All Stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
SaltyBackendGuy•Jul 23, 2026
Ha - this was the first thing that came to mind. I read this in Arnold's voice.
ben7799•Jul 23, 2026
I didn't read it in Arnold's voice till I saw your comment, so thank you.
throw310822•Jul 23, 2026
No worries, these will all be controlled by AIs sitting in orbiting data centers part of the Starlink constellation.
And in any case, no one is building humanoid robots.
> The U.S. Army is seeking innovative humanoid technology solutions from eligible small and large businesses across the globe to advance toward fielded militarized humanoid capabilities through the xTechHumanoid competition
justsomehnguy•Jul 23, 2026
I find it quite sombre to see this comment from a peson with that handle.
Interesting coincidence that both this article and the Hugging Face "security incident" post were on July 16. These will be mandatory reading in future Skynet History classes, assuming we survive the war.
bloqs•Jul 23, 2026
I read this in Linda Hamiltons voice
t1234s•Jul 23, 2026
This is how AI will solve the paperclip problem.
seydor•Jul 23, 2026
Sounds like a very expensive drone
RIMR•Jul 23, 2026
Drones have human operators. This is a murderbot.
zajio1am•Jul 23, 2026
There are already semi-autonomous drones in Ukraine.
gjskngnf•Jul 23, 2026
It’s a drone. That can kill people.
cucumber3732842•Jul 23, 2026
More like it'll fly itself while the pilot engages in other tasks.
Every pound of weapons officer/navigator is a pound you can't put on target all else being equal.
ErroneousBosh•Jul 23, 2026
So like some sort of automatic pilot then?
cucumber3732842•Jul 23, 2026
Conventional autpilot is like a zip tie on the throttle, only it deals in outputs (your actual heading) rather than inputs (pedals and stick)
I assume what they're going for here is something substantially smarter and more reactive to changing conditions than that. Something that can be used during the "unscripted" parts of the flight during which a) you're most likely to have multiple crew working hard b) you're most likely to be pushing the limits of what one crew can do.
jackb4040•Jul 23, 2026
* You're absolutely right. My altitude is dropping precipitously. Let me check my elevator position to see if that's causing the problem.
* Bash Check elevator position
* Thought for 8s
throw310822•Jul 23, 2026
Does the presence of humans on board limit the maneuverability of these aircraft in any way? E.g. in terms of acceleration?
rvba•Jul 23, 2026
Yes. Humans can survive 9g for only a few seconds, while a drone could do much sharper manouvers
ChrisMarshallNY•Jul 23, 2026
But they also have their limits.
Bolts and trusses (and solder joints) have tensile strength limits, but it can be higher than what humans can take.
StableAlkyne•Jul 23, 2026
While they can, drones are still limited by physics.
Sure, the aircraft can pull a ton of G's to defeat a missile or achieve a firing solution. Maybe it even succeeded at that.
It still pulled 9+ Gs and has burned an incredible amount of kinetic energy doing do. And the harder it pulls, the quicker it bleeds speed. It might not be able to defeat the next missile or outmaneuver the other plane's buddies because it is now slow and very likely outside its optimal turning speed.
Even today, missiles can pull dozens of G's yet still are defeatable by humans who can only pull about 9.
wartywhoa23•Jul 23, 2026
"I apologize, that was indeed a wedding party, not a terrorist camp I wrongly assumed. You are totally right, wasting those 3 Hydras was unacceptable. On a brighter side, we've got 39 more to go!
Should I seek another target looking similar to the one I unintentionally destroyed so as to tune my decision-making, or give you an advice on how to wipe the traces of this mishap from the mission data recorder?"
Eridrus•Jul 23, 2026
I'm sure there will be a next generation of jet drones that are cheaper, but the autonomy kit here is probably still cheaper than new jet drones.
I think most fully autonomous jet drone programs are also designed to work with a main crewed fighter jet that coordinates them, so there is also a benefit in getting the fighter jet to be able to fly better than a pilot.
There's a lot of different and overlapping programs in play here. I do not believe that autonomous F-16s are intended to be operational assets. That said...
VENOM - program that shows you can bolt on autonomous flight control into a standard F-16. Previously, the X-62A (a one-off prototype based F-16) demonstrated autonomous dogfighting back in 2023.
VENOM provides USAF/DARPA with a lot of high performance autonomous platforms (bolt-on F-16s) that they can then use to develop and validate software, tactics and training for actually fighting with autonomous systems. This would presumably be critical for getting the most of the CCA (aka loyal wingman) programs currently in development.
The AIR program referenced is basically "how do we get autonomous systems to control and fight effectively as a team (presumably arbitrary mixture of manned and unmanned systems) in a beyond visual range fight".
The ACE program referenced was basically "how do we get autonomous platforms to dogfight" with related questions like "how can we augment the human pilot in a dogfight - ie, how can we hand off the actual flying and execution of manoeuvres, and using all of the sensors to autonomous systems, and let the pilot choose actions, instead of hang flying the actions".
recursivedoubts•Jul 23, 2026
A computer can never be held accountable
Therefore a computer must make all unpopular management decisions
LeifCarrotson•Jul 23, 2026
That's not precisely how I remember that quote... But it's on the Internet, so my memory must be faulty.
wartywhoa23•Jul 23, 2026
This whole AI hype is such a convenient cover for the decisions of the 0.001%
reactordev•Jul 23, 2026
It really is. It's the perfect excuse to do what they please.
jauntywundrkind•Jul 23, 2026
With apologies, I don't particularly enjoy when people do this, and I don't think it adds a lot, but I want to leave this breadcrumb, I wrote a post on this a couple days ago here, on an anti-AI screed submission, saying this anti-politic, this accountability denial, is very much the point.
Taking this quote and seeing exactly that potential for abuse seems very very much like the point. Strong agree, strongly against leaving non-seeing non-thinking alien intelligences with no accountability and proprietary programming to judge us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083
calebio•Jul 23, 2026
Hey look, the lawn darts are now AI-controlled.
willmadden•Jul 23, 2026
What a waste of resources.
Zsfe510asG•Jul 23, 2026
The article smells of AI psychosis. They are already "orchestrating".
In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.
FrustratedMonky•Jul 23, 2026
Drones really changed the equation more than Covid. Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. This would have been big 20 years ago. Now the cheap drones make it not the biggest deal anymore.
justsomehnguy•Jul 23, 2026
> Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots.
In a dogfight?
whartung•Jul 23, 2026
As I understand it, they done this in simulation, and the human pilots did not fare well.
I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.
bloqs•Jul 23, 2026
They did a small set of tests with one Pilot IIRC?
stackskipton•Jul 23, 2026
I think they did it in simulation with several.
In any case, dogfighting is commonly done because it's great training but in most cases, you expect most Air to Air combat being flinging missiles at each other.
rolph•Jul 23, 2026
human pilots have physiological constraints that AI doesnt.
onboard computers are not immune to G's but have a substantially higher threshold until physical mechanisms fail due to strain.
IshKebab•Jul 23, 2026
Is that hard to believe? It's got to be one of the easiest situations for AI to win in. You probably don't even need any fancy modern AI; I would have thought MPC would do most of the job.
tokai•Jul 23, 2026
What are you talking about, Iraq fell in a month not years.
codeddesign•Jul 23, 2026
Did it? You mean operational govt fell. The country was fought over for 10 yrs, which the U.S. then backed out.
Israel got a regime change while U.S. tax payers received the bill.
In the end, it’s still a country.
tokai•Jul 23, 2026
I'm not saying that the war didn't go on for 10 years, it did. Baathist government fell and the US led Coalition Provisional Authority took over running the country. You have US troops in the whole country and US control of all civil institutions. The only way that's not "occupying" the country is if you redefine what the word mean. With your definition France, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and many more were not occupied during ww2.
Jtsummers•Jul 23, 2026
> In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
The objectives for the two wars were incredibly different, making this an apples to oranges comparison. In the first war, the objective was to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait (achieved) and then to contain the Iraqi military within Iraq (achieved). In the second war, the objectives were much broader and much harder to achieve. They achieved some objectives (toppling the existing government, defeating the existing military), and then utterly failed in nation building and got into a protracted conflict with state and non-state sponsored military groups.
chasd00•Jul 23, 2026
> In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
The scope of the first Iraq war was to force them out of Kuwait. That is very different then the invasion of 2003. If you just think about it this should be obvious.
alephnerd•Jul 23, 2026
> The article smells of AI psychosis
China has been doing something similar since 2020 [0]
Bush Sr knew to keep the foreign-compromised media out of the war and so accomplished the objectives of the war swiftly. Bush Jr had to deal with the media second guessing everything.
bobthebob•Jul 23, 2026
Oh what a great CIA campaign that would be to give the impression that U.S. military isn’t up to par - to motivate and trick our enemies into making stupid moves while we keep our true cards hidden.
Such a crazy thought.
SoftTalker•Jul 23, 2026
> The kit utilizes a novel interface with the aircraft’s flight controls and mission systems, allowing a pilot to toggle between traditional human control and AI control with the flip of a switch. This ensures a safe, reliable environment for human-on-the-loop experimentation.
How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its limits and throws a problem in the human's lap. A lot of air upsets and crashes start when the autopilot disengages and hands control of a badly configured aircraft back to a human pilot.
nradov•Jul 23, 2026
These are going to be experienced test pilots who are pretty good at actively managing autopilots and other automated systems. Plus they'll be backed up by telemetry to ground controllers. But ultimately the military is willing to accept some losses in order to advance key R&D programs.
robotnikman•Jul 23, 2026
The drones of Ace Combat 7 are coming closer to reality
reactordev•Jul 23, 2026
This is a huge waste of resources. F-16s were designed for humans. You can get MUCH better results designing the airframe around the lack of one.
As another poster already said, building new F-16s would be a waste of resources, but using the old existing F-16s by automating them is likely to be a better use of the existing resources, instead of scraping them. This also allows to gain experience that might be useful for designing the future unmanned airframes.
megous•Jul 23, 2026
Not a great thing for aggressive state prone to electing nutjobs and supporting genocides to have automated killing machines that will not even get PTSD afterwards.
tyjen•Jul 23, 2026
Human control in flight has often taken a backseat to automation. For example, the SR-71, built in the 60s flew too fast to rely on human decision making for several tasks. If they were off by a fraction of a second, they would miss their intended recon target; so, both the navigation and sensor control were largely automated.
Seems odd to invest this much into AI flight of aircraft designed for manned flight, when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
jandrewrogers•Jul 23, 2026
The US military has thousands of old airframes, many of which can be made flyable with very short turnaround. They already use the F-16 as test targets.
Taking an obsolete airframe that is already paid for and adding AI to it is much cheaper than building a completely new AI-native airframe from scratch. This is finding a new use for old aircraft. You can send a bunch of old AI-driven F-16s on high-risk missions without worrying about a human pilot or cost. The airframes may be relatively obsolete but can still do plenty of damage on their day.
The new 6th generation aircraft are all being designed as "manned optional". That is probably the last generation with affordances for a pilot.
anonymousiam•Jul 23, 2026
The F16 was the first fully fly-by-wire fighter jet. It's an ideal platform for AI experiments. Having AI "wing men" can be a great tactical advantage, and they're expendable.
IshKebab•Jul 23, 2026
> when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
I guess if you already have a load of F-16s it might make sense, but I think that's a stretch.
chis•Jul 23, 2026
Absolutely terrifying. I'm sure they will soon find that AI pilots defeat human ones in dogfights 100% of the time, since they have faster reaction times, can tolerate higher G forces, and can be perfectly RL trained in the flight sims we already have.
It's really incredible to me that people aren't protesting in the streets over this stuff. Just in the last month we have
* AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies
* AI solving long-standing math problems without any meaningful human help
* AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America
* AI now represents over 50% of GDP growth in America and yearly capex will soon exceed the size of the $1 trillion US military budget
Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned? I mean it really all reads like a sci-fi plot with a bad ending at the moment.
impulser_•Jul 23, 2026
These systems still require a human to command the jet, they jsut don't have to be inside them.
"This critical testing will pave the way for human pilots to seamlessly command and orchestrate teams of autonomous, uncrewed aircraft."
The reason they are doing this is because the Military is already building a bunch of autonomous drones and fighter jets that already run on this system so they are retrofitting existing equipment with the same system so they can all fly together.
"Ultimately, the capabilities advanced under AIR will enable a wide variety of future joint force operations, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs."
Are dogfights still relevant? Isn't it mostly shooting missiles outside of visual range these days?
jandrewrogers•Jul 23, 2026
Dogfights aren't really a thing for a modern military. What the AI enables is much higher endurance than is feasible with a human in the loop. They planes can stay flying as long as they can be refueled, which is also going AI.
orbital-decay•Jul 23, 2026
>Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies
Except this never happened, it's a piece of marketing. It never "went rogue" but followed an intentional prompt (exploit-related benchmark), with hardly surprising results as the capabilities of this model were well known.
>AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America
An entirely different kind of AI, not huge generalist models. Neural networks are being experimented with in sensors and control systems since the 80s and are widely used in everything since AlexNet, not sure what's new here, especially "this month" new.
ryandrake•Jul 23, 2026
> Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned?
Is someone, somewhere using the wrong bathroom? Or is the wrong colored person crossing an invisible line in the desert? Those seem to be the only issues that reliably get the (American) public to the polls.
brcmthrowaway•Jul 23, 2026
I'm waiting for a ship called Nomad to go rogue.
smrtinsert•Jul 23, 2026
I thought Captain America personally stopped this initiative
ionwake•Jul 23, 2026
based, finally we get to Macross Plus
Mobius01•Jul 23, 2026
One Sharon Apple concert before the end!
beloch•Jul 23, 2026
Autonomous driving is still nowhere near 100%, so why suddenly jump to fighter jets? Is this more of Hegseth's foolhardy bluster and injected testosterone? The tech isn't ready. They should start with golf-karts, not fighter planes.
ge96•Jul 23, 2026
Planes might be easier, large empty space in the sky
Lord-Jobo•Jul 23, 2026
There are many ways that flying is an easier solve than driving, believe it or not.
serf•Jul 23, 2026
I reject the notion that planes are harder to automate.
syrrim•Jul 23, 2026
Fighter jets don't need 100%. In a war, we accept a much higher rate of casualties than we do in day to day driving. I would also imagine that while planes are harder for a person to pilot, they are easier for a computer. Most of what makes them hard is mechanical, not dealing with unexpected situations.
18 Comments
And in any case, no one is building humanoid robots.
https://www.agilityrobotics.com/
> The U.S. Army is seeking innovative humanoid technology solutions from eligible small and large businesses across the globe to advance toward fielded militarized humanoid capabilities through the xTechHumanoid competition
Every pound of weapons officer/navigator is a pound you can't put on target all else being equal.
I assume what they're going for here is something substantially smarter and more reactive to changing conditions than that. Something that can be used during the "unscripted" parts of the flight during which a) you're most likely to have multiple crew working hard b) you're most likely to be pushing the limits of what one crew can do.
* Bash Check elevator position
* Thought for 8s
Bolts and trusses (and solder joints) have tensile strength limits, but it can be higher than what humans can take.
Sure, the aircraft can pull a ton of G's to defeat a missile or achieve a firing solution. Maybe it even succeeded at that.
It still pulled 9+ Gs and has burned an incredible amount of kinetic energy doing do. And the harder it pulls, the quicker it bleeds speed. It might not be able to defeat the next missile or outmaneuver the other plane's buddies because it is now slow and very likely outside its optimal turning speed.
Even today, missiles can pull dozens of G's yet still are defeatable by humans who can only pull about 9.
Should I seek another target looking similar to the one I unintentionally destroyed so as to tune my decision-making, or give you an advice on how to wipe the traces of this mishap from the mission data recorder?"
I think most fully autonomous jet drone programs are also designed to work with a main crewed fighter jet that coordinates them, so there is also a benefit in getting the fighter jet to be able to fly better than a pilot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_FQ-42_Dark_Mer...
There's a lot of different and overlapping programs in play here. I do not believe that autonomous F-16s are intended to be operational assets. That said...
VENOM - program that shows you can bolt on autonomous flight control into a standard F-16. Previously, the X-62A (a one-off prototype based F-16) demonstrated autonomous dogfighting back in 2023.
VENOM provides USAF/DARPA with a lot of high performance autonomous platforms (bolt-on F-16s) that they can then use to develop and validate software, tactics and training for actually fighting with autonomous systems. This would presumably be critical for getting the most of the CCA (aka loyal wingman) programs currently in development.
The AIR program referenced is basically "how do we get autonomous systems to control and fight effectively as a team (presumably arbitrary mixture of manned and unmanned systems) in a beyond visual range fight".
The ACE program referenced was basically "how do we get autonomous platforms to dogfight" with related questions like "how can we augment the human pilot in a dogfight - ie, how can we hand off the actual flying and execution of manoeuvres, and using all of the sensors to autonomous systems, and let the pilot choose actions, instead of hang flying the actions".
Taking this quote and seeing exactly that potential for abuse seems very very much like the point. Strong agree, strongly against leaving non-seeing non-thinking alien intelligences with no accountability and proprietary programming to judge us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965083
In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.
In a dogfight?
I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.
In any case, dogfighting is commonly done because it's great training but in most cases, you expect most Air to Air combat being flinging missiles at each other.
onboard computers are not immune to G's but have a substantially higher threshold until physical mechanisms fail due to strain.
Israel got a regime change while U.S. tax payers received the bill.
In the end, it’s still a country.
The objectives for the two wars were incredibly different, making this an apples to oranges comparison. In the first war, the objective was to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait (achieved) and then to contain the Iraqi military within Iraq (achieved). In the second war, the objectives were much broader and much harder to achieve. They achieved some objectives (toppling the existing government, defeating the existing military), and then utterly failed in nation building and got into a protracted conflict with state and non-state sponsored military groups.
The scope of the first Iraq war was to force them out of Kuwait. That is very different then the invasion of 2003. If you just think about it this should be obvious.
China has been doing something similar since 2020 [0]
[0] - https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/10/20/c...
Bush Sr knew to keep the foreign-compromised media out of the war and so accomplished the objectives of the war swiftly. Bush Jr had to deal with the media second guessing everything.
Such a crazy thought.
How, exactly, does that ensure a safe reliable environment? Humans are pretty bad at suddenly taking over when an automatic system reaches its limits and throws a problem in the human's lap. A lot of air upsets and crashes start when the autopilot disengages and hands control of a badly configured aircraft back to a human pilot.
Seems odd to invest this much into AI flight of aircraft designed for manned flight, when it would be better to build craft spec'd for AI flight without human life support systems.
Taking an obsolete airframe that is already paid for and adding AI to it is much cheaper than building a completely new AI-native airframe from scratch. This is finding a new use for old aircraft. You can send a bunch of old AI-driven F-16s on high-risk missions without worrying about a human pilot or cost. The airframes may be relatively obsolete but can still do plenty of damage on their day.
The new 6th generation aircraft are all being designed as "manned optional". That is probably the last generation with affordances for a pilot.
Yeah this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_FQ-44
The "see also" section lists several competitors.
I guess if you already have a load of F-16s it might make sense, but I think that's a stretch.
It's really incredible to me that people aren't protesting in the streets over this stuff. Just in the last month we have * AI that goes rogue and hacks billion-dollar companies * AI solving long-standing math problems without any meaningful human help * AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America * AI now represents over 50% of GDP growth in America and yearly capex will soon exceed the size of the $1 trillion US military budget
Is there any line where the public will become deeply concerned? I mean it really all reads like a sci-fi plot with a bad ending at the moment.
"This critical testing will pave the way for human pilots to seamlessly command and orchestrate teams of autonomous, uncrewed aircraft."
The reason they are doing this is because the Military is already building a bunch of autonomous drones and fighter jets that already run on this system so they are retrofitting existing equipment with the same system so they can all fly together.
"Ultimately, the capabilities advanced under AIR will enable a wide variety of future joint force operations, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs."
Which are these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned-unmanned_teaming
And everyone is developing these.
Unfortunately you're wrong. It's not soon. It's 6 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_AlphaDogfight
Except this never happened, it's a piece of marketing. It never "went rogue" but followed an intentional prompt (exploit-related benchmark), with hardly surprising results as the capabilities of this model were well known.
>AI controlled autonomous drones in Ukraine and F-16s in America
An entirely different kind of AI, not huge generalist models. Neural networks are being experimented with in sensors and control systems since the 80s and are widely used in everything since AlexNet, not sure what's new here, especially "this month" new.
Is someone, somewhere using the wrong bathroom? Or is the wrong colored person crossing an invisible line in the desert? Those seem to be the only issues that reliably get the (American) public to the polls.