The US Air Force wants $5.8 billion to build 1,000 AI-driven unmanned combat aircraft, possibly more, as part of its next generation air dominance initiative::The unmanned aircraft are ideal for suicide missions, the Air Force says. Human rights advocates call the autonomous lethal weapons “slaughterbots.”
$5.8 billion for a thousand combat drones? That’s incredibly cheap, especially since the implication is that this includes amortized R&D costs and the per-unit cost will eventually be even lower.
As for “slaughterbots” - I’m not sure why some people are inclined to trust human soldiers more than machines. Humans don’t exactly have the best track record for minimizing violence…
6 million dollars apiece is cheap?
The F35 costs about 80 million and they sell like hotcakes. Yes, 6 million is cheap.
Oh okay. I didn’t realize that. Wow.
Every bolt and river has to have its entire history accounted for in case it fails
F35A is now down to about $70 million/piece now, which further demonstrates the point of costs coming down with mass production I think.
It originally was more like $150 million.
It’s almost unbelievably cheap for a combat aircraft - over five times cheaper than an MQ-9 Reaper drone, which costs 32 million. (And Reapers aren’t capable of air-to-air combat, although they have other capabilities that these drones will probably lack.) Manned fighters cost even more. An F-35 is 80 million, and it’s a relatively low-priced jet. An F-22 costs about twice as much. Even a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile is 400 thousand.
It’s more like 2.5 billion for R&D and then 2.5 billion to create the factory that builds them and the first thousand units. The per unit cost is initially high and then comes down once all the front end work is done.
And as with many programs, the R&D phase may lead to a brand new use-case for drones or an entirely different purpose for one of the drone prototypes. So there can be unknown benefits too.
I think the scary part is when one guy and an obedient AI control millions of slaughterbots.
And is that better or worse than when he dies from tripping down a stairwell but the AI remembers the whole mission.
A lot of this was planned already. Primarily the capability to turn existing aircraft platforms into ‘missile trucks’ which circle an area autonomously while waiting for the F35 controller to select a target.
Well that’s great I guess. Like the human piloting the F35 or F24 will act as a spotter then the bots will fire when instructed. It creeps me out if they will be given autonomy to fire.
The problem with slaughter bots is that the chain of command to kill can be shortened to just one person.
The chain of command for a human is much more complex and can have a moral circuit breaker in every part of that chain.
i think $5.8 for only r&d and production cost 1000 craft will be different
Based on my simple movie watching experience neither do machines so check, mate.
I’d also like to know the degree of autonomy. Just because they can fly without a human on the stick constantly doesn’t mean they are choosing their missions.
The program is called ‘Loyal Wingman’ and envisages older gen airframes past their flight limits being slaved to current gen fighters like F-35.
Edit: Loyal Wingman is something different, the USN program.