{"id":51561,"date":"2020-09-10T19:36:58","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T19:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2020\/09\/10\/ais-dogfight-triumph-a-step-toward-human-machine-teaming\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:47:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:47:55","slug":"ais-dogfight-triumph-a-step-toward-human-machine-teaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/industry\/2020\/09\/10\/ais-dogfight-triumph-a-step-toward-human-machine-teaming\/","title":{"rendered":"AI\u2019s dogfight triumph a step toward human-machine teaming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2015 Human fighter pilots, your jobs are safe for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weeks after an artificial intelligence algorithm defeated<\/a> a human pilot in a simulated dogfight between F-16 jets, the Pentagon\u2019s director of research and engineering for modernization said Thursday at the Defense News Conference<\/a> that it\u2019s more likely an AI will team with military pilots than replace them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see human pilots being phased out, I see them being enhanced, not physically, but I see their work, their effectiveness being enhanced by cooperation with artificial intelligence systems,\u201d said Mark Lewis, who also serves as the acting deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AlphaDogfight Trials in August marked the finale of the Pentagon research agency\u2019s AI air combat competition. The now-notorious algorithm, developed by Heron Systems, easily defeated the fighter pilot in all five rounds that capped off a yearlong competition hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency \u2015 which is overseen by Lewis and the Defense Department\u2019s research and engineering shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe key takeaway from that was the artificial intelligence system did so well because it wasn\u2019t so concerned about self-preservation, it was willing to do things that a human pilot wouldn\u2019t do. And that\u2019s the advantage of artificial intelligence,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cI think the real answer is teaming AI with a human for the best combination of both. So I\u2019m pretty confident we\u2019re going to have human pilots into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AlphaDogfight Trials were a subset of the Air Combat Evolution program, or ACE, which is one of a few DARPA efforts exploring human-machine teaming, agency spokesman Jared Adams said in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACE is using human-machine collaborative dogfighting to increase trust in combat autonomy, and the goal is for it to scale to more complex multi-aircraft scenarios to pave the way for live, campaign-level experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\t