If the engineers in charge of designing these crafts around an AI pilot think outside the box we could see some pretty wild tech.
I wonder why we're even talking about planes any more. Missiles to kill the planes and missiles to attack the ground. No pilots, no problems. Right?
> Because we need a human up there, flying around, controlling the missiles
Do we? Why is this important. I thought everything could be done remotely these days.
Jamming is an issue for one. Latency for another.
Well, we can already do things like this with non-piloted tech; and there is no way that a traditional jet could keep up, load-wise. The g-force induced load limit for most modern jets is about double the rated limit. You likely wouldn't be able to fly any air-frames made with human passengers in mind over 35g without significant re-engineering.
The point of the AI jet-fighter idea is to have an AI that is capable of piloting a fighter jet (designed for a human) at near-human levels.
We can already programmatically control super fast flying devices into whatever wacky flight-plan we calculate on the fly, on the device, near instantly. Lockheed and Raytheon advertisements have been talking about super-fast on-device radar/surveillance avoidance systems for years.
> we could see some pretty wild tech.
you're not kiddin', the only thing that outweighs my hope for what the future brings is my fear of what the future brings.
IE an "AI aircraft" is a smart missle that can come home.
If modern fighters are missile platforms, why not design a fleet of cheap no-human drone missile platforms and put most of the intelligence into the missiles?
The "wild tech" would mean getting rid of super-expensive low-reliability fighters altogether, because it's not obvious what they bring to an automated conflict.
Those maneuvers sound like they'd destroy the plane.
I'm not sure if that would work. Missiles can put a lot more stress on the airframe because they're literally single-use disposable items. Something that takes the "plane" role would probably be larger (so missile solutions may not scale) and would have to account for things like fatigue over time.
I'm reminded of the Mig 25: the planes are capable of flying at Mach 3.2, but doing so wreaks the engines. If it was a missile, it'd operate a full speed no question; but since it's a reusable plane, it's operationally limited to Mach 2.8.
The reality is that aircraft have to fly in air, which imposes severe physical limits regardless of whether there is a human pilot on board.
30G is not within reach. Calculate how much the airframe would have to weigh to handle that strain, and explain how to avoid stalling the wing or compressor. Scaling up a small missile design won't work at all. This is just basic physics. Range and radar signature are higher priorities than maneuverability.
If I were designing such an aircraft I would make sure that the onboard missiles could be rapidly swiveled. Someone on your tail? Easy, just swivel a missile around 180 degrees and then fire. No need to maneuver the entire aircraft.
A swiveling missile launcher is far from easy. Please calculate how much such a contraption would weigh. Remember that it needs to securely hold multiple large, heavy missiles without structural deformation during your hypothetical 10G maneuvers. And what sensors will you use to detect someone on your tail and target your own missile before he does? Where will those sensors be placed, how much will they weight, and how much drag will they add?
The concepts you propose only work in cartoons, not in the real world bound by laws of physics.
In terms of tactical decision making while flying, I think AI's advantage is its ability to integrate (much) more data into overall situational awareness. If you were somehow able to integrate all of this directly into the human proprioception system I have a feeling we would fare much better. It seems like we're probably quite a bit further from humans being defeated in contact sports by an AI-powered robot of equivalent strength/weight/mobility.
Not that much further though. :/