Inside US Air Force plot to unleash 1,000 AI ‘loyal’ drone fighters that can’t refuse orders & cheaper than normal jets

A BRANCH of the US military has set off to change how wars are fought as it plans to use artificial intelligence-controlled drones.

The US Air Force will reportedly take on 1,000 AI-controlled armed drones, known as loyal wingman drones, in the coming years.

The unmanned fighter aircraft are expected to be nimbler and cheaper than traditional manned fighter jets, Telegraph reported.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency brought on eight teams of coders to develop the first-ever dogfighting AI under the auspices of the AlphaDogfight project back in 2019.

DARPA hosted a series of dogfight-like competitions pitting the AIs against each other in mid 2020, according to Telegraph.

The competitors included major American defense corporations like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, smaller companies including Maryland-based Heron Systems and even start-up squads from universities.

Not long after that, it deployed the most competitive AI – Heron’s – against an actual human: a US Air Force F-16 pilot who's only known by his callsign Banger.

The video-game-style contest that was broadcasted online in a spectacle similar to a sports event reportedly ended quickly.

It featured Banger sitting in a mockup of an F-16 cockpit, flying a simulated battle against another F-16 flown by the AI which drew a bead on Banger and shot him down with simulated gunfire.

The AI repeated the feat in numerous subsequent mock fights as its secret was aggression, Telegraph reported.

It is said to have stood out from the other algorithms owing to its preference for head-on attacks with its simulated gun.

With its forceful tactics, the Heron drone offset a human pilot’s main advantage over an artificial mind which is creativity. 

An F-16 pilot who observed the initial DARPA trials, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Justin Mock, said earlier Drone AI models "struggled with those adversaries that did something even just a little different."

Heron’s artificial pilot doesn’t have that problem as, in a contest, its code moved too fast for Banger to do anything surprising.

"The standard things we do as fighter pilots aren’t working," Banger complained as he got shot down in the simulated fight.

California-based startup Shield AI bought Heron in 2021 after it won the DARPA fight contest.

The Air Force got an improved version of the Heron AI to a drone called the XQ-58 AI experiment for its own AI experiment named Skyborg, which has been running for several years now.

The experiment is to develop inexpensive loyal-wingman drones that will fly alongside manned fighters.

The AI drones will add their sensors and weapons to any wild and dangerous aerial war battle and if a few drones get shot down, it’s no big loss for an air force that might have hundreds of replacements.

The expendable drones would give USAF commanders the option of acting more aggressively and attacking heavily-defended airspace with less fear of getting human pilots killed.