A look at the US Air Force's efforts to build an AI-based air combat system, including drones for as little as $3M apiece that serve pilots as a “loyal wingman”
An Air Force program shows how the Pentagon is starting to embrace the potential of a rapidly emerging technology …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Air Force's work extends DARPA's Air Combat Evolution effort to build AI able to fly and fight aircraft without a human pilot. It also fits an earlier Air Force push to shorten the path from startup pitches to technology contracts, as covered in its rapid-tech contracting approach.
Subsequent coverage of plans for more than 1,000 AI-controlled aircraft shows the “loyal wingman” concept becoming a potential force-structure program rather than remaining solely a research exercise.
First-order effects
- The Air Force gains a lower-cost unmanned companion concept that could extend a pilot's sensing, mission, or combat capacity without putting another crewed aircraft in the air.
- AI performance and human-machine teaming become central practical tests for the Air Force, rather than separate questions of aircraft design and software capability.
Second-order effects
- A scalable wingman program would shift procurement pressure toward manufacturers that can combine airframes, autonomy software, and reliable integration with crewed operations.
- The case for deploying such systems depends on proving what autonomy is reliable enough for operational use, a decision framework later highlighted by the Pentagon's Replicator initiative.
Third-order effects
- If the approach scales, air-combat force design could move from aircraft-centered procurement toward mixed fleets in which relatively inexpensive autonomous systems augment fewer crewed platforms.
- That shift would make dual-use AI governance and testing standards more consequential: the enduring constraint is not only model capability, but the military's confidence in deploying it.
The trend: This is part of the Pentagon's broader move from AI experimentation toward procuring autonomous systems as operational military capacity.