The Pentagon has announced a plan to fund the development of artificial intelligence-piloted (AI-piloted) aircraft, according to Interesting Engineering.

“Called the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) project, it will form part of a larger $6 billion program to see at least 1,000 new drones join the United States Air Force (USAF) ranks. The AI-piloted drones will fly alongside human pilots and help provide cover, escort, fire support, and scouting roles,” the outlet writes.

Defense contractors are chomping at the bit to win the lucrative contract.

Per Fox News:

Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics and Anduril Industries have all taken up the challenge. General Atomics supplied the Reaper and Predator drones the U.S. has deployed in numerous campaigns in the Middle East, and Anduril is a newcomer to the field, founded in 2017 by inventor Palmer Luckey, an entrepreneur who founded Oculus VR.

Boeing is the only company that has shown off its entrant, known as the Ghost Bat. It’s between 20 and 30 feet in length and is able to fly just below the speed of sound and travel more than 2,000 nautical miles.

The plane is designed to work with existing military aircraft and “complement and extend airborne missions,” according to an overview on Boeing’s website.

Other features of the plane include “tactical early warning” and other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, but the highlight, according to the manufacturer, is the “low-cost design.”

“One of the jets under consideration is the Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat which is already in use in Australia,” Daily Mail writes.

“The Ghost Bat is an unmanned drone and is the only one of the contenders that has been flown publicly,” the outlet noted.

WATCH:

Interesting Engineering reports:

To be considered, the proposed aircraft must be able to fly at least 30 feet (9.1 meters) above the ground autonomously and at ground speeds of 600 mph (966 kph). The AI-piloted drone fleet will need to be able to perform risky maneuvers and escort and protect crewed planes, carry weapons to attack targets on the ground and in the air, and act as scouts.

The Pentagon plans to select two companies by this summer to produce the planes to complete hundreds within five years. Each plane is expected to cost between $10 and $20 million. To put that into perspective, a new F-35 costs around $100 million apiece, while a B-21 can cost upwards of $750 million per unit.

Per Daily Mail:

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told the Wall Street Journal: ‘They offer a lot of things that traditional crewed fighter planes just aren’t designed to do.’

The newest models will be a step up from the small drones have become a key feature of modern battlefields in recent years in Ukraine and parts of the Middle East.

Larger drones, like the new fleet, are needed to tackle the vast distances of the western Pacific.

The planes rely on artificial intelligence to fly autonomously and adapt to changing conditions in combat.

One of the main new developers of flying software is Shield AI.

Their technology helped an uncrewed F-16 regularly beat some of the best Air Force pilots in simulated missions, allowing their planes to skim the ground at 600 miles an hour.

Ground controllers could manage 10 of the drones at once or they can be programmed to fly in swarms, overwhelming and confusing the enemy.

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