The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, is a U.S. Department of Defense agency responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
Back in January 2020, researchers were granted the permission to hire gamers to teach AI-powered drones. The military also has something similar in mind, as DARPA also wants to hire video game developers to help it build AI-powered fighter jets.
The Pentagon’s DARPA here is seeking their support for its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program.
ACE aims to build the trust of fighter pilots in automated combat by testing algorithms in dogfights, or close-range aerial battles.
But before any of that can happen, AIs need to have their algorithms properly trained and trialed in simulations.
This is where DARPA wants developers to give it a hand.
Lieutenant Colonel Dan Javorsek envisions the algorithms piloting a fighter jet's maneuvers so its human pilots can better focus on the “higher-level context intent and sentiment challenges”.
For humans to team with computers involve the former giving his/her trust to the AI.
This can take time, given that digfighting involves a lot of skills.
Modern air-to-air combat is "air combat maneuvering", which refers to tactical situations requiring the use of individual basic fighter maneuvers to attack or evade one or more opponents. This needs knowledge and also experience. For human pilots to trust an AI, needs a capable AI.
To earn developers' trust, DARPA is seeking proposals from developers at companies, universities and the entertainment industry, where Javorsek noted that AI can already play realistic video games at expert human levels.
Once the algorithms have shown they work in controlled simulations, Javorsek said that the ACE program should progress to small-scale unmanned aerial vehicles, and then graduate to live, operationally representative aircraft.
In the modern days of technology, newer fighter jets from the military are already equipped with a vast array of hardware and software that are unknown to most ordinary civilians.
To most people, the term 'dogfight' means to maneuver in a chase between at least two jets, in order to get one jet's ability to get another jet at its head-up display to launch an attack. But in reality, the whole concept of 'dogfighting' is so misunderstood and taken out of context.
Most people learn about dogfights from Hollywood movies. While that is true to some extent, dogfights have become rather obsolete after the World War II.
This is because with increasingly greater speed and longer-range weapons, a fighter jet can shoot down a target that is miles away, even without having to really have it at the crosshair.
Unlike older jets, like the F-14 Tomcat immortalized in films like Top Gun, the F-35 which is one of the U.S. military's most advanced fighter jet, doesn't have to face its adversary to destroy it.
The F-35 can simply fire “off boresight,” a term to describe an ability to target and destroy air to air targets that are not in front of the aircraft with a direct or immediate line of sight. This way, an F-35 can virtually eliminate the need to jockey for position behind an enemy.
What's more, an F-35 can can also take out an enemy miles beyond the pilot's visual range, that is also beyond the jet's arsenal reach. With the help of communication, the pilot can pass the target information to another platform, like a drone or a U.S. Navy Destroyer, and take down the target without even firing a shot.
Javorsek wants ACE to focus on high-speed and high-G dogfights, isn't because 'dogfighting' is necessary, but because this method has clearly-defined objectives, measurable outcomes, and deals with a jet's dynamics that have inherent physical limitations.
This is why dogfights can be good test case for more complicated combat scenarios.
