advanced virtual AI dogfights involving both within-visual-range (WVR) and beyond-visual-range (BVR) multi-aircraft scenarios with simulated weapons, plus live flying using an instrumented jet to measure pilot physiology and trust in AI. Throughout the ACE program, which began last year, DARPA has stressed the importance of establishing human pilots' trust in AI, allowing it to conduct the actual combat maneuvers while the human concentrates on overarching battle management decisions. The process of "capturing trust data" has seen test pilots fly in an L-29 Delfin jet trainer at the University of Iowa Technology Institute's Operator Performance Laboratory. This aircraft has been adapted with cockpit sensors to measure the pilot's physiological responses, giving an insight into whether or not the pilot trusts the AI. In these missions, the L-29 has been flown by a safety pilot in the front seat, who makes flight control inputs based on AI decisions.

AI will face off against human pilots in real-world fighter aircraft by 2024, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper revealed on Wednesday. The Pentagon announced the plan a month after an AI system demolished an Air Force pilot in a virtual dogfight. An algorithm developed by defense contractor Heron Systems swept a best-of-five aerial duel versus an F-16 pilot wearing a VR helmet. The new trials will test how the AI's capabilities transfer to the real world, Esper explained on Wednesday at the Pentagon's first AI Symposium: The AI agent's resounding victory demonstrated the ability of advanced algorithms to out-perform humans in virtual dogfights. To be clear, AI's role in our lethality is to support human decision-makers, not replace them.

The teams had to start from the ground up to teach their AIs how to fly a fighter jet. Lee Ritholtz, director and chief architect of AI, from Lockheed Martin, said: "You don't have to teach a human [that] it shouldn't crash into the ground. "They have basic instincts that the algorithm doesn't have. "That means dying a lot. For Lockheed Martin, it took several servers running trial-and-error dogfights around the clock to come up with its final AI, a piece of software capable of being run on a single graphics card. The winning team's AI had been through more than 4 billion simulations.

An event pitting an AI-controlled fighter plane against a human pilot in a virtual dogfight was recently held, with the end result that the AI managed to defeat its human opponent, adding another example of AIs outclassing humans at even extraordinarily complex tasks. As reported by DefenseOne, the recent virtual dogfight was orchestrated by the US military as part of an ongoing effort to demonstrate the capability of autonomous agents to defeat aircraft in dogfights, a project called the AlphaDogFight challenge. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) chose eight teams of AIs developed by various defense contractors, and pitted these AI teams against each other in virtual dogfights. The winner of this tournament was an AI developed by Heron Systems, and afterward the AI was pitted against a human pilot who wore a VR helmet and sat in a flight simulator. The AI reportedly won all five rounds it played.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in diverse domains of military activity, from intelligence to training and logistics, is being explored by various defence forces and manufacturers as the battlefield becomes increasingly technology-driven. Now, it seems, even the old school dogfights -- aerial battle between fighter aircraft -- are set to be revolutionised by AI algorithms. On 20 August, in an event organised by the US' Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to understand how AI and machine learning can be employed in air-to-air combat, an AI algorithm defeated a human fighter pilot operating a simulated F-16 Viper fighter jet in a virtual dogfight five to zero. This event was the final dogfight of the US military's AlphaDogfight challenge, which was organised to "demonstrate the feasibility of developing intelligent autonomous agents capable of defeating adversary aircraft in a dogfight". A fighter wins a dogfight when it manages to place itself behind the enemy and remain in that position long enough to get a kill shot.

On 20 August, in an event organised by the US' Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to understand how AI and machine learning can …

An artificial intelligence algorithm defeated a human F-16 fighter pilot in a virtual dogfight sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Thursday. After two days of competition, the winning algorithm of Darpa's Air Combat Evolution program took on a human pilot in a Lockheed Martin (LMT) F-16 simulator Thursday. Artificial intelligence teams from Boeing (BA) subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences, EpiSys Science, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Heron Systems, Lockheed Martin, Perspecta Labs, PhysicsAI, and SoarTech entered the competition. In a semifinal Thursday, Lockheed beat Physics AI. Heron defeated Aurora in the other semifinal and then took down Lockheed in the final.

An AI-controlled fighter jet will battle a US Air Force pilot in a simulated dogfight next week -- and you can watch the action online. The clash is the culmination of DARPA's AlphaDogfight competition, which the Pentagon's "mad science" wing launched to increase trust in AI-assisted combat. DARPA hopes this will raise support for using algorithms in simpler aerial operations, so pilots can focus on more challenging tasks, such as organizing teams of unmanned aircraft across the battlespace. The three-day event was scheduled to take place in-person in Las Vegas from August 18-20, but the COVID-19 pandemic led DARPA to move the event online. Before the teams take on the Air Force on August 20, the eight finalists will test their algorithms against five enemy AIs developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

An artificial intelligence programmed to fly fighter jets has defeated several air combat experts in a simulation, according to a paper published in the Journal of Defense Management. The AI, called ALPHA, was built by Psibernetix, Inc. with assistance from the Air Force Research Laboratory. ALPHA's purpose was to be better than highly trained fighter pilots, and so far it appears up to the task. The AI has gone up against its predecessor, the AFRL's previous AI program, and a series of human opponents. It emerged victorious each time. One of those opponents, Gene Lee, is a retired Air Force colonel with extensive flight experience both as a pilot and an instructor.