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.