Using its artificial intelligence (AI) pilot ‘Hivemind’, Shield AI demonstrated multi-jet flight autonomy in San Diego, California, according to a statement made on 21 August 2024.
The demo points to the growing tendency for hybrid warfare capabilities alongside uncrewed systems.
The US defence start-up successfully demonstrated the autonomous interplay between two Kratos MQM-178 Firejet systems. Specifically, Hivemind executed onboard and in-air platform communication, allowing the two aerial systems to perform coordinated manoeuvres.
Similar to a human pilot, Hivemind reads and reacts to the battlefield, and does not require GPS, waypoints, or communications to make decisions. Hivemind enables intelligent teams to perform missions ranging from penetrating air defence systems with V-BATs, to dogfighting F-16s.
A new form of aerial warfare
This demonstration is one of various milestones in deploying a ‘hybrid’ force structure using manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) methods.
MUM-T denotes the homogenous employment of heterogenous aerial assets, namely traditional crewed platforms such as fighter jets and attack helicopters, and uncrewed platforms, within individual combat units. Indeed, while uncrewed systems have been used extensively for over three decades, they have always operated independently from other manned air assets
At the end of April 2024, General Atomics and Anduril were both down-selected to deliver the Collaborative Combat Air system, an autonomous uncrewed system to operate alongside the future sixth generation fighter aircraft for the US Air Force.
Demo features
“In the next decade, AI pilots will command and manouevre all unmanned systems, enabling the US and our allies to deploy millions of intelligent, resilient drones,” argued Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s president, co-founder and a former Navy SEAL.
“These Firejet flight tests represent a key milestone on our journey to bring autonomy to the world. What’s awesome is that the algorithms are not limited to the number of aircraft. For test objectives and budgetary reasons, we limited the number of Firejets to two, but it could have been fours, eight, 16, 32, and so on.”
This builds on multiple AI-piloted Firejet flight tests completed in March, marked the sixth aircraft to be flown by Shield AI’s Hivemind AI Pilot. In June, the team completed its inaugural Live Virtual Constructive integration, which bridges live platforms with virtual environments and enables dynamic interactions across different domains.
