Air Force Brings AI to Major Air-Warfare Combat Platforms – B-2, F-35 & F-15

By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

The US Air Force is now accelerating a massive AI push to cyber-harden networks, improve weapons systems and transform functions of large combat air platforms such as the B-2, F-15 and F-35, service officials said.

“The Air Force has over 600 projects incorporating a facet of artificial intelligence to address various mission sets,” Capt. Hope Cronin, Air Force spokeswoman, told Warrior Maven.

While AI can of course massively expedite data consolidation, cloud migration and various kinds much-needed cybersecurity functions, it is increasingly being applied more broadly across weapons systems and large platforms.

AI performs a wide range of functions not purely restricted to conventional notions of IT or cyberspace; computer algorithms are increasingly able to almost instantaneously access vast pools of data, compare and organize information and perform automated procedural and analytical functions for human decision-makers in a role of command and control.

When high-volume, redundant tasks are performed through computer automation, humans are freed up to expend energy pursuing a wider range of interpretive or conceptual work.

For the F-35, B-2 and F-15, rapid data-base access, organizing information and performing high-volume procedural functions are all decided advantages of AI applications. Algorithms, for example, are increasingly able to scan, view and organize targeting, ISR and sensor input such as navigation information, radar warning information, images or video.

The F-35, for instance, uses early iterations of artificial intelligence to help acquire, organize and present information to the pilot on a single screen without much human intervention. Often referred to as easing the cognitive burden upon pilots, the effort is geared toward systematically presenting information from a range of disparate sensors on a single screen. The F-35s widely-discussed sensor fusion, for example, is evidence of this phenomenon, as it involves consolidating targeting, navigation and sensor information for pilots.