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Science and Tech

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Dept. of Technology
January 24, 2022 Issue

The Rise of A.I. Fighter Pilots

Artificial intelligence is being taught to fly warplanes. Can
the technology be trusted?

By Sue Halpern

January 17, 2022

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outline of a mechanical hand holding a plane in the sky
Implementing new technology will mean convincing humans to cede
control.Illustration by Karolis Strautniekas

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On a cloudless morning last May, a pilot took off from the Niagara
Falls International Airport, heading for restricted military airspace
over Lake Ontario. The plane, which bore the insignia of the United
States Air Force, was a repurposed Czechoslovak jet, an L-39
Albatros, purchased by a private defense contractor. The bay in front
of the cockpit was filled with sensors and computer processors that
recorded the aircraft's performance. For two hours, the pilot flew
counterclockwise around the lake. Engineers on the ground, under
contract with DARPA, the Defense Department's research agency, had
choreographed every turn, every pitch and roll, in an attempt to do
something unprecedented: design a plane that can fly and engage in
aerial combat--dogfighting--without a human pilot operating it.

The exercise was an early step in the agency's Air Combat Evolution
program, known as ACE, one of more than six hundred Department of
Defense projects that are incorporating artificial intelligence into
war-fighting. This year, the Pentagon plans to spend close to a
billion dollars on A.I.-related technology. The Navy is building
unmanned vessels that can stay at sea for months; the Army is
developing a fleet of robotic combat vehicles. Artificial
intelligence is being designed to improve supply logistics,
intelligence gathering, and a category of wearable technology,
sensors, and auxiliary robots that the military calls the Internet of
Battlefield Things.

Published in the print edition of the January 24, 2022, issue, with
the headline "Flying Aces."

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[halpern-su]
Sue Halpern is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author
of, most recently, the novel "Summer Hours at the Robbers Library."
More:TechnologyAirplanesMilitaryArtificial IntelligenceWarsDefense
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