Air Force eyes drone swarms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI)

Some of the most iconic weapons of the past 17 years are quickly becoming a relic. The Air Force is rushing toward a mix of almost-ready and yet-to-be-developed technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, hypersonics, drone swarms, and clouds of tiny cubesats capable of sucking up data and beaming it back down to operators the ground in real time. After running red team exercises looking at what some of the biggest future challenges might be for the Air Force, leaders concluded that the Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of today are not far away from becoming mere museum pieces. Not only does the Air Force want to get its people away from staring at computer screens to recognize, interpret, and identify what they’re seeing, but also seeks to develop processing and exploitation at the sensor.