That's now how wars work. You get time to learn and adapt to the enemy strategy. One plane down doesn't mean anything if you learn how to exploit the enemy's entire fleet of "AI" with 1 casualty.

"That's not how previous wars worked" would be a more accurate take. Considering how few aircraft there are in modern militaries and how long it takes to manufacture modern fighter aircraft and missiles, one side will be out of high tech aircraft/missiles before the other and then it's game over.

This is one of those things I kind of wonder about the reality of. It's absolutely true that you're unlikely to be able to manufacture a lot of what you'll use during the war.

But simultaneously, it's not like the United States is really trying to fix this problem. The modern generation fighter aircraft are boondoggles with massively inefficient manufacturing designed to win senators and congresspeople votes - not act as the backbone of a hardened supply chain.

They're being built the way they are because the US doesn't seriously expect to face any enemy who can substantially deplete its forces, or is going to have any ability to strike the mainland.

My suspicion is that if there was an actual belief in the need to have reliable supply lines, it could be done and manufacturing could be streamlined a lot. You could definitely imagine a nearly fully automated factory rolling these things off very quickly.

> "My suspicion is that if there was an actual belief in the need to have reliable supply lines, it could be done and manufacturing could be streamlined a lot. You could definitely imagine a nearly fully automated factory rolling these things off very quickly."

Unlike previous wars, cruise missiles are a mature technology, making it much easier to precisely zap an opponent's manufacturing facility and infrastructure than before. High tech gizmos also have a lot more dependencies that go into them, making it easier to disrupt by knocking out a few or even just one of them.

In case of a prolonged conflict you need to consider the AI and it's programmers as a joint system. The AI by itself may be exploitable, but the programmers will adjust it to counter anti-ai strategies.

We don't program what are called AI's nowadays. We curate data, sometimes supervise the learning process, and do our best to detect when a model is bad.

If you think there's any intention or well defined predictability to these things, I've got a bridge to sell ya.

This is why people train. Once AI piloted planes are prevalent on the battlefield, there will be a huge effort to capture enemy systems and develop tactics against them. The USA has been doing it for decades (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Doughnut), I’m sure that China and Russia have as well.

But how do you know which version of AI are you fighting?

Its not really all that simple, as you have limited time/resources to determine what exactly you are up against.

And you get to test your hypothesis once. You win or lose after that.

The biggest thing you seem to be missing is that none of your arguments are unique to fighting AI. You still only get one chance against a human pilot. You don't know how good they are individually, you don't know if they have any special tricks, and you don't know whether they've got all the available upgrades on their jet, or if they have some old or broken equipment. You do know the average skill level of the enemy pilots, and what equipment they might have, so you make your decisions by assuming that they are a competent pilot with the best equipment that is likely to be on that jet. Warfare still happens even when you don't have time to gather up perfect information and make a perfect decision.

One other thing to note is that there will not be a unique AI in every individual jet; that would be impossible to maintain. There will be one version rolled out to each type of jet, maybe with a few customization options that can be changed during mission planning. When a new AI version comes out of testing it will get rolled out to every plane in the fleet that has the required computing power- some jets used for training/reserve/national guard duties won't have the latest hardware upgrades and won't get the newest version. So a pilot will be able to ID a jet, know where it is generally strong and weak, and then try to target the enemy's weakness while avoiding the strengths. Sometimes they'll lose, but once enough people have survived encounters with AI jets (either from exploiting stolen jets or from plain old combat) the best practices will get pushed to the other squadrons. Just like what already happens.

Except an AI tweak which changes behavior enough can be rolled out - let's face it - probably via a wi-fi update within minutes (aviation is, ironically, pretty simply compared to self-driving cars - we're not talking about big algorithms in a lot of cases).

The side with AI planes is just looking up K/D ratios on their telemetry from the planes. The other side is losing pilots.

Ejection is a thing. At this point it’s also about who has better missiles and more of them.

The USAF missiles will make guns obsolete doctrine of the 1960’s was premature not completely wrong.

It's almost always about who has better missiles and longer range radar/sensors. No point in getting into a dogfight if you can shoot the opponent out of the sky from 100 miles away.

In general yes you can make that distinction but more importantly this is a problem for peace time.

No one would authorize a non-visual shoot down of a target in a non-active AO and not during an actual conflict.

If you are at the stage where you have factions duking it out in the skies especially these days were talking about a major conflict in which case there won’t be any civilian jets flying there anyhow.

There is probably a way they know his, but can you really fire a missile at something on a computer screen miles away and be fully confident the thing you are shooting at is enemy military aircraft? And not say a civilian aircraft ?

I guess if its going fast enough its almost certianly a military aircraft. Can the radars in the military jets identity the type of the aircraft before it gets blown out of the sky?

Radars on the F-15 can determine the type of turbine on an aircraft...

Another way is to announce a no-fly zone and then assume anything within the zone is hostile. (Yes, civilian planes can still fly there, but they've literally been warned at that point)

I assume this would happen pretty quickly when a war went hot.

That lets you distinguish friend from not-friend, but not enemy from airliner.

Until it isn't, because the enemy has already captured and compromised your government back home.