Real pilots were flying the fighters but they were getting their directions from artificial intelligence in a test conducted on F-16s, F/A-18s and F-35s during a joint military exercise earlier this month. Fox News is reporting that Raft AI’s new Starsage system replaces the ground-based battle managers who tell the pilots where to fly and when to fight, but the company suggested it should be coming to a tower or center near you to prevent tragedies like the collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and a regional jet that killed all 67 people on both aircraft last January. “If the FAA had this technology, that never would have happened,” Raft AI CEO Shubhi Mishra told Fox. “It’s just data, and then execution on the data.”
The system monitors various data inputs, including radar, and uses that data to formulate tactics and collision avoidance instructions instantly and then tell the pilot what to do. In current military operations, battle managers handle several aircraft at a time, but with the AI system each aircraft gets its own digital controller. “The autonomous agent we built is one-to-one, at the beck and call of each pilot,” said Mishra. He said no other countries are testing similar systems, giving the U.S. the edge in its deployment.
This immediately made me think of Star Wars and putting an R2 droid as the back-seater in an X Wing fighter.
It’s an R2D2!
Mr. Mishra, please explain exactly how this system, had it been installed in the DCA tower, would have prevented the BlackHawk/CRJ700 collision. The controller and the pilots were all aware of the conflict but, for whatever reasons, the chopper wasn’t where it should have been. To say, “If the FAA had this technology, that never would have happened” is bald-faced marketing BS.
Besides, I don’t think I can cram all the necessary boxes of this “autonomous agent” into my 172, either.
“no other countries are testing similar systems” Also seems, shall we say, optimistic.
Wait, isn’t it important to say that the west is falling behind when trying to drum up support?
General “Buck” Turgidson to President Muffley, on Soviet preparations for nuclear conflict: “I mean, we must be increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mine-shaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow… a mine-shaft gap!”