Boeing Reveals an Intelligent Drone Designed to Escort Manned Fighters

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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Yesterday, Boeing introduced a autonomous UAV designed to perform the role of a "loyal wingman to manned platforms." The press release says that the aircraft is about 38 feet long has a range of over 2,000 nauticle miles, while Defense News says it can carry unspecified weapons into combat. It can supposedly be controlled from the ground or the manned aircraft its following, and Boeing also mentioned that it will "Use artificial intelligence to fly independently or in support of manned aircraft while maintaining safe distance between other aircraft." Unfortunately, they stopped short of revealing just how extensive the aircraft's autonomous systems are, what sort of silicon they use for the aircraft's artificial intelligence, or what kind of performance we can expect from the plane. But unlike most other military drones I've seen, this particular airframe seems to be optimized for supersonic (or at least high transonic) travel.

"This aircraft is a historic endeavor for Boeing. Not only is it developed outside the United States, it is also designed so that our global customers can integrate local content to meet their country-specific requirements," said Marc Allen, president, Boeing International. "The Boeing Airpower Teaming System provides a transformational capability in terms of defense, and our customers - led by Australia - effectively become partners on the program with the ability to grow their own sovereign capabilities to support it, including a high-tech workforce." First flight is planned for 2020.
 
So Skynet will have aircraft powered by AI capable of carrying weapons up to 2000 miles? Greeeeeaatttttttt. Fast forward 10 years and the humans won't be needed in this equation.

this is where we cut their budgets to nothing
 
Galaga_doubleShipLarge.png


Finally, the dream realized.....
 
It almost feels like this is Boeing giving Kalashnikov the middle finger for invading their "airspace"...

Its a "My drone is better contest".
 
I'm sure this is just the first step to get people warmed up before attempting to move to completely autonomous fighters. Eventually a fleshy meat sack, that needs to maintain counciusness under heavy Gs, just won't be able to keep up.
 
Antonymous jet w/ nuclear weapons on board, that should end well.

why are you assuming they have nukes on board? These are being designed as force multipliers to protect manned aircraft during a mission.

And what do you think a cruise missile is....
 
I'm sure this is just the first step to get people warmed up before attempting to move to completely autonomous fighters. Eventually a fleshy meat sack, that needs to maintain counciusness under heavy Gs, just won't be able to keep up.

That's a given, it's already assumed that the F-35 will be the last front line aircraft with a pilot in it. It's been known for decades that the weak link in an aircraft's air to air combat performance is the physical limitations of the pilot, humans cannot tolerate strong G forces for very long at all, and during negative G's will cause a pilot to "red out" at not much more than 1 G, where pilots can tolerate up to 9 G's of positive force for a very short time. The aircraft are a lot tougher than the pilots.

The Navy's X-47B has completed carrier take off and landings, and aerial refueling, it's now a "completed" program, but smart money would already have the next generation of unmanned combat fighters are already being prototyped.
 

true, but we have really been doing that sort of thing a long time with the cruise missiles. just makes it easier to abort a strike with an UAV or autonomous vehicles. once the cruise missiles launched, it was Armageddon time.
 
true, but we have really been doing that sort of thing a long time with the cruise missiles. just makes it easier to abort a strike with an UAV or autonomous vehicles. once the cruise missiles launched, it was Armageddon time.

I guess i was being too concise. I'm speaking broader than just the US using these types of technologies to support their existing arsenal. As iterations go through and the tech becomes cheaper, we're going to eventually see this spreading out through countries around the world. As their budgets wane, and support isn't sufficient, autonymous planes with weapons could trigger serious life altering consequences to those involved. We've always said 'oh one day the machines will take over.' This is just giving that big bad monster a shape and form. What if they don't take over, but simply fail or glitch out. When we're so reliant on a world run by machines, their simple non-compliance with our needs for whatever reason could be disastrous.
 
So Skynet will have aircraft powered by AI capable of carrying weapons up to 2000 miles? Greeeeeaatttttttt. Fast forward 10 years and the humans won't be needed in this equation.

Oh well. If it happens within the next 10 years then the planet might still have a chance of recovering from humans. Our robot overlords will inherit a planet restored to a point of self-sustainability. Win!/Win!
 
It's Firefox.

It's Stealth. Firefox had Clint Eastwood stealing a Mach 6 capable MiG-31 "Firefox" that was invisible to radar and whose weapon systems were controlled by thought. Stealth featured EDI ("Eddie"), an Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle whose AI starts evolving uncontrollably after taking a lightning strike.
 
Oh well. If it happens within the next 10 years then the planet might still have a chance of recovering from humans. Our robot overlords will inherit a planet restored to a point of self-sustainability. Win!/Win!

an ai wingman what could go wrong!

why would robots care about plants or animals, they would just strip mine the planet bare for raw materials.
 
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