Comment by budman1
9 days ago
mistakes in A/A combat can have serious repercussions. not only loss of expensive air vehicles, but things like civilian airliners.
'loyal wingman' gives the kill / no kill decision to an Air Force officer. And having the decision maker geographically close eliminates jamming, delays, and the requirements to have a satellite infrastructure (like is required for Predator UAV's).
i hope we never assign a piece of code, AI or not, to be the decision maker.
> i hope we never assign a piece of code, AI or not, to be the decision maker.
This is already a past station, just not at Airbus.
> just not at Airbus
Airbus has publicized that it is working on a Project Maven style project with France's DGA [0][1].
Thales also publicly launched and demonstrated SkyDefender a couple days ago [2].
Mistral AI also announced in January 2026 that it is working with the DGA to productionize it's models for military applications [3] - ironically similar in manner to how the DoD was using Claude but is now using Gemini and GPT.
No country is going to leave networked, autonomous offensive and defensive capabilities on the table.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airbus-wi...
[1] - https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/defence/ai...
[2] - https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/air/thales...
[3] - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marjorietoucas_were-happy-to-...
Yes, we are ~4-5 years into AI kill-chains now, though maybe only 1-3 with full autonomy.
You haven't been paying attention. We are at least 47 years into AI kill chains.
https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/m...
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Drones doesn't automatically mean no pilot or no human in the loop. Motherships and relays to command centers solve nearly everything loyal wingman offers. The only question is data access (which is still a major issue in manned jets operating in EW conditions far from home).
Same with the idea that drones can't have high end radars and other stuff which requires a fancy human jet in the loop. Decidated single purpose drones with high end sensors can solve a similar purpose with a much lower risk and cost.