The Air Force Research Laboratory said on August 2 that a drone, the XQ-58A Valkyrie, was successfully flown by artificial intelligence software.
On July 25, the US lab conducted the three-hour sortie with test units at the Florida Eglin Test and Training Complex. The autonomous fighter aircraft was created over the course of two years by a team from the lab and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Centre called Skyborg Vanguard.
“This sortie officially enables the ability to develop artificial intelligence agents that will execute modern air-to-air and air-to-surface skills that are immediately transferrable to the CCA programme,” said Colonel Tucker Hamilton, Air Force’s chief of AI test and operations.
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According to the Air Force, the lab’s Autonomous Air Combat Operations team developed algorithms for the flight that accumulated millions of hours of development time through simulations, sorties with the X-62 VISTA experimental aircraft, work with the XQ-58A, and ground test operations.The Air Force’s efforts to conduct study on loyal wingmen have been aided by earlier flights of the XQ-58A Valkyrie.
The Air Force Research Lab is the organization’s main scientific research and development facility and is in charge of discovering, developing, and integrating low-cost warfighting technologies for the nation’s air, space, and cyberspace forces.
The head of the lab, Brig. Gen. Scott Cain, stated in the announcement, “AI will be a critical element to future warfighting and the speed at which we’re going to have to understand the operational picture and make decisions. We require the concerted efforts of our government, academic, and business partners to stay up with the exceptional rate of evolution of AI, autonomous operations, and human-machine teaming.”
