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Telegraph
24-07-2025
- Science
- Telegraph
How AI is coming for our top guns
Like countless other schoolboys, Greg Bagwell dreamed of becoming an RAF fighter pilot when he grew up. Unlike countless other schoolboys, he actually did so – beating thousands of others in a selection procedure as stringent as joining the SAS. First, recruits must be fit enough to withstand pressures of 9G during flight – equivalent to nine times the force of gravity on the body, and twice what a bobsleigh crew or a Formula 1 driver endures. Second, they must be capable of complex maths to plot manoeuvres and missile trajectories. Third, they must be able to do all of the above while being shot at. 'Short of becoming an astronaut, there aren't many jobs that are as selective,' says Bagwell, 63, who flew Tornados in Iraq in the 1990s and is now a Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. 'You need the hand-eye co-ordination to fly at supersonic speeds, while also doing the maths that gives you the 3D shaping of the airspace. It's like being a Formula 1 driver while also playing chess; only you're having to make each chess move in split seconds while travelling at nine miles a minute,' says Bagwell. It is no surprise that air forces seek high standards in fighter pilots. Their jets are hugely costly, and are often the first responders in hostilities, be it military reconnaissance of Islamic State bases in the Middle East, or dropping a bomb. Tales of their skills are also the stuff of history books and movies, from Battle of Britain aces such as Douglas Bader to space pioneers like Neil Armstrong, who flew combat missions in Korea before his journey to the Moon. But in a combat arena where the slightest human error can prove supremely costly, the future may lie in removing humans from cockpits – with those like Bagwell replaced by AI-controlled pilots. Brink of extinction Such scenarios may sound like the script of Top Gun: Maverick, in which Tom Cruise's ageing air ace is warned that his ilk will soon be replaced by UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). 'Pilots need to eat, sleep, take a p--s,' sneers a tech-minded superior. 'Your kind is headed for extinction.' This is no case of Hollywood hyperbole: if anything, the Top Gun scriptwriters may be behind the times. For AI-controlled fighter jets are already holding their own against human pilots – as demonstrated in tests this summer carried by Helsing, a German drone maker and AI firm. In a collaboration last month with the Swedish fighter-plane maker Saab, two Gripen E combat jets engaged in mock dogfights over the Baltic Sea – one jet flown by a regular pilot, the other by a pilot guided by Helsing's Centaur AI software. While neither aircraft came out on top, Centaur gave its human counterpart a run for its money. Given the rate at which AI learns, it may be just a few years before it gains the edge. 'Right now, there are still pilots out there that will have a chance, but that will change fast,' explains Marcus Wandt, Saab's chief innovation officer, and a former fighter pilot. 'If you need to retrain for a new weapon system or new tactics, it will be difficult to stay on par.' Helsing was founded as a start-up by German tech entrepreneur Torsten Reil, an Oxford-educated gaming developer, and Gundbert Scherf, formerly an aerospace expert with the German ministry of defence. Their motivation was Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, which they saw as proof that Europe needed to harness 'autonomous capabilities' to survive against aggressive dictatorships. Having been proved all too right by the war in Ukraine, Helsing has become one of Europe's biggest start-ups, making advanced air and sea drones. Such unmanned weapons have proved game-changers in Ukraine, helping to keep Russia's far bigger army in check, crippling Moscow's Black Sea fleet, and destroying dozens of Russian bombers recently at an airfield in Siberia. Helsing is now valued at more than £10bn, with Spotify founder Daniel Ek's investment company having led a £500m funding round in June. The age of drones The firm's success has already led some to question whether Western governments should even continue investing in manned fighter aircraft. Britain, for example, is purchasing 12 new US F35-A fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear bombs. The F35 is the world's most advanced fighter jet, yet is still built around the concept of a human at the controls. Last year, the Tesla boss Elon Musk described the F-35 as a case of Western militaries training for yesterday's war. He posted an image on X of a Chinese drone swarm, saying: 'Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35.' He added: 'Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones…Will just get pilots killed.' Defence officials argue that planes such as the F-35 take decades to design, and that AI is still too much in its infancy to design an entire plane around. But Helsing put on a recent demonstration of Centaur's skills at the Global Air & Space Chiefs' Conference, a top-level military and industry forum in London hosted by the RAF. On a flight simulator set up in a hotel suite next to the conference centre, two former 'Top Guns' – ex-Tornado pilot Stewart Campbell and ex-French Mirage pilot Benoit Planche – fought two Centaur rivals in 'beyond visual range' combat. This is when the enemy jet is too far away to see, but still within missile and radar range. That sort of military engagement makes success more reliant on computing heights, trajectories and speeds, to maximise the chances of a missile finding its target. The projectiles have limited fuel time, so if a pilot doesn't fire them at the most opportune moment, the target may dodge or outrun them. 'We want to hit the enemy before they hit us, which means we're running maths in our head constantly about heights, speed, loft and so on,' says Campbell, who left the RAF this year after serving in Afghanistan and the Red Arrows. 'Ultimately, I think you're going to see AI take over because it can do those calculations far better than I can.' Campbell also points out that, contrary to the impression given in films, the average fighter jet has limited weaponry. His simulated jet has just four air-to-air missiles – fewer than the number of bullets held by the average revolver. 'I can't just fire with impunity; I need each shot to be lethal,' he points out. 'The chances of the AI getting it wrong are much less – especially if you're a stressed-out junior pilot, being shot at in a part of the world you're unfamiliar with,' he adds. AI advantages The Centaur AI pilots honed their skills on a simulated platform where they were given a simple reward function: 'Kill the other aircraft and don't die.' They then played each other constantly, absorbing the equivalent of more than 100 years' flying time in a few days. The process is broadly comparable to Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer that took on – and ultimately defeated – chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the 1990s, evaluating 200 million chess positions per second. In last week's demonstration in London, Centaur won some of the battles while the pilots won others. Campbell admits, though, that AI also offers other advantages. 'From a risk point of view, you've not got a human being in that cockpit. Nor are you paying a pension or its healthcare.' A running theme at the conference was the risk that AI could creep up, like a stealth fighter jet, on an unwieldy defence establishment. Several speakers suggested that unmanned AI jets could be operational by 2040. 'The F-35 is the best fighter around today, and will be for a good while yet,' says Prof Kenneth Payne, an expert in strategic studies at King's College London. 'But AI will be able to do what human pilots can well before the next RAF fighter comes into service. 'We need to think seriously about whether that aircraft needs a cockpit,' he continues. 'Some leading AI figures think it will surpass human-level intelligence at many, even most, tasks within a few years. I don't think enough people inside defence are taking that seriously yet.' The RAF's next fighter will be the Tempest, a joint British-Italian-Japanese venture due in service by 2035. It is expected to offer both manned and unmanned options, although Bagwell seems unconvinced that pilots will be dispensed by then. 'A manned platform can do all kinds of things, from dogfights and escorts through to intercepting an airliner and looking into the cockpit to see if there is a hostage situation. There isn't a machine that exists today that can do all those things,' he says. 'In combat scenarios, planes will also be flying into deeply hostile airspace, with jamming, spoofing and other attacks on connectivity. If you lose that, you may still need a human being in the loop.' 'Besides,' he adds, 'I spent all my life as a pilot being promised stuff that never quite meets the glossy brochure. And in life-and-death situations, where a pilot might be trying to stop a missile attack on the UK, are we happy to put 100-per-cent trust in machines?' 'Our time is done' Others, of course, argue that the very act of flying requires putting 100-per-cent trust in a machine, and that the whole trajectory of combat aircraft has been away from the reckless 'barnstormer' image of the last century. Indeed, in a memorable article about a tour of a US Air Force base in 1969, the hellraising journalist Hunter S Thompson mourned the demise of the 'daredevil, speedball' flying ace. Today's pilot, he wrote, was a 'supercautious, supertrained, superintelligent monument to the computer age'. In that sense, AI pilots may simply be the next logical step – if not taking over entirely, then flying certain missions deemed too risky for humans. And much as men such as Campbell may still represent the elite, for now, he accepts that the Top Gun legend could be about to end. 'When I joined the Royal Air Force, I was told that a time would come when fighters wouldn't be in the cockpit,' he says. 'Ultimately, when we fight a war, we want to win, and if AI becomes capable enough to win, then I accept that our time as pilots is done.'
The Citizen
09-05-2025
- General
- The Citizen
The big lesson to be learnt from World War II
My mother, aunts and uncles all had stories to tell about those years, one thing we learnt is that war benefits nobody but arms merchants. A woman walks past WWII-era artillery guns at the colonnade of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War at Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow on October 31, 2019. Picture: Alexander Nemenov / AFP Growing up, I could not avoid becoming swept up in the stories of World War II. My uncle from Cape Town was captured at Tobruk in Libya and spent four years in a German-prisoner-of-war (POW) camp; my father experienced the Blitz in London and signed up for four years with the Royal Air Force (RAF), mainly fighting against the Japanese. My mother, my aunts and uncles all had stories to tell about those years. Long before the advent of the Internet, I devoured all the books I could find about the war. I marvelled at British Battle of Britain hero Douglas Bader, who lost his legs in a flying accident in the 1930s, but went on to bully his way back into a cockpit, commanding RAF squadrons and later getting shot down and interned in a POW camp. I learned, too, about South African fighter pilot 'Sailor' Adolph Gysbert Malan, absorbing his experiences in the Battle of Britain and later over Europe, before finding out years later, that my mother had met him after the war when she was a volunteer for the 'Torch Commando' – a group of liberal whites who started one of the first fightbacks against apartheid. ALSO READ: Echoes of Nazism still haunt the modern world Even now, I can put together an accurate timeline of events both in Europe and in the Pacific theatre, but I have realised that the predominance of Western sources – newspapers, radio and movies – mean I had a slanted view of who did what in that conflict. Ignorant Americans like to tell the Brits and the French that 'if it wasn't for us, you'd be speaking French', implying they liberated Europe from Nazi control. And while the D-Day landings did mark a significant gain for the Allies, the fact that the Germans were now fighting on two fronts meant their days were numbered. In reality, it was the people of the Soviet Union – not only Russians, but Ukrainians and assorted other 'socialist republics' – who shed the most blood in the war and who played perhaps the decisive role in defeating Adolf Hitler. Without their resistance and ultimate victory at Stalingrad, the punishing massive tank battle at Kursk and their relentless drive from the east in 1944/45, it would have been far more difficult to bring Germany to its knees. ALSO READ: Indian WWII veteran, 97, wins pension battle That, of course, is not to discount the suffering and grit of the people of the rest of Europe – and the UK, particularly, which was heavily battered during the Luftwaffe air war campaign of 1940/41 – who have every right to mark the 80th anniversary of end of hostilities this week. The old alliances of the war years, though, are gone for good. It doesn't seem as though 'hands across the water', which encapsulated US-UK relations during the war, means as much now, given the bullying from the Trump White House. My father seldom talked about his experiences other than a comment once that 'war is a waste'. He always respected the suffering of my uncle whose time in a POW camp saw him lose all his toes and later, back in civvie street, when booze softened those memories, he lost his marriage and his health. My father said little when he saw me conscripted as a soldier, although he must have worried. When my son was born, I vowed I would never, as the Ballad of the Green Beret admonished, 'put silver wings on my son's chest'. If we learn only one thing from World War II, it should be that war benefits nobody but arms merchants. NOW READ: Love at any age: WWII veteran, 100, to wed in France
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Pub has a 'real buzz' after helping set Guinness World Record
There is a "real buzz" at a pub in Martlesham as it has helped set a Guinness World Record. The Douglas Bader, in The Square in Martlesham Heath, has joined Heineken and 113 other pubs and breweries across the UK to set the a world record for the most people pulling a pint at exactly the same time. It was called the 'Big Pour' and took place on Monday, April 7. In just 10 seconds, the world-record attempt saw 114 pubs across the country pour pints of Heineken 0.0 and regular Heineken - simultaneously and in perfect sync. Harriet Coomber runs the Douglas Bader pub (Image: Sonya Duncan) Harriet Coomber, the landlady at the Douglas Bader, said: "I'm so proud to have been a part of this huge achievement for Heineken and excited to share the news with our lovely community here. "It's amazing to say I hold a World Record - it's brought a real buzz to the pub. I'm very excited to get our official plaque to display. " Harriet Coomber, the landlady, during 'The Big Pour' (Image: The Douglas Bader pub) This was made possible through online video technology, as 114 pub managers from Scotland to Surrey joined the Martlesham pub on a mass video call to pull their pints together in real time. It was all done under the eyes of an official Guinness World Records adjudicator. The 'Big Pour' was done to celebrate the installation of Heineken 0.0's 1,000th tap. Heineken said this is a milestone in making alcohol-free beer more accessible and offering choice for customer preferences. Harriet Coomber was delighted to be a world record holder (Image: The Douglas Bader pub) Lawson Mountstevens, managing director of Star Pubs at Heineken UK, said: 'Part of the ritual of going to the pub is watching your pint being freshly poured from the tap- the tilt of the glass, the smooth cascade, and mouth watering anticipation of the first sip. The Douglas Bader pub in Martlesham (Image: The Douglas Bader Pub) "This draught experience is central to pub culture, and for non- alcoholic beer to become truly mainstream, it needs to be part of that experience. It needs to be poured from the tap like any other pint, not just another option in the fridge. "That's why we're committed to getting 0.0 on draught in pubs everywhere, because everyone deserves a proper pint, with or without alcohol.'
