A red, white and blue VISTA X-62A takes Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall for a demonstration flight Thursday to demonstrate the potential of AI-piloted fighter aircraft in the future. Photo by Richard Gonzales/U.S. Air Force
May 4 (UPI) — An AI-piloted experimental fighter gave Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall a glimpse of the future during a relatively low-speed demonstration flight this week.
Kendall was aboard the VISTA X-62A experimental craft Thursday at Edwards Air Force Base in California when it undertook several tactical maneuvers while responding to simulated aerial threats to show off its autonomous capabilities, the Air Force announced.
The demonstration flight stayed at the subsonic speed of about 550 mph while Kendall and a safety pilot kept their hands off of the aircraft’s manual control systems.
“The potential for autonomous air-to-air combat has been imaginable for decades,” the Air Force Secretary said, “but the reality has remained a distant dream until now. This is a transformational moment.”
He said the AI-piloted X-62A broke one of combat aviation’s most significant barriers last year when it engaged in an experimental dogfight with a human-piloted F-16 at speeds approaching 1,200 mph over the desert near Edwards.
“AI is really taking the most capable technology you have, pitting it together and using it on problems that previously had to be solved through human decision making,” Kendall told The Aviationist. “It’s automation of those decisions and it’s very specific.”
The X-62A is an experimental aircraft derived from the F-16 fighter.
Lockheed Martin engineers are developing and using special software that includes a model-following algorithm and systems for autonomous control of the simulation technology to create the variable in-flight simulation test aircraft, more popularly called VISTA.
“VISTA will allow us to parallelize the development and test of cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques with new uncrewed vehicle designs,” said M. Christopher Cotting, research director of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School.
