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Artificial intelligence-piloted fighter jets will be a “complete revolution” in future combat operations by rewriting the traditional aerial rules of engagement, according to American entrepreneur Palmer Luckey.
The virtual reality developer and founder of military contractor Anduril Industries made the comments during an in-depth interview with popular American podcaster and former television host Joe Rogan on 17 October.
Anduril is among other defence companies developing autonomous fighter jet aircraft for combat operations. The company’s Fury high-performance, multi-mission autonomous fighter jet was displayed for the first time outside of the USA at the Avalon Australian International Airshow in Victoria earlier this year.
Fury is designed to act as a force multiplier for crewed fighter aircraft with weaponry potentially carried on wing-mounted hardpoints and an internal payload bay.
“(Fury is) a stealth aircraft, low signature, uses the same weapon systems that a real fighter jet uses,” Luckey said during the interview.
“The idea is you have a bunch of these for every manned fighter because they’re cheaper, they are more expendable, you can take more risk with them.
“Imagine this, I’ve got an F-35 (Joint Strike Fighter) flying with five of these things … (Fury is) going to go in and do what I tell it, but it’s never going to question my orders. It’s never going to try to save itself if it means ruining the mission.
“One of the craziest things about autonomous aircraft is that the United States has spent basically a century figuring out what works in air combat … How you manage your energy and your altitude and your position so that you destroy the enemy and you don’t get destroyed yourself.
“There’s another book of tactics that will allow you to destroy the enemy but will probably get you killed in the process. We don’t teach those generally or if we do, it’s in the context of don’t do this.
“All of those tactics are on the table when it comes to AI-powered fighter jets. I can now have it doing things that are so risky that a human pilot would never even try the manoeuvre because … it’s a coin flip; it’s a 50-50 chance that you’re going to die, but a 100 per cent chance that I’m going to be able to take out the enemy target.
“Imagine going after something where I know I am probably going to get shot down at the end of that manoeuvre. But I definitely take out all the surface-to-air missile launchers on the shore, which then allow everything else to come in through the gap that you just cleared.
“You’ll make that trade every day. You’ll trade a cheap AI fighter jet to blow up a bunch of really expensive manned or autonomous systems in the air or on the ground every time if it allows you to accomplish that mission.
“And so autonomy, it really changes the game on this stuff. It’s not an incremental change in tactics. It’s a complete revolution.”
