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AI takes down human F-16 pilot in simulated dogfight, could it mark a watershed moment in aerial warfare?

The outcome could be a serious indication towards how machines will play a much bigger role in times to come, feel experts

A man versus machine contest was held in the sky and the machine won it! On Thursday, August 20, a USAF F-16 Top Gun took on an AI pilot in the first-ever simulator dogfight competition run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to see if a man could beat a machine in the sky. The showdown took place at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and it saw the human pilot being annihilated by his opponent, reports Defense One.

The aircraft run by the human pilot, a Weapons School instructor pilot known by his sign-call ‘Banger’, was virtually shot down by the AI pilot in a simulation Viper fighter jet in five rounds of mock air fight, making it conclusive that the gap between human brain and technology’s aggressive tactics is only getting wider. 

A turning point?

The event marked the culmination of the US military’s AlphaDogfight trials -- a DARPA project launched in 2019 to see human fighter pilots combating machines and that takes place alongside the wider Air Combat Evolution program. The program focuses on exploring how AI can be used to help military operations and seeing Thursday’s outcome, the experts will be more than satisfied even while those in favor of the human element would be a tad worried.

The absorbing fight was broadcast live and showed Bangar sitting in a simulation vehicle. Footage showed the experienced human pilot avoiding the first shot from his AI opponent and trying to circle back. He expressed concern about his artificial opponent’s aggressive tactics, saying: “The standard things we do as fighter pilots aren’t working,” reports Daily Mail. 

Banger’s apprehension soon proved to be true as the bot fired thrice at him and all of them were bang on target. Victory for the AI pilot looked imminent as the bot, made by Maryland-based Heron Systems, went for more aggressive tactics and head-on gun attacks compared to the more general human combat. 

Last August, DARPA picked eight teams ranging from big, traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin to small firms like Heron Systems to compete in a series of trials in November and January. And Heron had the last laugh eventually on Thursday as it left behind the rest seven teams after two days of old-school dogfights in which they went after each other using nose-aimed guns only. Heron finally faced the human fighter pilot and won comprehensively -- five rounds to zero. Lockheed was the second runner-up.
 
According to Defense One, Ben Bell, a senior machine-learning engineer at Heron Systems, said their agent had been through at least four billion simulations and had acquired at least "12 years of experience." The AI’s victory is not something unprecedented. In 2016, a demonstration showed that an AI-agent called Alpha could beat an experienced human flight instructor even though Thursday’s combat was more significant as pitted a variety of AI agents against one another and then against a human pilot in a sophisticated framework, the One report added. 

The outcome also could see a shift in the thinking about AI. Last year, DARPA said, “No AI currently exists ... that can outduel a human strapped into a fighter jet in a high-speed, high-G dogfight.” PW Singer, an analyst at the New America Foundation who co-penned the novel ‘Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution’, told The Daily Beast that the trials could lead to a marked change in the way the US airforce starts fighting its enemies. “There is a nobility to the human role, but it symbolically points to a future of more and more machines in more and more roles,” Singer said. 

Robot pilots have the capacity to think faster and creatively, with trials in April showing at least one AI-driven fighter taking a shot at its opponent while flipping upside down, a move that many human pilots were not being able to, the Mail report added.