The U.S. Air Force has announced plans to equip a small group of F-16 Fighting Falcons with artificial intelligence (AI) pilots, as part of the Project Viper Experimentation and Next-Gen Operations Mode, or VENOM. The news came just about a month after the branch announced an AI-piloted and heavily modified F-16 known as the X-62A successfully flew a variety of air-combat missions over the span of two weeks this past December.

Project VENOM is the latest development in the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Skyborg autonomous aircraft teaming architecture, which aims to pair crewed fighters with AI-enabled drone wingmen for the 21st-century fight. The Air Force is investing heavily into this concept, with a reported $50 million allocated in its 2024 budget proposal to the VENOM effort alone. …

This effort will not pull pilots out of the cockpit. Instead, it will equip six F-16s out of Eglin Air Force Base with AI agents that will ride in the cockpit along with their human counterparts. The goal is to use these aircraft in a variety of test operations to gather useful data on manned-unmanned-teaming concepts while simultaneously helping to foster higher levels of trust between pilots and AI “agents.”

[I’ve seen this movie a few times. More seriously, the idea is to augment the cockpit by giving human pilots access to AI analysis, not to create Skynet through completely automated fighter jets. In movie terms, it would be similar to Jarvis in Iron Man … but then again, that didn’t necessarily work out well in terms of human control either. — Ed]