As someone who was a huge
Top Gun fan as a kid, and daydreamed about dogfighting Soviet MiGs in my imaginary F-16 Fighting Falcon, this pains me to say, but I think our next air superiority fighter should be 100% unmanned. I favor a remotely-piloted option w/ AI assist over a purely autonomous fighter. Recently, an AI kicked a human pilot's butt in simulated air-to-air combat. It wasn't a fluke either.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-fighter-pilot
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ot-in-dogfight
An unmanned aircraft can sustain more G's than the human body can handle, making it more maneuverable. AI makes decisions quicker and implements them faster than a human can. As the tech matures, it will also more consistently make
better decisions than a human would.
I fear the days of the piloted combat aircraft will very soon be behind us. If we're not at the leading edge of emerging aerospace tech, we'll get left in the dust by the Chinese.
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