The US Air Force details how an AI copilot successfully flew a U-2 spy plane on December 15, marking the first time AI has controlled a US military system
- The U.S. Air Force flew an artificial intelligence (AI) copilot on a — in California. — The flight marked …
Context & Ripple Effects
This December 15 flight over California is the origin point of a program arc the coverage now traces forward four years: an AI copilot flying a U-2 marked the first time AI controlled a US military system, with the human pilot reduced to supervising the machine. What followed reads as deliberate escalation — the VISTA X-62A F-16 testbed was built as a stepping stone toward unmanned combat aircraft, and DARPA then put an AI-controlled X-62A into a live dogfight against a human-piloted F-16.
By 2024 the Air Force had converted those experiments into procurement intent, announcing plans for a fleet of more than 1,000 AI-controlled jets with the first operating by 2028, after some AI versions beat human pilots in air-to-air combat. Anduril's late-2025 first flight of a semi-autonomous jet drone shows industry now building to that demand signal.
First-order effects
- The Air Force gained its first operational evidence that AI can fly a national-security aircraft end to end, validating the pilot-as-supervisor model the service would later build its unmanned fleet plans around.
Second-order effects
- The demonstration set the template contractors like Anduril are now executing against — its semi-autonomous jet drone flight aligns with the Air Force's stated plan for swarms of unmanned jets and cheap 'loyal wingman' drones priced around $3M apiece.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, air combat shifts structurally from crewed platforms assisted by AI to massed uncrewed fleets directed by it, with human pilots moving to command-and-supervision roles — a transition whose pace depends on how the X-62A dogfight results translate into fielded systems by the 2028 target.
The trend: Military aviation is progressing from AI copilots on crewed spy planes toward mass-produced uncrewed combat jets, with each flight test converting autonomy research into procurement.