An AI algorithm piloting an F-16 Fighting Falcon in a simulated dogfight against a seasoned
US Air Force pilot achieved a perfect score with five straight wins in a competition.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held the final round of its third
and final AlphaDogfight competition on Thursday, putting an AI system designed by Heron Systems
against a human pilot in a "simulated within-visual-range air combat" situation.
According to Breaking Defense, Heron's AI went head-to-head with a graduate of the Air
Force's Weapons Instructor Course with the callsign "Banger".
An expert commentator, DARPA's Justin Mock, said that the AI algorithm demonstrated "superhuman
aiming ability" during the dogfight and the human pilot couldn't score a single hit.
In this video Defense Updates analyzes how AI beating fighter pilot in virtual dog fight
shows that the U.S military is stealing a march in this important area?
Let’s get started.
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AI is being seen as the next big thing when it comes to warfare.
The U.S and its near-peer rivals like Russia and China are investing considerable resources
in AI to gain an advantage.
The fact is that the first state to develop AI would serious advantages over others militarily.
Artificial-intelligence models are improving every day and have shown their value in many
applications.
Initially, these systems could be useful for tasks such as identifying a target from satellite
image but in the future, AI could act autonomously and be used for offensive action.
Russian President Putin was quoted last year saying “artificial intelligence is the future
not only of Russia but of all of mankind … Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become
the ruler of the world”.
AI has stamped its authority in several experiments.
Garry Kasparov who is perhaps the greatest chess player in history lost to IBM supercomputer
called Deep Blue in 1997
The loss sent shock waves across the world and seemed to herald a new era of machine
mastery over man.
Last year, DARPA explained that while AI can beat human beings in games like chess, there
is no AI currently in existence that "can outduel a human strapped into a fighter jet
in a high-speed, high-G dogfight.
DARPA has spent the last year trying to resolve this through an aerial warfare contest called
the AlphaDogfight Trials which would simulate man-unmanned combat.
The Pentagon’s “mad science” unit created the competition to assess how AI could assist
pilots, and attract developers to its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program.
Once the algorithms have shown they work in simulations, the ACE program will progress
to small-scale unmanned aerial vehicles, and then graduate to live, operational aircraft.
In the first round, AIs were pitted against each other.
Eight teams participated in it and an algorithm developed by Heron Systems won it.
Reports stated that the Maryland-based company guided its jet with deep reinforcement learning,
which helps AI improve its decisions by testing out different approaches and learning from
its mistakes.
After the first round win, Heron faced its final challenge: a best-of-five aerial duel
against an Air Force F-16 pilot known as “Banger.”
All of the simulated fighter battles were restricted to allow the use of the nose cannon
only and human pilot entered the competition, wearing a VR helmet.
Heron quickly built up a 4-0 lead.
Gunned down four times but somehow still alive, Banger had no choice but to change up his
gameplan.
He said, “The standard things that we do as fighter
pilots are not working, so for this last one, I’ll try to change it up a little bit just
to see if we can do something different.
That initial turn is where I lose a lot of life…
I’ve just gotta look for opportunities to minimize that distance separation away from
the adversary, try to get him back in so I press inside or stay outside his nose area.”
Banger pulled up to 9Gs — nine times the force of gravity — and hit speeds over 500
mph or 805 kph.
He then dropped the jet down to 13,000 feet, trying to drag Heron close to the ground.
The plan seemed to be working.
Heron couldn’t get its gun low enough to shoot.
But within a few seconds, the AI was back on Banger’s tail and was able to execute
the final hit.
Link to the video of Dogfight is given in the Description section below.
Ben Bell, Heron's Senior Machine Learning Engineer, told Sandboxx News that the simulated
environment put the AI combatant at an advantage over its human foe.
But is to be noted that the virtual environment also allowed the human pilot to execute high-G
maneuvers that might not be possible for a human pilot in the real world.
Still, the achievement is significant for an AI system whose development reportedly
started just a year ago.
As per Defense One, Bell said that Heron's AI program learned fast, gaining roughly "12
years of experiences" over the course of 4 billion simulations.
After their AI won the competition, Heron Systems developers gave a Q&A via YouTube,
explaining some of the behavior they saw and even some movements that were unexpected.
According to Heron, their agent is capable of running (without real-time image recognition)
on something as small as an NVIDIA Tegra chip.
The ACE program, according to DARPA, is designed to "deliver a capability that enables a pilot
to attend to a broader, more global air command mission while their aircraft and teamed unmanned
systems are engaged in individual tactics.”
Commenting on the ambitious goals of DARPA's ACE program, Col. Dan Javorsek, the program
manager in DARPA's Strategic Technology Office, said last year that the agency envisions "a
future in which AI handles the split-second maneuvering during within-visual-range dogfights,
keeping pilots safer and more effective as they orchestrate large numbers of unmanned
systems into a web of overwhelming combat effects."
Given the Department of Defense's growing interest in AI, DARPA is not the only one
pursuing these types of opportunities.
Speaking at a Mitchell Institute event in early June, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan,
then the head of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said that the Air Force is looking
at putting an AI-driven autonomous drone up against a manned fighter aircraft in a dogfight
next year.
In December 2016, 123 member nations of the UN’s Review Conference of the Convention
on Conventional Weapons unanimously agreed to begin formal discussions on autonomous
weapons.
Of these, 19 have already called for an outright ban.
Viewers may note that in 2017, an open letter signed by 116 founders of robotics and artificial
intelligence companies from 26 countries urges the United Nations to urgently address the
challenge of lethal autonomous weapons and ban their use internationally.
Self-directing AI weapons constitute the third weaponry revolution after gunpowder and the
atomic bomb.
Although real-life Terminators are far from reality things could eventually come to this.
It is clear that major military powers like the U.S, Russia, and China are not willing
to let go of trying to gain an AI edge.
There were some reports that China is actually ahead of the U.S in this field but the latest
demonstration by this DARPA initiative shows that America is probably the front runner.
It remains to be seen how things pan out in the future.