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Comment by fatbird | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure someone in these programs has speculated what air combat would look like between AIs where body-based thresholds are removed and machine learning has developed new tactics that are only applicable in a pure AI arena. I'd be really interested in seeing those speculations.

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I'd honestly be quite surprised if AI research discovers novel and useful dogfight tactics. The interplay between speed, height, position, and direction has been pretty thoroughly mined for ideas, there's been little in terms of updates since Boyd's 1964 Aerial Attack Study (I found a copy at http://oplaunch.com/resources/aerial-attack-study-1964.pdf if you're curious)

Then again, the AI system Eurisko won the Trillon Credit Squadron game twice in a row, each time with novel strategies. You might say that dogfighting is more constrained by laws of physics we already know, and so this won't happen. But wouldn't you hate to be proven wrong?

I would bet the inverse. If the majority of tactics is spearheaded by one person from 1964 - that probably means there's a lot of innovation.

I found reading Boyd's biography, so much effort was made before decision makers would use his tactics, even when they were clearly superior.

Even board game like Go and Chess have experienced new and novel tactics from AI despite being much older, with lower barriers to entry. Inversely, dogfighting is new and the barriers to entry are so high its unlikely its close to optimal.

I can't help but think a drone aircraft is essentially the same as a guided missile except the exploding pieces are modular rather than exploding itself and thus the majority of it is re-usable.

We already shoot missiles at other missiles. Drones will make that cheaper. In other words i think the biggest change will be in the economics of war. War will become much cheaper in the same way SpaceX's reusable rockets made space travel much cheaper.

I agree war will become a numbers game even moreso than it already is, by taking out the 'incalculable' losses of human life on both sides of an engagement. But modern combat systems are definitely not cheap!

So the enemy's goal is to convince people on our side that using drones in combat is utterly beyond the pale, something only a monster would do. This prevents them from being developed, lest the military feel severe backlash even from within its own ranks, and ensures we're committed to human-flown craft while the enemy gets to field drones.

Just because drones make sense in a war between nations doesn't mean they can't be abused by governments against civilians. There is no shortage of governments that attacked their own citizens and with drones it becomes even easier.

...it's not the enemy, it's anyone with any appreciation for the physical forces to which a warfighting machine is subject, and the economic factors at play that make production of those systems as disastrous to the nation employing them as not doing anything at all. Keep in mind, a large contribution to the collapse of the USSR was the incredible financial strain created by defense spending in response to the Star Wars defense system initiative.

It was an economic victory for the U.S. more than anything else. There is always a balance. It's just like the hoopla over hypersonic cruise weapons. Sounds horrifying. Until you realize the trumpet bell makes countering them easier rather than harder as long as you detect them early, because there is simply no way to reorient quickly at those speeds without being torn apart.

Further, no one is saying we should stick with manned fighter craft, only that they won't likely be the silver bullet everyone seems to think they will be, will be fraught with their own weaknesses, may not in the long run be cheaper than man operated, and may Coe with unforeseen doctrinal changes as the enemy adapts.

War is complicated, and rarely does who has the cooler gun perfectly translate to who wins or loses.

Gee, I can't wait to see which poor country one of the big players will attack next /s

Modern warfare is eventually just an economic game. How many missiles can you afford to launch, and how many missile defences can you afford to build? (/ how much can you afford to spend on military R&D?).

If that's true then why has nobody invented a missile that is equipped with a metal storm [0] as its warhead?

[0] https://youtu.be/wKlnMwuCZso

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