New Pilotless Jet Fighters on Horizon

"Pilotless jet fighters that can fly 30 feet above the ground to their targets or straight toward a barrage of enemy missiles are being developed by the U.S. Air Force to help deter China.

The soaring cost of existing military aircraft and advances in flying software have the Air Force pivoting toward a new generation of pilotless jets to bolster a fleet that its leaders say is the smallest and oldest since it became a separate service in 1947.

The Air Force wants at least 1,000 of the mini-fighters now being developed, including hundreds within five years. They would escort and protect crewed aircraft such as the F-35 fighter and the new B-21 bomber, carry their own weapons to attack other planes and targets on the ground and act as scouts and communications hubs.

The "Collaborative Combat Aircraft," or CCAs, are part of a $6 billion program being pursued by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics and newcomer Anduril Industries. The Pentagon plans by the summer to choose two of the companies to start building the jets.

The Air Force has had big drones for years. General Atomics' Reapers and Predators have been extensively used to fire missiles in the Middle East, piloted remotely. Black Hawk helicopters and F-16 fighters also have been flown autonomously.

Small drones have transformed the battlefields over Ukraine and parts of the Middle East, but larger jet-powered versions are viewed as crucial to tackle the vast distances in the western Pacific. "They offer a lot of things that traditional crewed fighter planes just aren't designed to do," Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said.

Only one of the five contenders -- Boeing's MQ-28 Ghost Bat -- has flown publicly, and the Royal Australian Air Force has ordered the plane. Anduril has released photos of its Fury, while General Atomics has published renderings of its Gambit series. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have kept their jets under wraps.

The Ghost Bat and the Fury are between 20 feet and 30 feet in length -- half the size of Lockheed Martin's ubiquitous F-16.

The new jets reflect strides made in flying software, using artificial intelligence to build programs based on thousands of hours of combat flying. The technology that allowed planes to be piloted from the ground has been superseded by software allowing planes to fly autonomously and adapt to changing conditions.

San Diego-based Shield AI developed software that helped an uncrewed F-16 programmed with AI to regularly beat some of the best Air Force and Navy pilots in simulated dogfights as part of a Pentagon-backed test.

The Air Force wants to tap into the technology, allowing pilots to control the new drones remotely from their cockpits. Ground controllers also could handle as many as 10 of the drones, while others could be pre-programed to fly in swarms, overwhelming enemy defenses or confusing them to draw fire.

The lack of crew allows the drones to fly riskier maneuvers, Air Force officials and flying-software developers said. Shield AI's software offers the ability for jets to skim the ground at 600 miles an hour, said Brandon Tseng, the company's founder and president.

It should also make them cheaper, the Air Force and defense executives said.

The Air Force is targeting $20 million to $30 million for each jet, though industry executives expect it to eventually come down to around $10 million or less. That compares with around $100 million for an F-35 or more than $750 million for the new B-21 bomber.

The CCA program is a key test of the Defense Department's efforts to break from years of late and over-budget military programs.

Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said the CCA program takes lessons from past programs that have struggled to harness new technology, notably the F-35 program. The first CCAs are intended to be stripped-down models, keeping costs low and introducing new technology when it is ready, rather than while it is still being tested.

Companies bidding for the CCA contract are also being told to minimize complexity, including only what is required for missions rather than every eventuality. The average Pentagon program takes seven years from contract award until service entry, and the F-35 took twice that. Only five years is being allotted for the CCA.

Air Force officials said one obstacle to broader adoption of uncrewed jets is starting to erode: the pilots themselves.

The options of piloting drones from the cockpit, remotely from the ground or autonomously with preplanned flight programs has reduced resistance among seasoned fliers. Newer recruits brought up on videogames have also tipped the balance. "We're eager to get them because they're gonna save our lives," Air Force Secretary Kendall said of the new drones." [1]

Autonomous killers have to become illegal. They will be either autonomous or killers, not both. This way this program becomes vulnerable to politics.

1.U.S. News: New Pilotless Jet Fighters on Horizon. Cameron, Doug.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 04 Mar 2024: A.3.