Keep Maverick in the Cockpit
July 21, 2025By Margot Anderson
Last month, seven B-2 stealth bombers semi-circumnavigated the earth to conduct the largest B-2 mission in more than two decades. With minimal radio communications along the 18-hour flight to the targets, the B-2s covertly synchronized with over 125 other U.S. aircraft, including refueling tankers, fighters, and intelligence planes. The surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was nothing short of a virtuoso performance by our pilots and air planners.
But imagine if instead of 14 B-2 pilots flying for 37 hours into and out of enemy airspace, we used drones—and instead of a human behind the stick of the fighter escorts, AI was in control. Could the U.S. claim a moral victory if machines did the dirty work for us? Would our hearts still swell with awe and pride in our military if we didn’t have any skin in the game? I believe the answer is largely “no.”
Culturally, as evidenced by the depiction of aviation in popular films and books, we remain attached to the notion of humans in the cockpit, and the fighter pilot maintains a special place in the American popular consciousness. But this sentiment is eroding, and it will have a profound effect on future warfare.
Last spring, DARPA revealed that its AI-driven X-62 VISTA (a modified F-16) went head-to-head in a dogfight with a human-flown F-16. While the winner of the fight was (wisely) never revealed, the aerial demonstration was deemed a success. And recently, Elon Musk, who knows a thing or two about autonomous vehicles, blithely proclaimed in an X post that “manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/keep-maverick-in-the-cockpit/
