A US Defense Firm Just Unveiled the First AI-Controlled, Unmanned Fighter Jet With Insane Capabilities That Will Change Combat Forever

Bloomberg. Getty Images.

There's a great exchange in one of my all time favorite movies, Patton. It's after V-E Day. Germany is defeated. The General is just doing administrative work and waiting for his orders, but he realizes his days of doing what he loves, what he was born to do - commanding troops in battle - is pretty much at an end.

So in a meeting with the press, he's asked, "We're told of 'wonder weapons' the Germans were working on: Long-range rockets, push-button bombing. Weapons that don't need soldiers."

"'Wonder weapon'?" Patton replies. "My God, I don't see the wonder in them. Killing without heroics. Nothing is glorified, nothing is reaffirmed. No heroes, no cowards, no troops. No generals. Only those that are left alive and those that are left . . . dead. I'm glad I won't live to see it."

Well it would appear you and I have lived to see it. Based on this report on 60 Minutes on Fury, the new fully functioning AI fighter jet being made by Anduril Industries. This is all still so secret that the film crew wasn't allowed to say where they were to see this thing for the first time:

That is currently the No. 19 trending video on YouTube, with over a million views in just 21 hours. Possibly because Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey has that drip the kids talk about:

Matt Winkelmeyer. Getty Images.

Or because, like me, people respect a high tech defense firm that's named after Aragorn's Sword That Was Reforged, Anduril, Flame of the West.

Giphy Images.

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But we just came for those things. We stayed for the absolute terrifying nature of the weapons system Luckey's team has unleashed upon the world. From Anduril's website:

Accelerating Autonomy into an Operational Reality

Fury is a high-performance, multi-mission group 5 autonomous air vehicle (AAV) enabling trusted and collaborative autonomy for the high-end fight. 

Leveraging Lattice software, Fury is designed to accelerate the development, testing, and fielding of Mission Autonomy into operational reality for the warfighter, delivering an unfair advantage for unrivaled deterrence. …

Designed to deliver next-generation flight performance with the flexibility to integrate a variety of first or third-party sensors and payloads to support the mission requirements.  …

The digital design is rapidly tested, validated, and iterated by leveraging synthetic pilots and intelligent flight simulation onboard actual aircraft.

And as co-founder and CEO Brian Schimpf points out, Fury can be mass produced at scale. Because not only does it not require all those complicated, messy and expensive design features that keep pilots from being killed, it has the kind of engines the put in private jets and simple landing gear you can build in any machine shop. Meanwhile, it can be operated from a safe distance by a pilot hanging back behind the engagement with the enemy. And he envisions one man operating a hundred of these things at once, as opposed to losing Goose (RIP) because Maverick was being too reckless and got caught in somebody else's jet wash.

I'm as freaked out at the idea of AI having complete autonomous control of supersonic death machines as you or anybody else. That is, until they trotted this thing out. And to hear Luckey's and Schimpf's argument that while yes, the capabilities of their creation is scary and we're all naturally fearful the bots will use it to destroy us all, having mad men around the world in charge of weapons systems isn't any better. Plus they assure us these systems are all designed with a kill switch in case things go haywire and we find ourselves in a Fail Safe scenario. 

But I can't kid myself and I won't try to kid you. I'm OK with this because I'm impressed by the ingenuity it takes to design and build it. Appreciate that it will keep pilots safer in combat. Happy that it will cost less than a piloted jet by an order of magnitude. But above all else, I'm grateful this company and this jet are on our side. If this is what the future or warfare looks like, there's nothing we can do to stop progress. But if it's going to happen, I want these here United States of America to build these first so bad actors with ill intent around the globe will think twice before trying any monkey business. 

So good on you, Anduril. If Fury does go rogue, we'll deal with you later. But for now, unlike Old Blood and Guts, I'm glad I've lived to see this.