AI, autonomy, and airpower: the end of pilots?

ABSTRACT

Military pilots have long been central to airpower projection in both combat and non-combat operations. While the historical and contemporary roles of military aviators have been examined extensively in previous scholarship, the present study distinguishes itself by evaluating the future prospects of military aviators. By so doing, it argues that technological advances in autonomy and artificial intelligence (AI) will most likely lead to the development of pilotless aerial vehicles (PAVs), if current technological and social trends persist. In this new order, the military pilot will become a thing of the past.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• autonomous systems
• airpower
• pilots
• pilotless aerial vehicles (PAVs)

Acknowledgments

I thank Stefan Borg, Rickard Lindborg, Mike Palmer, Dan Öberg and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Pilot refers to those who control the flight of an aircraft, either from the cockpit or a remote location. They must have undergone training and received the appropriate pilot certifications to qualify as such. In this study, the main focus is on military pilots and especially fighter pilots.

2. Flying ace is a military pilot that has shot down several opponents, usually five or more in aerial combat (Robertson 2003).

3. In this context, autonomy refers to the degree that aircraft can search, locate and engage targets on their own. When an aircraft can complete a task without human assistance, it is ‘fully autonomous’, in this respect. Should it require human aid, it is ‘semi-autonomous’. AI refers to the intelligence the aircraft possesses. Intelligence “reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending … surroundings-‘catching on,’ ‘making sense’ of things, or ‘figuring out’ what to do” (Gottfredson 1997, p. 13).

4. In this article, the terms UAVs and drones are used interchangeably and refer to aerial vehicles that do not have an onboard human pilot. As such, this definition includes so-called suicide or kamikaze drones with built-in warheads that attack targets by self-destructing into them.

5. Extraversion is typically manifested in outgoing, assertive and energetic behavior. Conscientiousness is associated with being hard-working, reliable, efficient, organized, self-disciplined and striving for achievement. Individuals with low levels of neuroticism are more emotionally stable, calm and even-tempered (Barrick and Mount 1991).

6. It should be noted that pilot flying time in Russia is measured differently than in the United States. The Russians only consider the time that the aircraft is airborne whereas the US Air Force start calculating from the moment the aircraft moves on the ground by its own power to the moment it comes to a complete halt upon landing. Moreover, the average flight hours for Russian pilots had reportedly increased to about 120–125 hours in 2016 (Sutyagin 2018, pp. 320–321).

7. There are nonetheless a number of weakness with contemporary drones. Current UAVs such as the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper lack defensive capabilities have limited maneuverability and fly slowly. They are deemed useless in contested environments and susceptible to jamming and hacking (Kaag and Kreps 2014, Zegart 2018, p. 5).

8. There are different accounts as to how many AI winters there have been, when they took place and why they occurred. The causes of AI winters have been attributed to the overhyping of AI research that did not live up to promises and expectations, lack of practical applications for AI research as well as institutional and economic factors, etc. (Boobier 2018, p. 42).

9. Military necessity prohibits acts that are not essential from a military point of view. Distinction suggests that military operations may only be directed against combatants and specific military objectives. Proportionality specifies that attacks harming civilians or civilian objects may not exceed the concrete military advantage anticipated by such attacks. Unnecessary suffering seeks to reduce and alleviate human suffering in war (Bourbonnière 2004).

10. AI has already been used in jurisdiction. Some states in the US employ AI that recommend criminal sentences. The Estonian Ministry of Justice is currently planning to launch an AI-system to settle small claims disputes of less than €7,000 (about $8,000) (Niiler 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou

Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou is an Assistant Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. His work has appeared in the journals International Relations, International Politics, Journal of International Political Theory and The Washington Quarterly, among others. Palgrave published his latest monograph Realism and Fear in International Relations: Morgenthau, Waltz and Mearsheimer Reconsidered.