[HN Gopher] The Rise of A.I. Fighter Pilots
___________________________________________________________________
The Rise of A.I. Fighter Pilots
Author : jbegley
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-01-18 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| This is what I don't understand about sci-fi shows set up in
| space - why bother with a pilot? Surely one can see the advantage
| of not having to waste space and life-support for a squishy
| meatball. Apparently nobody saw this coming, much like Picard
| carrying his 5 physical eBooks with him. That or close-up shots
| of some radiator don't really make for compelling TV.
| mLuby wrote:
| Good sci-fi is about humans, bad sci-fi is about technology.
|
| You're right though, no fighter pilots in space and no stealth
| in space are two lessons the entertainment industry has been
| slow to learn.
|
| The Expanse (which is amazing--go watch 3 eps) strikes a good
| balance: pilots work in tandem with ship software the fly;
| they're more like navigators with AI helmsman. And it looks
| like gunners are prioritizing targets for the ship's AI to
| shoot, not swinging the turrets around by hand like Skywalker &
| Solo in A New Hope.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Lots of hypotheticals about the capabilities of missiles vs. jets
| and recently I found this YouTube page thats new that has videos
| of setting up simulations in Command: Modern Operations with
| surprisingly accurate (to my untrained eye) simulations for
| something you can get on Steam.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJXWJ-Px5tU
| a4isms wrote:
| News "articles" that speak to the future of the war and spend
| most of their words describing new, expensive technology that
| will replace the existing military approach sound an awful lot
| like pieces planted by public relations firms working for
| military contractors.
|
| The purpose is to generate the public's appetite for military
| spending and to prepare the way for aggressive lobbying. pg wrote
| at length about the value of public relations in "The Submarine:"
|
| http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
|
| The above does not mean that TFA does not have value. As pg said:
| "Good PR firms... give reporters stories that are true, but whose
| truth favors their clients."
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >>A fighter plane equipped with artificial intelligence could
| eventually execute tighter turns, take greater risks, and get off
| better shots than human pilots.
|
| No.
|
| (1) An AI-controlled fighter is still limited by the laws of
| physics. In 99% of circumstances the pilots ability to "pull G"
| is not the deciding factor in maneuvering. Pulling 10+ is only
| possible for a wing, ANY wing, in very specific circumstances of
| speed an air pressure. Most realworld dogfighting occurs well
| below human G limitations.
|
| (2) Can AI take greater risks? Fighter pilots in combat don't
| avoid risk out of fear for their own live. That isn't part of
| their thinking. They avoid risk because the loss of their
| aircraft will have knock-on impacts to the rest of the operation.
| Fighter pilots do not protect themselves, they protect a host of
| other aircraft and people standing behind them. The concept that
| an AI pilot will press an attack where a human pilot would back
| off out of fear evidences a lack of understanding. Fighter pilots
| don't back down for such reasons. Listen to the
| recordings/transcripts of pilots in dogfights over Vietnam. They
| are aggressive to a fault, once in an turning fight pressing the
| attack no matter the likely outcome.
|
| (3) What "better shots" will these AI be taking? Missiles are not
| arrows. They are autonomous vehicles. Whether an AI or a human
| pilot launches them is of little consequence to a sidewinder.
| There is a place (cranking) where an AI pilot might be able to
| better perform the maneuver and better-guide a missile, but that
| isn't AI rather than a basic autopilot-type assist (holding
| target at a particular angle). As for gun shots, AI is no needed
| to calculate a trajectory and fire the cannot at the appropriate
| moment to most likely intercept the target. That is well within
| non-AI tech.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I wonder how this (and drone tech) affects helicopter pilots. I
| briefly considered enlisting to try and be an army helicopter
| pilot, but the contract is a 12 year obligation. I just couldn't
| get over the thought that 5 years from now, AI and drone based
| countermeasures will be like nothing we've ever seen. I don't
| trust the army to figure that one out before losing a bunch of
| people.
| imtringued wrote:
| Artillery is still relevant after decades of being declared
| obsolete.
| melling wrote:
| We don't crank out planes like we used to:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works
|
| Removing humans from the cockpit could increase innovation. Make
| them a fraction of the size and cost without humans
| Arubis wrote:
| Removing humans from the cockpit frees designers up to do a lot
| more than save weight. The big restriction with human pilots is
| a ceiling for how much G you can pull before your precious
| human cargo blacks out. Silicon has no such restrictions; you
| can turn as hard as your fuselage will allow.
| mc32 wrote:
| Also endurance. Now you're only limited to hardware endurance
| and refueling capabilities rather than pilot fatigue
| --affording much better performance.
| nradov wrote:
| Humans can endure for quite a long time if they have to. A
| manned B-2 bomber flew a 44 hour combat mission.
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36643/u-s-strategic-
| co...
| melling wrote:
| An unmanned hypersonic SR-71 successor.
|
| Lower speed reconnaissance jets that are always in the air?
|
| Refueled in the air from drone planes.
| pantulis wrote:
| Conspiracy hat on: maybe that's what all the UAP craze is
| about.
| deepnotderp wrote:
| Also, imho AI fundamentally changes how machines of war are
| made. Currently, a machine must be made expensive and
| sophisticated since a human is inside it, and if it's already
| expensive, may as well add some more expense to make it a bit
| better, and a bit more, etc.
|
| By contrast, with AI, the question becomes a matter of
| performance per dollar. If I can swarm an enemy with hundreds
| of cheap fighter jets, then it's okay for me to lose half of
| them.
|
| This is existential to the US imho, since the US generally
| always has the best equipment period, but at a _very_ high
| cost.
| nradov wrote:
| In the real world ability to pull more G's is of limited
| value. It mostly only matters when defending against a
| missile after all else has failed. Building an airframe
| strong enough to handle that load incurs a huge weight
| penalty.
|
| The UCAVs built so far are actually stressed to lower G loads
| than manned tactical aircraft.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| For those who had not watched the AlphaDogfight competition, the
| most remarkable thing was not that the AI beat the Human fighter
| pilot. The most remarkable thing was the extreme gap in
| performance between the best AI and second and third place AI's.
| It wasn't even close. An AI that is marginally worse could still
| be able to beat a human but will lose consistently over and over
| against a better AI.
|
| This bodes very poorly for any nation that falls behind in the AI
| race. As well as any nation who's best and brightest minds refuse
| to contribute while their adversaries have no such qualms.
| jancsika wrote:
| > This bodes very poorly for any nation that falls behind in
| the AI race. As well as any nation who's best and brightest
| minds refuse to contribute while their adversaries have no such
| qualms.
|
| Curious how you think such an arms race avoids complete
| annihilation of both sides.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| There is a great course by Prof. William Spaniel about Game
| Theory in the context of Nuclear Proliferation. Highly
| recommend it for anyone who wants to know about the nuts and
| bolts of how nuclear policy is shaped: https://www.youtube.co
| m/playlist?list=PLKI1h_nAkaQqivWh2_XEt...
|
| Basically, you have to choose between MAD or asymmetrical
| destruction. With exponentially improving AI, the situation
| is more like an inverted pendulum. Any small perturbation
| (say resources or breakthroughs in AI) would lead to
| catastrophic asymmetrical advantage for one side.
| belter wrote:
| Nothing a proper EMP weapon will not sort out.
|
| https://www.doh.wa.gov/portals/1/documents/pubs/320-090_elec...
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Do we actually have non nuclear emp weapons
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| From your link:
|
| > There are two basic ways to protect or harden items against
| EMP effects. The first method is metallic shielding. Shields
| are made of a continuous piece of metal such as steel or
| copper. A metal enclosure generally does not fully shield the
| interior because of the small holes that are likely to exist.
| Therefore, this type of shielding often contains additional
| elements to create the barrier. Commonly, only a fraction of
| a millimeter of a metal is needed to supply adequate
| protection. This shield must completely surround the item to
| be hardened.
|
| > The second method, tailored hardening, is a more cost-
| effective way of hardening. In this method, only the most
| vulnerable elements and circuits are redesigned to be more
| rugged. The more rugged elements will be able to withstand
| much higher currents. This method has shown unpredictable
| failures in testing, though it is thought it may be useful to
| make existing systems less vulnerable.
|
| Seems reasonable to provide EMP shielding to a drone?
| sklargh wrote:
| Since we are capable of EMP-hardening very large airframes
| (see Nightwatch, Looking Glass, SAM) I assume shielding
| crucial systems on a drone would be an initial design
| challenge but not impossible.
| onion2k wrote:
| _This bodes very poorly for any nation that falls behind in the
| AI race._
|
| Not really. The chance of any sort of aerial dogfighting
| happening in a war are next to zero. The cost of planes, and
| pilots, is so high that almost all the effort spent these days
| is on killing your enemy with over-the-horizon weapons fired
| from hundreds of miles away. AI-powered dogfighting in aircraft
| is military marketing.
|
| A nation could develop world-class AI planes and they'd be
| absolutely useless against a hypersonic missile fired from
| mainland China or a Russian submarine, nor would they be any
| use against a guerilla army in Afghanistan or Iraq that doesn't
| have the capability to fight in the air or that has 30 year old
| planes that can be shot down with 50 year old tech. War has
| changed; making better versions of old weapons is a waste of
| time.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > The chance of any sort of aerial dogfighting happening in a
| war are next to zero.
|
| I am not so sure. Fundamentally, bullets are cheaper than
| missiles. A single AIM-9X Sidewinder missile comes at $400k,
| about the price of a brand new Cessna. A fixed wing drone
| under $100k is not inconceivable (drones don't have to
| support pilots, so all sorts of failure modes are acceptable,
| as opposed to what's ok for a Cessna). It would be within the
| capabilities of many nations' armed forces to send swarms of
| thousands of such drones. Shooting them down with missiles
| will be both expensive and impractical. The only realistic
| way to defend against swarms of cheap drones is to use your
| own cheap(ish) drones that can out-dogfigth them.
| bigbizisverywyz wrote:
| I'm not sure that these drone 'swarms' are going to have
| enough of a payload to take out anything significant like
| strong armour or heavy emplacements.
|
| But against small units of well dug in, or hidden enemies -
| mortars, snipers or troops in trenches, I'm sure they'd be
| great. I'm thinking basically a grenade with wings that can
| hover, spot a target and be guided by an operator ~1km
| away.
|
| Still have to fear the EMP though.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > I'm not sure that these drone 'swarms' are going to
| have enough of a payload to take out anything significant
| like strong armour or heavy emplacements.
|
| Maybe you're thinking of sub-$1000 quadcopter-type
| drones. I'm thinking of fixed wing drones, something like
| the Houthi Samad [1] or the Iranian Shahed [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samad_(UAV)
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahed_149_Gaza
| imtringued wrote:
| >But against small units of well dug in, or hidden
| enemies - mortars, snipers or troops in trenches, I'm
| sure they'd be great. I'm thinking basically a grenade
| with wings that can hover, spot a target and be guided by
| an operator ~1km away.
|
| I don't know why people insist on flying grenades with
| lots of electronics. That is very expensive. It would be
| more logical to use the drones for physical target
| acquisition and surveillance and then use an actual
| grenade launcher or other conventional weapons to do the
| killing blow.
| mLuby wrote:
| You're right. But if the target is on the fourth floor of
| an eight story building, a drone (or human) might be the
| only way to get the weapon there.
|
| Slaughterbots provide better leverage of air superiority
| than current missile-based options.
| nradov wrote:
| The only way to generate a significant EMP is with a
| nuclear weapon, at which point you have bigger problems
| than drone swarms. Non-nuclear EMP weapons do exist but
| the effects don't extend very far.
| imtringued wrote:
| Where are all the bullet shooting missiles?
| credit_guy wrote:
| There aren't. My point is, if you want to take down a
| cheap drone that comes at you with a 500 pound gravity
| bomb (and could make your day quite unpleasant), you
| can't afford to spend a missile on that, but you can
| afford to send another drone with a 50 cal machine gun or
| a 20mm cannon. But that means dogfight.
| VectorLock wrote:
| How about if instead of a machine gun it just explodes
| when it gets close? Looks like we're back to missiles.
| VectorLock wrote:
| And what are those cheap drones supposed to do? Fire even
| cheaper missiles? Fire bullets at aircraft far faster,
| higher and more maneuverable than them?
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| You would need sufficient hypersonic missiles to knock out
| the offensive capability of the target.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| I think you're taking the example of dogfighting a little too
| literal when it can be easily applicable in all sorts of
| different ways.
|
| Let's take your Hypersonic missiles. The largest difficulty
| with intercepting such weapons is not their speed, they
| travel slower than traditional ballistic missiles, but their
| terminal maneuvering which tries to dodge any interceptors.
| AI powered interceptors could be a game changer in improving
| the likelihood of those extremely expensive and limited
| quantity stand off weapons from reaching their intended
| targets. And having a slight edge in your interceptor AI vs
| say the terminal guidance AI could produce overwhelming
| advantages.
|
| > War has changed; making better versions of old weapons is a
| waste of time.
|
| This has been declared a great many times and yet has been
| also disproven just as many. Just because a M1A1 Abrams tanks
| and F-117 Nighthawks Stealth Bombers wouldn't have won the
| Vietnam War doesn't mean they weren't a significant
| contributors to winning the Gulf War.
|
| For better or worse airpower will continue to be the deliver
| method of most warheads onto foreheads. The hypersonic's
| which you suggest that are making them obsolete are very
| costly and very limited in total payload capacity compared to
| the amount which can be delivered by air. There's a reason
| why Russian and China are not discontinuing investments into
| new fighter jets and bomber programs just because they have
| hypersonics.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> AI powered interceptors could be a game changer
|
| Nope. AI wouldn't make any difference. The problem in
| shooting down an inbound maneuvering hypersonic isn't
| reaction time. It doesn't matter how quickly you see that
| the target has changed course. Hypersonics are a matter of
| commitment. Once the interceptor is launched it is
| committed to very narrow cone of potential trajectories. If
| the inbound hypersonic makes a slight turn, it is then
| outside that cone. The interceptor cannot physically alter
| its course enough to hit the new trajectory. It lacks the
| energy (delta-V) to make such a change. AI cannot create
| delta-V out of thin air.
|
| A computer can spot a track, project its likely path and
| guide an interceptor missile. But that isn't AI. Computers
| in the 1950s were capable of such things before any notion
| of what we now call AI.
| p1esk wrote:
| I don't understand, why can't an interceptor missile
| change its course but a hypersonic missile can?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Relative speeds. A slight turn by the inbound hypersonic
| will could move the impact/intercept point several
| hundred miles left or right. If you are the ground-launch
| interceptor that shift left or right requires a much
| larger turn, a turn requiring much greater energy on your
| part than the hypersonic spent making the smaller turn.
| Say the inbound hypersonic just turned a few degrees
| east. The interceptor fired towards the old western
| trajectory might now have to turn around and head east,
| meaning it no longer has enough energy to get to the new
| intercept point.
| whiddershins wrote:
| This doesn't make intuitive sense.
|
| It's all in how fast the interceptor updates to reflect
| the new trajectory. If it were magically simultaneous and
| their mass were the same, the energy would be the same,
| no?
|
| Or is this something I am lacking findamentL knowledge
| on.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Because the hypersonic missile has an air breathing
| engine and/or goes much faster, so it has a lot of energy
| to expend.
|
| Also, a very slight change in trajectory by a missile far
| away requires a much larger change in trajectory for the
| interceptor, because the interceptor has to go to where
| the missile is projected to be, meaning that the
| interceptor is always at a disadvantage.
| richardw wrote:
| It seems that some think it's possible:
|
| https://breakingdefense.com/2021/11/raytheon-northrop-
| lockhe...
| typon wrote:
| How is winning a war against a decrepit nation's badly run
| military proof of any weapons system's superiority?
| ridgeguy wrote:
| At the time of the first Gulf War, Iraq had the world's
| fourth largest army. Some details here:
|
| https://nuke.fas.org/guide/iraq/agency/army.htm
|
| Not decrepit, IMHO.
| dragontamer wrote:
| It was also widely believed that America's "volunteer
| force" was a disadvantage.
|
| The USA did many firsts. It was the first deployment of
| M1 Abrams, no one knew if it'd be good (and IIRC, it was
| considered a waste of money back then, since it wasn't
| battle proven yet). It was the first time the US used GPS
| on the battlefield. It was the first time precision
| weapons were used. Etc. etc.
|
| A lot of people at the time thought the USA could lose
| Desert Storm. It turns out that war happened completely
| differently than armchair generals / pundits believed.
|
| I don't know if we'll necessarily win or lose our next
| war. But I think I can rather confidently say that none
| of us will be able to predict it.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Your belief that the Iraqi armed forces of 1991 were
| decrepit and badly run is the proof of just how superior
| those weapons were, along with the accompanying tactics
| and doctrine. Before the conflict the overwhelming
| victory for the Coalition of Willing was not so clear.
|
| The Iraqi army was battle hardened and tested after a
| near decade long war against Iran. They had the third
| largest army in the world, which was trained in Soviet
| doctrine, armed with potent and modern weapon systems.
| Their integrated air defense system was state of the art
| combination of the most modern Soviet and European
| systems that were redundantly layered and hardened.
|
| America, along with its allies, fought them and won in
| spite of being geographically on the other side of the
| planet. The exceptional difficulty of achieving that is
| impossible over state.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The Iraqi army was battle hardened and tested after a
| near decade long war against Iran.
|
| Which means absolutely nothing if you cannot stop the
| airplane from dropping bombs on your critical logistics
| nodes. Those battle-hardened soldiers weren't so hard
| after a few days without water rations, without fuel in
| their tanks. In modern maneuver warfare between nation
| states "toughness" means far less than even a slight
| technological advantage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare
| onepointsixC wrote:
| >Which means absolutely nothing if you cannot stop the
| airplane from dropping bombs on your critical logistics
| nodes.
|
| Which was only possible thanks to the superiority of
| American weapons system's which were better versions of
| old weapons. Thank you for reinforcing my point. Also the
| major coalition action was over after 3 days of fighting,
| that wasn't long enough for any Iraqi divisions to run
| out of supplies.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Their integrated air defense system was state of the
| art combination of the most modern Soviet and European
| systems that were redundantly layered and hardened.
|
| Not quite: for example, see [0]:
|
| " _Though impressive on paper, the Iraqi Air Force 's
| primary role was to act as a regional deterrent, with a
| secondary role of supporting the Iraqi Army, rather than
| attempt to gain air superiority in any conflict. Basic
| training was rigid, inflexible, and left pilots with
| extremely poor situational awareness.... Like its
| aircraft, much of Iraq's ground air defenses were also
| outdated: SA-2 and SA-3 systems were nearing the end of
| their operational lifespan and their countermeasures were
| well-known at this point, while its other SAM systems
| were not much younger._"
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_air_campaign#I
| raqi_Ar...
| onepointsixC wrote:
| I'm not talking about their missiles or air force, but
| the Integrated Air Defense System.
|
| The French built KARI IADS system was a very much modern
| at the time, having been first operationalized in 1987
| and was linked with fiber optic cable, with wireless
| communication as a backup [0]. While the Iraqi's did not
| have the latest SAM systems themselves, their integrated
| air defense system allowed them to keep the radars of SAM
| batteries turned off, keeping them hidden to avoid
| detection. Their missiles were very potent, and it had a
| _lot_ of them at 16,000 in total [1]:
|
| "The U.S. Government estimated before the war that the
| most critical Iraqi targets were more heavily defended
| than any in Eastern Europe even during the height of the
| Cold War."
|
| S-125 missiles had victories against coalition aircraft.
| They would have had many more victories were it not for
| the fact that coalition air strikes severed the
| centralized air command communications in the starting
| minutes of the war thanks to the Stealthy F-117's which
| were already above Baghdad at the time of H hour. The
| combination of stealth aircraft taking out key crucial
| infrastructure, severing of fiber optics communication,
| jamming of wireless communications, electronic warfare,
| and decoy drones proved to be too much for the Iraqi
| IAD's. But without those technologies and strategies, the
| Gulf War could have been a blood bath much more akin to
| Vietnam.
|
| [0]: https://media.defense.gov/2010/Sep/27/2001329817/-1/
| -1/0/AFD... [1]: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pu
| bs/papers/2009/P7837...
| gloriana wrote:
| This is true. But the barrier to using over-the-horizon
| weapons like icbm / hypersonic is much greater than say drone
| attacks or fighter jet bombs. Have over-the-horizon weapons
| ever been used? No. But drone attacks and fighter jet
| activities are daily occurrences because they can be used
| with little repercussions.
| regularfry wrote:
| Over-the-horizon weapons absolutely have been used.
| Frequently, repeatedly, and (allegedly) effectively.
| Tomahawks count, unless they're retrospectively
| reclassified as drones.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Not really. The chance of any sort of aerial dogfighting
| happening in a war are next to zero. The cost of planes, and
| pilots, is so high that almost all the effort spent these
| days is on killing your enemy with over-the-horizon weapons
| fired from hundreds of miles away. AI-powered dogfighting in
| aircraft is military marketing.
|
| AI would dramatically reduce the cost of planes and it would
| eliminate the cost of pilots altogether. If you don't need a
| pilot then the economics of building planes completely change
| --you can throw lots of cheaper planes at the enemy and
| accept that a certain number of them won't come back.
|
| I think that will also change the psychology of AI sorties.
| If a cheap Russian drone downs a cheap US drone, it will
| probably feel more like "Russians believed to be behind US
| government hack" than "Russians shot down a US fighter
| plane". The latter is a lot more of a _casus belli_ than the
| former.
| nradov wrote:
| No the construction economics are still mostly the same.
| UCAVs with the range and capacity to replace manned
| tactical aircraft are only marginally cheaper. MQ-25 unit
| cost is in the $150M range. No country can afford to build
| a lot of them.
|
| The small, cheap "swarming" drones have very limited range
| and endurance. Useful in some limited scenarios but only if
| you can first find a way to deliver them to the target area
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I posit that the costs will continue to decrease as
| mindshifts change--right now (or more precisely, around
| the time these drones were designed and purchased) we
| think about drones as being "unmanned planes" and planes
| are supposed to be big, reliable, and expensive and the
| military procedures and culture is calibrated to minimize
| losses of these planes. As expectations change, I think
| costs will decline as well which will feed back into a
| change of expectations (time will tell).
|
| Regarding "delivering them to the target area", it's
| pretty easy to conceive of a larger transport craft
| managing delivery.
| nradov wrote:
| What's your point? We already have that. Large bombers
| are used to deliver cruise missiles close enough to the
| target area. Cruise missiles are drones by another name.
| But they're hardly cheap. In fact they're getting more
| expensive.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| The point is that AI has the power to change the ecology
| of war. Cruise missiles occupy a niche, and yet they
| haven't obsoleted combat aircraft, so clearly they aren't
| "drones by another name"--drones serve a purpose today
| and will continue to diversify (including a blurring of
| lines between "drone" and "cruise missile"). Anyway, this
| conversation has taken a defensive tone, so I'll duck
| out.
| alexpotato wrote:
| - build small, short range but very smart swarm drones
|
| - package them up (cluster bomb style) into a "dumb"
| ballistic missile that only needs to get to the general
| area (e.g. near a city)
|
| - airborne deploy the swarm once near the target
|
| Combines long range "cheap" deployment with short range
| smart capabilities.
| imtringued wrote:
| Have some stupid CGI: https://youtu.be/n8u0l_c2_NA
| nradov wrote:
| There have been proposals to build conventionally armed
| ballistic missiles to fulfill the prompt global strike
| mission. The problem is that if Russia / China / North
| Korea detect a ballistic missile headed in their general
| direction they might misinterpret it as an incoming
| nuclear first strike and retaliate accordingly. A very
| dangerous game.
|
| Also it's rather pointless to deploy any sort of "drone"
| from a long range ballistic missile. It would need a
| complex and heavy braking system to slow down enough
| during re-entry to allow for controlled flight. Easier to
| just hit the target directly with a re-entry vehicle.
| fnord77 wrote:
| > A nation could develop world-class AI planes...
|
| such a nation would probably already have nuclear weapons.
| Any nation capable of hypersonic skip glide weapons also
| probably has nukes. So this hypothetical attack wouldn't be
| happening. At least w/ non-nuclear weapons.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> making better versions of old weapons is a waste of time.
|
| Except for hypersonics being a basic step up for ballistic
| missile tech, a better warhead/payload atop a rather standard
| missile. Those submarines are incremental improvements on
| very old sub designs. Drones have been around for decades
| too. Even autonomous "suicide drones", but we used to call
| those cruise missiles with loiter capacity. Despite the
| constant rhetoric there is actually very little revolutionary
| in the modern battlespace.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Can you extrapolate on this? In my understanding in recent
| conflicts (e.g. Armenia and Azerbaijan) and currently in
| Ethiopia, drones (okay, we're not talking about fighter jets
| here but still, autonomous or near autonomous aerial systems)
| have played critical roles in eliminating air defenses, heavy
| weaponry, etc. and in future conflicts now that parties on
| all sides know how important the use of such drones are, will
| be deploying their own drones as countermeasures.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Not the guy you are asking, and won't cite due to time
| constraints, but here is the tldr. In Vietnam, one nation
| had a dream. It dreamt of MIG-21s falling out of the sky
| before they even saw the US fighter. That fighter was the
| F-4 and it did not get a cannon. It did not get a cannon,
| because its missiles were so advanced that it did not need
| one - it would spot the MIG-21/19 and shoot it out of the
| sky before the lighter, more agile plane (with an inferior
| radar) got close. Except that didn't happen. Some blame
| lack of approval-to-fire on target that isn't visually
| identified, but the reality is that the tech wasn't there.
|
| Now it is. Most fighter-to-fighter kills now are radar
| beyond-visual-range "BVR" kills. Heavier, less maneuverable
| fighters with more speed, altitude, and radar range can
| take out lighter ones. The SU-27 can take out the MIG-29.
| The F-15 can take out the F-16, etc.
|
| Now drones. Drones are mainly a joke when the big boys come
| to play. The aforementioned SU-27 and F-15 CAN detect and
| CAN take out most drones. Things like Bayraktars are great
| against insurgents. Not so much against an advanced
| military. Note that most drones in service now are used as
| spotters and ground attack. They are VERY slow, but are
| high-altitude.
|
| And, no one ruled out EW when it comes to large-scale
| conflict. Ukraine, 2008 Georgia, Arm/Azer don't count.
|
| edit: For the guy below talking about ICBMs - no one is
| talking ICBMs. Google AIM-120 AMRAAM and AESA radar. Not
| trolling, just faster to tell you what to Google than try
| to summarize.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| The F-4 story is a bit more nuanced than that.
|
| The issue wasn't that the F-4 didn't have a cannon, but
| that it was assumed that homing missiles would make
| teaching the art of dogfighting obsolete. This was proven
| to be a disastrous mistake. However once SFTI program
| (AKA TOPGUN) was established, the now much better trained
| American pilots had established a clear lead in air to
| air victories.
|
| We know that it wasn't the lack of a gun because a gun
| pod was developed for the F-4. The ratios of victories to
| losses of the gun pod equipped F-4's was worse than those
| without.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Except a country with shitload of drones will send 100 of
| them for a cost of 1 F35 from field runways no satellite
| can find, and bomb your airstrips.
|
| Even if you react in time, and shoot down a dozen, result
| doesn't change.
| nradov wrote:
| Current F-35A unit cost is $78M. Which model of drone
| costs $780K and has the same range?
|
| In reality cruise missiles will be used for most strikes
| against fixed targets like runways. Even those cost like
| $2M each.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Which model of drone costs $780K and has the same
| range?
|
| None, but you don't need range if you will creep within
| few hundred kms of the target, and launch from field.
| nradov wrote:
| Well we already have that. Manned aircraft have been used
| to deliver cruise missiles for decades. Cruise missiles
| are drones by another name.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I mostly agree, but aim-120s are hundreds of thousands of
| dollars each, and each plane only carries about ten. toe-
| to-toe, a drone has no chance against a modern fighter,
| but fighters are an extremely inefficient counter to a
| fleet of cheap drones.
|
| of course, how to get the swarm of cheap drones to a
| distant target is also an unsolved problem.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Not really. The chance of any sort of aerial dogfighting
| happening in a war are next to zero. The cost of planes, and
| pilots, is so high that almost all the effort spent these
| days is on killing your enemy with over-the-horizon weapons
| fired from hundreds of miles away. AI-powered dogfighting in
| aircraft is military marketing.
|
| People have been claiming that over-the-horizon missiles will
| obsolete dog-fighting _since before the Vietnam war_ :
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_F6D_Missileer
|
| > Through the later part of the 1950s and into the 1960s,
| military air planners increasingly believed that future air
| combat would be carried out almost entirely by long-range
| missile fire. This changed the basic requirements for a
| fighter design considerably. The pilots would be expected to
| fight primarily through their radar and fire control systems,
| hopefully never even seeing their opponent. Because of this,
| the emphasis was on "head down" combat and an all-round view
| was considered unimportant....
|
| Not saying that won't _eventually_ be true, but it doesn 't
| mean it will be true any time soon. The lesson is to preserve
| the capability until it's actually been proven to no longer
| be needed.
| nradov wrote:
| If you look at the actual data from the past couple
| decades, far more aircraft were destroyed by SAMs or cruise
| missiles (on the ground) than in BVR or WVR combat.
| Dogfights haven't been a significant factor for a long
| time.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If you look at the actual data from the past couple
| decades, far more aircraft were destroyed by SAMs or
| cruise missiles (on the ground) than in BVR or WVR
| combat. Dogfights haven't been a significant factor for a
| long time.
|
| Data can only tell you so much. For instance, according
| to the data, nuclear weapons haven't destroyed _any_
| enemy equipment in the last 80 years, but you 'd be going
| too far to infer from that conventional weapons have made
| them militarily obsolete.
| stouset wrote:
| The difference is that nobody is avoiding WVR dogfights
| just so they can get shot down by a missile in BVR or a
| SAM. _Nobody is getting within range of a dogfight_
| nowadays because these other weapons are so
| extraordinarily dominant.
|
| > The lesson is to preserve the capability until it's
| actually been proven to no longer be needed.
|
| And yet when faced with evidence of this, your immediate
| response is "data can only tell you so much".
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> The lesson is to preserve the capability until it's
| actually been proven to no longer be needed.
|
| > And yet when faced with evidence of this, your
| immediate response is "data can only tell you so much".
|
| That evidence probably isn't sufficient. The kind of
| evidence I'm looking for is: fight an actual war against
| an enemy with an air force, and find out your pilots
| never actually used dog-fighting skills or capability.
| Until then, maybe hold off on plans to replace all the
| fighters with missile trucks or something.
| stouset wrote:
| > fight an actual war against an enemy with an air force
|
| Like Iraq? Or Afghanistan? Or do you mean an air force
| that's at least somewhat comparable to ours, like Russia
| or China?
|
| Case one is that we're up against an enemy with a
| drastically inferior air force, in which case WVR is
| _never_ going to happen. Their air capability will be
| devastated whether on the ground or in the air.
|
| Case two is that we're up against a country with a
| powerful air force. Assuming we're somehow tiptoeing
| around the issue of full-blown nuclear war, we're now
| talking about a situation where combat is somehow
| happening hundreds of miles away from either side's
| radar-guided mobile SAM systems (Russia's S-400 has an
| operational range of at least 400km), both sides have
| managed to evade multiple BVR missile launches per
| airframe, both sides have an equal number of jets in the
| engagement, and the area objective is so important that
| it's worth gambling multiple $50+ million jets on.
|
| Do you realize how comically implausible this scenario
| is?
|
| If you can think of a more realistic situation in which
| the US will actually engage their fighter jets in
| dogfighting, I'm all ears.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| > People have been claiming that over-the-horizon missiles
| will obsolete dog-fighting since before the Vietnam war:
|
| This is exactly what this article from yesterday is
| claiming. I have to agree with it TBH.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-40327934
| rcv wrote:
| > People have been claiming that over-the-horizon missiles
| will obsolete dog-fighting since before the Vietnam war:
|
| If you're interested in this line of thought, the book
| "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War" is a
| really great read.
| beerandt wrote:
| Just as advances in war tech in the past have led to the more
| "advanced" war machine "fighting the last war," these advances
| only serve to change the behaviors, rules, and context of any
| future engagement.
|
| Keeping in mind that war is ultimately a "battle" of resources
| and expenditures, no one in a position of great disadvantage
| will invest in that particular effort, but seek a way to
| circumvent it. Whereas the "winner" has already sunk that cost.
| (Even without AI, how common are dogfights or air-to-air
| confrontation in the last 50 years?)
|
| There are ways for the more advanced participant to defeat this
| game, but so far it has required violating human norms that are
| held sacrosanct even in war.
|
| AI's advantage might end up being the ability to navigate this
| evolving game theory, but only if it's able to properly value
| what's acceptable to human nature and what isn't.
|
| A "kill all humans as a solution to end spam" doesn't work here
| (unless the AI has taken ultimate charge, which becomes an
| entirely different issue).
|
| On the other hand, certain near-peer potential adversaries have
| signaled a willingness to violate whatever norms need be
| violated to secure victory.
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| >> As well as any nation who's best and brightest minds refuse
| to contribute while their adversaries have no such qualms.
|
| Wait, what? Are you saying that if a scientist refuses to
| contribute to AI development that will be used to kill human
| beings then he plays into the hands of nation's adversaries ?
| Victerius wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly what it means.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Not to put words in their mouth but isn't that pretty clear?
| If you don't develop advanced weaponry, you are going to be
| killed by people who _do_ develop advanced weaponry.
|
| Unless you manage to stop the advanced weaponry from being
| developed at all, which is admirable, but incredibly
| difficult, and with huge consequences for being wrong.
| pasabagi wrote:
| That depends on your model of international relations. Most
| states have recognized that international relationships are
| _far_ from zero sum, and that wars between peer competitors
| are almost never worth it. Indeed, the success stories
| since WW2 have been those countries that have spent very
| little on weapons, and engaged in few wars (with the US
| being the exception).
|
| Even if you take WW2 and WW1 into account, the biggest
| winner of those conflicts (the US) spent the least on
| armaments prior, and had probably the least aggressive
| foreign policy of any major power.
| boppo1 wrote:
| > have been those countries that have spent very little
| on weapons, and engaged in few wars (with the US being
| the exception).
|
| Perhaps, _because_ the US is an exception.
| pasabagi wrote:
| Maybe? China has historically spent very little on its
| military, and it's not like they benefited from US
| protection. Quite the opposite, in fact.
| nradov wrote:
| China's military spending is now effectively near parity
| with the USA and rising rapidly.
|
| https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/chinas-
| defense-s...
| pasabagi wrote:
| Dunno about the methodology there, but, that's why I said
| _historically_.
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| >>but isn't that pretty clear?
|
| No, for me it's counterintuitive. Personally I'd never
| contribute to any military technology.
| [deleted]
| CalRobert wrote:
| OK, but that means someone with good weapons can kill you
| and take your stuff.
| arpa wrote:
| killing me is easy enough as-is, without the need for
| advanced technology. Literally any cop can bash my head
| in. Further arms race when nuclear weapons are present is
| pointless, as any conflict with nuclear power is likely
| to end in nuclear exchange, and is acceptable only if you
| are a psycho that thinks megadeaths is just a number upon
| which strategy can be built.
| mateo1 wrote:
| Although the idea that MAD saved us from a nuclear
| holocaust is prevalent, people tend to forget how a strong
| anti-war effort was required to dissuade the crazy people
| from ideas like megadeaths being an ok strategic decision
| and stopping plans like the "Star Wars Program" on their
| tracks (which has unfortunately resumed with potentially
| tragic consequences).
|
| These weapons and technologies are developed by nation-
| states only, and a collaboration, however unlikely might
| seem to you, is the only way to stop us from pointing guns
| at each others heads with AI controlling the trigger.
|
| The technologies will be developed, and have to be
| developed for the sake of balancing powers, but they need
| to be put in a drawer and locked there after being
| designed, not widely deployed and flaunted at each other.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Or unless you have a significant enough deterrent and the
| credibility to use it in basically any sort of conflict (N.
| Korea may fit into this category)
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Consider for a moment that you believe that Nuclear weapons
| are abominations which should be all eliminated.
|
| How do you convince North Korea to eliminate theirs? If you
| eliminate your nuclear weapons, you now open yourself to
| being threatened with nuclear destruction by North Korea with
| no mutual assured destructive response to deter them.
|
| The genie is out of the bottle and you cannot stop it. But
| you can deter its use against you.
| heartbeats wrote:
| Surely, this is not a serious take.
|
| For one, NK hardly has the capacity to "destroy" the US -
| they barely have working ICBMs.
|
| Secondly, whatever the amount of nuclear warheads necessary
| to deter this is, it's surely less than 3,750[0].
|
| We cannot know whether it is impossible to stop the
| "genie," as no serious attempt has been made. The U.S. and
| Russia together hold 90% of the world's nuclear weapons.
| The Cold War being over, are you seriously proposing they
| need this entire arsenal in order to defend themselves
| against the very serious and dangerous threats of _checks
| notes_ Pakistan and North Korea?
|
| If so, then how come the US still reserves the right to a
| pre-emptive nuclear strike? How come it has not adopted a
| "no first use" policy like China and India?
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_U
| nited_...
| onepointsixC wrote:
| I chose North Korea for the thought experiment because of
| it's belligerence, not because of it's quantity of
| nuclear weapons.
|
| >The Cold War being over, are you seriously proposing
| they need this entire arsenal in order to defend
| themselves against the very serious and dangerous threats
| of checks notes Pakistan and North Korea?
|
| Why did you choose to ignore the Chinese who are
| currently rapidly expanding their nuclear arsenal. The
| world is on the precipice of a new cold war between
| Beijing and Washington.
|
| >If so, then how come the US still reserves the right to
| a pre-emptive nuclear strike? How come it has not adopted
| a "no first use" policy like China and India?
|
| A "no first use" policy is worth less than the paper it
| would be printed on. No one serious actually believes in
| them.
| scandox wrote:
| Arthur C Clarke has a good story on the dangers of warfare at
| the bleeding edge
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)
| minimuffins wrote:
| > As well as any nation who's best and brightest minds refuse
| to contribute
|
| Sickening pro robo war jingoism!
| imtringued wrote:
| I could say the same thing about lots of obvious economic
| policies... The world doesn't work like that.
| torginus wrote:
| I remember I read a fighter pilot's analysis on the events:
|
| - Bullet drop and travel time were not modelled, the guns were
| literally lasers
|
| - Most of the kills the AI did were high aspect shots, meaning
| the aircraft flew perpendicularly to each other. In real life,
| these shots are almost impossible to hit, due to the
| aforementioned ignored factors
|
| - A human pilot in a simulator doesn't have the situational
| awareness of flying in a physical plane
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Yes.
|
| >> The pilot, dressed in an olive-green flight suit, sat in a
| high-backed gaming chair, his face obscured by a virtual-
| reality headset.
|
| So nothing like the real cockpit they would have trained in,
| with low-resolution, high-latency visuals. This alone could
| have removed a lot of the expert advantage of a real pilot in
| a real plane.
| VectorLock wrote:
| If they didn't model bullet drop, did they model effects of
| high-G on the pilots?
| hirundo wrote:
| It doesn't seem to me that aerial combat is vastly simpler than
| ground combat. If a robot pilot can accurately identify friend
| and foe, and maneuver effectively to target the latter, then
| likely we are not a lot farther from doing the same with an
| infantry robot.
| jetbooster wrote:
| I would claim it is vastly simpler. going from one position to
| another in a aerial vehicle is much simpler than navigating a
| cityscape, a swamp, or even simply an uneven field.
|
| In the aerial domain, your environment is for all intents and
| purposes empty, and you operate over and above a surface which
| may have targets on it. As long as you ensure your manuevers
| don't intersect the ground manuevering is mostly point in the
| direction you want to go. aerial -> aerial is even simpler, as
| these engagements are long range and often significantly above
| the ground, so other than maintaining altitude you can treat
| the whole universe as empty except you and your target.
| hirundo wrote:
| There are numerous videos of robots traversing rough ground
| now. None of them can approximate a human athlete doing the
| same, yet. But I remember when the same was true of the best
| chess programs versus humans, and now the one on my phone can
| beat an international grand master.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Moving through the air is a lot easier than moving on ground.
| No mud, slopes, or rubble to deal with.
| nindalf wrote:
| How do you identify civilians on the ground? Are they as easily
| identifiable at a glance like objects in the air? Do they all
| carry transponders to identify themselves wirelessly?
|
| We're certainly far away from effective solutions for either
| but one problem is much easier to solve.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Civilians are not identified, and every army today in an
| active conflict disregard Geneva convention.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| "Anyone who runs, is a VC. Anyone who stands still, is a
| well-disciplined VC!"
| [deleted]
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| They have come a long way since the AI mine was invented!
| dkobia wrote:
| I am reminded of the very awesome book Kill Decision by Daniel
| Suarez -- A fictional account of a future with A.I. fighter
| pilots with permission to kill.
| dmead wrote:
| Do you guys remember in the digg days when somebody was outed as
| a literal pentagon employee who would post over and over about
| the latest military hardware?
|
| I wish i could find some evidence of this. I just have my
| memories about it.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| There certainly are, the problem is the burden of proof. One
| case in particular was the USS Nimitz UAP video. It first
| leaked on the conspiracy Above Top Secret forum in 2009 (iirc);
| the now disclosed video, comms transcript,m. Obviously no one
| believed (and this being a conspiracy forum!), not that OP
| behavior helped with credibility. But still interesting to have
| such vindicated after all these years.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| I would imagine that these AI fighter pilots may still need a
| human being so that they don't shoot done civilian planes or
| something. How good are state of the art drones at flying in
| inclement weather with poor communication to home base?
| imtringued wrote:
| Absolutely terrible?
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Civilian planes fly with transponders - something that you can
| receive with a $20 bit of hardware. Military aircraft do not
| turn their transponders on unless they want the world to know
| where they are.
| mLuby wrote:
| Not all civilian planes do this, nor other airborne objects
| like skydivers.
| dirtyid wrote:
| IMO ramifications of AI fighters pilots would be more clear if
| writings focused on superhuman abilities to evade, which
| obliviates much of modern warfare underpinnings.
|
| Superior mental performance + kinematic performance in purpose
| built drones that operate at highers Gs = shifting force balance
| towards offense since when measures becomes obsolete /
| unworkable. Anti air weapons work well when autonomous missile
| can arbitrage the performance limitations of meatbags. But
| without meatbags, the sweet spot performance envelope are a step
| up - fighter sized vehicles that can carry more sensors, more
| compute, larger engines and more fuel than smaller vehicles like
| missiles. It's dodging in bullettime made real.
|
| Carriers can rationalize their existence currently because entire
| carrier group + air wings has enough countermeasures to defend
| against saturation attack from (for optimistic demonstration) 100
| incoming fighters and their missiles. This limits threat to other
| large states. But if AI can evade most of the counter measures
| that you only need 10 drones to penetrate a carrier group bubble,
| and considering these are unmanned that can be sold to almost any
| country without need to sustain complex airforce institutions,
| then the entire notion of modern naval power from a few capable
| projection platform dies. Global security balance is going to be
| decided even more by local superiority when significant force
| projection from around the world becomes untenable.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| One interesting implication of AI warfare is an increase in the
| tempo of war. Decisions won't happen on human timescales, but
| some of war and combat is making ethical judgments in the heat of
| the moment. We will need to make war AI that can evaluate moral
| dilemmas.
|
| Alternatively we will neglect to program for ethics, and the
| consequences will be unpleasant.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/ODgL0
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I wonder if we can just build some relatively cheap drones with
| video game AI on hardcore level and unleash swarms of them over
| enemy airspace.
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