Industry Prepping AI Tech for Next-Gen Aircraft.

• Author: Roaten, Meredith
• Position: ALGORITHMIC WARFARE

ATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland -- The Air Force wants its sixth-generation fighter aircraft to have a squad of uncrewed systems flying at its side. Before the autonomous aircraft becomes a program of record, the aerospace industry is eager to tackle the challenges of manned-unmanned teaming.

Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall has pitched the Air Force's Next-Generation Air Dominance program as a package deal of crewed and uncrewed systems. While the collaborative combat aircraft program isn't funded to start until 2024, industry executives said they are gearing up their autonomous capabilities to expand the potential for manned and unmanned teaming.

While there is certainty in the service that the uncrewed aircraft is the future, there are no requirements in place yet, said Gen. Mark Kelly, commander of Combat Air Command. Discussion is ongoing about how the acquisition process will work, he said.

Autonomy is one of three must-haves for the system, along with resilient communications links and the authority for the system to freely move. More testing and experiments will fill in the blanks, he said.

"I'm an advocate to iterate our way there because I think there's so much we don't know," he said during a media roundtable at the Air and Space Forces Association's annual conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

Operational tests for the collaborative combat aircraft will take place in two or three years, he said.

Industry needs to participate in the experimentation that will shape the autonomous capabilities, said Mike Atwood, senior director, advanced programs group at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

One area for industry to navigate alongside the Air Force is how it will face other artificial intelligence-based systems, he said during a panel discussion at the conference. That challenge could shape the ethical limits of autonomous systems.

The ADAIR-UX program--which is developing an AI-piloted aircraft with General Atomics for fighter jets to train against--will build awareness about the difficulty of facing AI as students at weapons schools practice against adversaries with lightning-fast decision making, he said.

"I think that will be maybe the Sputnik moment of cultural change, where we realize when we saw... F-22 and F-35S in the range, how challenging it is to go against that," he said during a panel at the conference.

A new advancement in autonomous capabilities with potential for future AI-controlled aerial vehicles is...