Beyond Pixie Dust - Air Force Magazine

Hopefully we will keep pace

Looks like a whale that flies

Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen
"Nearly every vision, strategy, and flight plan the U.S. Air Force has released over the past decade identified next-generation unmanned aircraft, autonomy, and artificial intelligence (AI) as technologies that are critical to securing a decisive combat advantage in future battlespaces. The future battlespace will not be entirely all manned or unmanned—it will be a hybrid. USAF warfighters have long envisioned using autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to perform missions that otherwise require either human control, whether in the cockpit or remote.

Teaming such autonomous aircraft with manned fighters and bombers is the next step in the development process. The goal of manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) is to significantly enhance operational capabilities and capacity by combining the advantages of both manned and autonomous aircraft, including cost, survivability, and judgment. For MUM-T to work in the operational realm, manned and unmanned aircraft must be able to collaborate closely and in ways that are effective and trusted by human warfighters. Pragmatic reliability and dependability are key benchmarks, but the captain on the flight line will be the ultimate arbiter of whether these new solutions add value.

For that to happen, engineers and warfighters need a common understanding of how autonomous technologies map to combat performance. Yet as important as this is, the software algorithms that underpin their behavior and performance are generally not well understood outside technical circles. Although USAF’s war­fighters and acquisition professionals intuitively grasp the potential for autonomy and artificial intelligence to transform warfare, most lack in-depth knowledge of what is needed to make these algorithms combat viable. Instead, autonomy and artificial intelligence technologies are often treated as “pixie dust”—just sprinkle a little on top to solve hard problems and magically make weapon systems autonomous. It will take more than this cursory understanding to meet tomorrow’s demands."...