The U.S. Air Force has announced plans to equip a small group of F-16 Fighting Falcons with artificial intelligence (AI) pilots, as part of a program dubbed Project Viper Experimentation and Next-Gen Operations Mode, or VENOM. This revelation comes just about a month after the branch announced an AI-piloted and heavily modified F-16 known as the X-62A successfully flew a variety of air-combat missions over the span of two weeks this past December.
Project VENOM is the latest development in the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Skyborg autonomous aircraft teaming architecture, which aims to pair crewed fighters with AI-enabled drone wingmen for the 21st-century fight. The Air Force is investing heavily into this concept, with a reported $50 million allocated in its 2024 budget proposal to the VENOM effort alone.
Let’s dive into Project Venom and what it means for the future of air combat…
Note: The first reference to “General Dertien” was cut in the edit. His full name and title are: Maj. Gen. Evan C. Dertien, commander, Air Force Test Center.
This article by Emma Helfrich at the Warzone was my source for many of these quotes: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/six-f-16s-getting-autonomous-computer-brains-for-combat-drone-trials
Make sure to check out Hasard Lee on YouTube here: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/author/hasard-lee/
And order his new book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Clear-Thinking-Timeless-Decisions/dp/125028144X
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Further Reading:
Previous AI F-16 coverage: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/us-air-force-ai-pilot-flies-real-f-16-in-simulated-dogfights/
NGAD: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/ngad-fighter/
Block 4 F-35: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/the-f-35-is-getting-a-15-billion-upgrade-thatll-make-it-a-whole-new-beast/
Citations:
Skyborg: https://afresearchlab.com/technology/vanguards/successstories/skyborg
DARPA AlphaDogFight: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/ai-wins-flawless-victory-against-human-fighter-pilot-in-darpa-dogfight/
Dr. Coleman quotes: https://www.airmanmagazine.af.mil/Features/Display/Article/3275545/command-interview-af-chief-scientist-dr-victoria-coleman/
MQ-9 Pilot: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a37623821/the-end-of-the-mq-9-reaper/
X-62A VISTA: https://www.edwards.af.mil/Units/X62A-Vista/
X-62A VISTA: https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2023-02-13-VISTA-X-62-Advancing-Autonomy-and-Changing-the-Face-of-Air-Power
DARPA: https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2023-02-13
Artificial Intelligence: https://www.sas.com/en_in/insights/analytics/what-is-artificial-intelligence.html#:~:text=AI%20works%20by%20combining%20large,or%20features%20in%20the%20data.
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Awesome Vid mate. This AI fascinates me. Been using the ChatGpt recently,and that's an eye opener
Japan had the idea but they don`t have the large quantity of money that demands the operation and they decided to go the US to work together
They really just should have called it Skynet
I love how china said they were going to turn migs into drones for the next gen fighter they are developing so we said; " that's fucking amateur hour. we'll do thag for our current gen fighter, but with f16's".
I should think that plugging an AI into DCS would give it a significant amount of simulated experience that would help it level up in the real thing.
Computers are suited well to IF=THEN what is paramount is sensors.
AI will get there and I am glad I live in America.
The f-16 was designed with the idea of a pilot 9ish g limit. When a platform is designed for high limit structure limited g forces they will dominate manned aircraft. Who can dogfight a plane that can pull 30+ g maneuvers?
Y'know what, Alex? Why not have these drone fighters piloted/controlled by AWACS/AEW&C aircraft & thus free up the cognitive load of the pilots of manned fighters?
Wow, very thorough presentation! Well done!
Oddly, I think… Well I might need a cardiologist DOD
I don't doubt this system is being studied in the large radar planes. They have large crews already. AI can assist them in getting the needed info to Command now quickly and accurately
I think you can help with the cognitave load by going back to tandem seat aircraft.
From my experience living, hearing about this stuff now usually means we are way beyond it.
It call comes down the best war game scenarios that can be computed to predict the winner. If you are standing on the sidewalk and an AI driven car is making a choice about your life and others, did you have a choice in what that machine chooses and or know what that is, and why?
Any AI not rooted on that "life is most important" for all input and output vectors lacks the possibly to actually properly correctly emulate learning. All of the platforms lacking that are broken at their core. The person using the system should know what the decision are based on, even more so than the machine. They should already know this truth and with that can know if a machine has been compromised. It doesn't prohibit shooting planes down and killing people if that is what is really in the best interest of life. The US declared life as the very first self-evident truth.
The people who have been holding to that truth as best possible is why they have the machines that have the computing and creative advantages.
All China and Russia need to do is train their AI on this truth. It will blow away the versions done with more processing power. It will quickly point out their contradictions and give them the tools to avoid conflict all together. It will tell them that they are not honestly holding to life being most important as much as the US is and they they need to yield or they will lose.
Why do the concepts not have two seater? Why not have a dedicated back seater help interface/manage with the AI and drone wingmen? It’s
seems like we are doing the F-4 faith
in missiles/technology with no gun over again.
Say hello to skynet
Now this is what China wants to steal from USA….
The future is AI drones. The problem is the US Air force is full of pilots.
You know, the game you described at 12:00 sounds pretty damn awesome 😀
"Only Human."
In the future I think it would be best to have 2 real people in the plane, plus the AI co pilot on board the same plane. And then they would be accompanied by a team of ai unmanned drones that are communicating with the pilots and the ai. Think of it like a football team. One of those people would be piloting the plane, with the assistance of the ai, and then the other person would be actively executing tasks using the ai to help make decisions. Think of the 2nd person in the craft as like the coach / quarterback who is actively interfacing with the ai, looking at different scenarios, executing different strategies, and managing the team of unmanned drones. He could deligate the type of strategy that they would want to employ and then the ai could take over. He could have a screen with a 3d view of the entire field where he could select targets and assign drones to targets, and select other drones to act in a defensive strategy, just like in football. If anything fires on the pilots the drones can intercept acting as a shield. This way the pilot of the plane can focus on flying the plane, while the other pilot is essentially manning a fleet of drones. Think, if you have the 2nd pilot you can do things like take complete control over other wingman drones with, because you are in close range with that drone, and then you could remotely control that drone and have it do things that AI is just not able to do right now. You can use it to kamikaze other targets, intercept targets, do surveillance, and if the ai is not capable then you can just do it yourself. There's so many more things that a fighter could do with 2 people in the cockpit with the assistance of ai and drones. Imagine a flock of 40-50 drones all piloted by ai and the assistance of 2 pilots. With that many drones imagine how hard it eould be for the enemy to get a kill. U essentially create a force field around the pilots. The old way of doing things would be to send out 4-5 fighter jets, which gives enemies only 4-5 targets to shoot down and each plane is very costly and has men inside making the risks associated very high. But imagine now 1 plane with 2 pilots and 40-50 unmanned drones in their control. Suddenly it gets much harder for the enemy. And the situational awareness goes way up for the pilots with the drones because they can now uses drones for scouting missions and other things like that without having to worry about losing a man if a drone gets shit down.
Why not just build dedicated drones?
HA Ha HA Ha 🤣 LoL 12:12 Nice visual metaphor
Long time fan but sorry to say ,As soon as you start talking about what AI is and how it does not have conscience you talking shit out of your ass when you have not the slightless clue what you are talking about , but if you think you have an idea please define conscience and give me one example of anything a human mind can do what an AI can't If you are so sure of your "explanation" …
China will inevitably make a fake, non usable knockoff soon, so dummies will continue to believe they can "keep up" 😂😂😂
It sounds like we are going from manual, to semiauto. This is a great and fair bit of work Alex, awesome video!
What could possibly go wrong?!
amazing points about AI love the vids
AI Agents (aka Intelligent Agents) is a standardized term in AI. It's based on the ideas presented by the seminal book Artificial Intelligence – A Modern Approach. It's basically self-contained AI that can perceive its environment & act autonomously. It's widely used in video games & has been covered repeatedly in Game Developer Magazine.
Soon there will be two kinds of vipers. Those with Venom, and the harmless ones.
we can't get autonomous vehicles on streets to stop killing people and someone thought this was a good idea? Morons.
does the uncrewed aircraft speak directly to the pilot for permission to engage? or just tell the pilot he destroyed the enemy aircraft already?
Why is our military obcessed with telling our enemies what we are doing?
it may be needed to have a 2nd pilot to act as a manager for the family of capabilities, while the primary pilot is dealing with the planes survivability and "human" squad mechanics.
I sure do hope pink haired gender benders aren't programming the AI in these. We've all seen the A.I chat biases and the climate change models claim. Mainly because of who is doing the programming for a preconceived outcome for political gain…What's new ?!?!
I was expecting the return of WCOs again.
R2D2 reporting for duty
Ai doesn't have morals
I have to disagree with you when you say that AI is a complex series of "if then" statements. I am a programmer, and although I am not a machine learning engineer, I can tell you that they most certainly are not "if then' statements. They are a complex web of software "neural nets" made up of many layers that pass information forward and backwards through the net with matrix math. The bleeding edge AI researchers are still discovering new emergent properties such as self relexion (self-improvement), theory of mind and brand new neural structures that have "wired" themselves in the neural net. This is some next level technology; it is almost nothing like a traditional computer program other than the fact that it uses our current programming languages as its "cells" for its neurons. The open letter calling for a halt on AI development is specifically concerned with Blackbox models that have untold numbers of these undiscovered neural structures and properties that do god knows what. No one knows here on earth, not even their creators.
The AI doesn't look at the cockpit display. lol
SpaceX Starshield could solve latency for remote drone control. An analog of Tesla HW 4 could move compute onto the airframe, eliminating latency altogether. Garmin Autonomi / Autoland might one day make day/night carrier landings and rotary wing fleet landings routine.
SKYNET.
they thought flying and running a radar was too mutch hence the rio on f4, f14, ect. now they got single pilots doing so mutch more, dont think its gonna work too well.
Belkan Witchcraft!
Skynet.
Would love to see about episode about SR71
Everyone in the comments making sci-fi references, but no one's willing to reference Stealth. Tinman's day is coming, folks!
"-Slava Ukraine!
-AI Slava!"
😉
Good news!
However, I'll get excited when there about 300-350 of them so they can use proven AI to swarm the Red swarms of either dictatorship.
I want to see 20 or 30 flying high CAP over Taiwan 24hrs/ day like SAC used to do with orbiting B-52s back when. Especially when the Chicoms rehearse invasion drills around the island.
Many of us grew up playing video games with CPU teammates that followed basic instructions, so it’s fascinating to see the concept being scaled up as AI & computing power takes leaps forward.