The Global Race to Produce AI-Driven War Machines

General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone flying over the clouds.

By Ken Hughes

Senior Cyber and Technology Editor, The Cipher Brief

SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE REPORTING — The marvels of artificial intelligence caught the imagination again this month when Frank Kendall, the secretary of the Air Force, took a spin in an AI-controlled F-16 fighter that flew a mock dogfight against a human-piloted opponent. 

The AI-driven F-16 – known as the X-62 Vista — maneuvered to within 1,000 feet of a piloted F-16, as each fighter tried to expose a vulnerability. In other words, a human being and an AI-piloted war machine were feeling one another out, and angling for an edge in the skies. 

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