On the other hand, I'm not sure whether I would confirm active research work on apparently rather capable combat AIs right now, if I were some USAF official.

The original blog post [1] is a summary of the talks at the "REAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit"; the summary of the AI talk is 2/3 of the way through the blog post. So either:

* Col Hamilton leaked information he wasn't supposed to, and now the AF is trying to deny it

* The person who summarized Col Hamilton's talk was really confused about what was said, and the AF is generally trying to shut down wrong impressions

* Col Hamilton and/or the summarizer made things up. (Was the blog post written by GPT-4?)

[1] https://www.aerosociety.com/news/highlights-from-the-raes-fu...