A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor and F-35A Lightning II fly in formation with the XQ-58A Valkyrie low-cost unmanned aerial vehicle over the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground testing range, Ariz., during a series of tests Dec. 9, 2020.
U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. James Cason
The Air Force has requested $5.8 billion in its budget to create AI-driven XQ-58A Valkyrie aircraft.
The autonomous crafts are ideal for completing suicide missions and protecting pilots, the Air Force says.
Human rights advocates say letting technology take lives crosses a moral boundary.
The Air Force is seeking a multibillion-dollar budgetary allowance to build between 1,000 and 2,000 unmanned aircraft powered by AI pilots.
XQ-58A Valkyrie aircraft are meant to serve as a robotic wingman to human airmen, providing cover and maneuvering around in scenarios where a flesh-and-blood pilot might struggle, The New York Times reported — and they’re ideal for suicide missions in which a human would be unlikely to return.
Later this year, the craft will be tested in a simulation where it will create its own strategy to chase and kill a target over the Gulf of Mexico, the Times reported.
Insider previously reported this model of Valkyrie can cruise at 550 mph. Its operational altitude is 45,000 feet, with a range of 3,000 nautical miles. Other models, like the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber first flown in 1964, require pilots in the cockpit, and only a few aircraft of their kind were created.
The budgetary estimate, which Congress has not yet approved, lists $5.8 billion in expenses over five years to build the vehicles. It comes after several years of test flights by the Air Force in which the vehicle has been used as a datalink for F-22s, F-35s, and the Air Force’s Skyborg program, which is an artificial intelligence-enabled system to control unmanned aircraft like the Valkyrie.
The Times reported each Valkyrie will cost between $3 million and $25 million — far less than a manned pilot jet.
Air Force and Department of Defense representatives did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
While the Air Force’s “Next Generation of Air Dominance” program has garnered widespread military support, human rights advocates are concerned the unmanned war machines pave the way to a “Terminator”-style dystopian future.
“You’re stepping over a moral line by outsourcing killing to machines — by allowing computer sensors rather than humans to take human life,” Mary Wareham, the advocacy director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, a proponent of international limits on autonomous lethal weapons, told the Times.
Other AI-weapons opponents, such as the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, call these advancements “slaughterbots” because algorithmic decision-making in weapons allows for faster combat that can increase the threats of rapid conflict escalation and unpredictability — as well as the risk of creating weapons of mass destruction.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said as far back as 2019 that “machines with the power and discretion to take lives without human involvement are politically unacceptable, morally repugnant and should be prohibited by international law.”