Flight tests overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force have demonstrated safe and effective employment of an autonomous fighter jet enabled by AI, including in “nose-to-nose” dogfighting against a human F-16 pilot, according to officials.

A few years, during DARPA’s AlphaDogFight Trials, algorithms went undefeated in computer simulated battles against a military aviator. More recently, the agency’s Air Combat Evolution program has been using a modified F-16 known as the X-62A VISTA (Variable In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft) to put machine learning agents through their paces in the skies above Edwards Air Force Base, California.

https://defensescoop.com/2024/04/17/darpa-ace-ai-dogfighting-flight-tests-f16/

Won't be a need for manned fighter aircraft pretty darn soon.

that's the plan. It won't end well.

Not if that same technology winds up in others hands and somehow it invariably always has/does.

or they become sentient.

I went TDY to Tyndall AFB from Langley for 2 weeks every year for the William Tell shootouts between fighter squadrons. We brought some F-106's from Langley and they were participants in the shootout exercises. This was 1975-1977 time frame. Anyway, I was on the flightline working on one of our jets, when I see an F-102 (Delta Dagger) taxi up to a spot nearby where a large metro truck with a rotating radar looking antenna on its roof. I watched as they chocked the wheels then opened the canopy and there was NO PILOT in the seat! I was stunned as I watched them put a ladder up and then remove a large backpack looking thing from the seat.

I later found out that they were flying this F-102 remote from the Metro truck. Sperry and Honeywell were experimenting with unmanned flight at that time. The beauty of it they said, was that G-forces were a limiting factor with human pilots and with the remote controlled flight, they could do maneuvers that they otherwise could not.

The F-102s were used mostly for targets at that time since the F-106 took over the fighter interceptor function.

Skynet.

It’s just a matter of time.

Machines can do more than a human can.
Fighters are restricted in how they can maneuver because the human body has a limit to the forced it can withstand. The can only do many G's till the body loses consciousness.

With vectored thrust I imagine planes can double to triple what man can withstand. Anyone using a computer will have a distinct advantage and they've known that for some time.

The advantage for man has been out ability to make decisions based on thousands of inputs in a fraction of a second. Now with faster computers that is going away.

This is what Top Gun 3 will be about, pilots will be replaced by AI. In Top Gun 4, the drones will go rouge and only Maveric will be able to stop them, and he may need help from Bruce Willis.

Pilots are not just limited to the G-forces they can withstand, as stated above. They also have to sleep, and eat, and those pee bags have to be emptied every now and then as too. The AI plane can stay in the air for days and days with aerial refueling. They'd only have to come down to re-arm and occasionally change the oil.

Drones are already essentially doing this in a less capable aircraft, and they are remotely controlled by a human.

I’m sure you’ll be giddy when goose and mavericks are lovers in top gun 3