"Stealth" the movie & Autonomous UCAV's

Regarding the movie "Stealth", I have no doubt that there will be viewers of the movie who come to this website asking about autonomous UCAVs and can they become a selfaware, artificially intelligent, seemingly demon possessed machines bent on the destruction of mankind?
When you see posts like that please inform them that NO it cannot happen - at least with the state of technology available today and it won't for many years to come - if ever.

So before the movie "Stealth" comes out I think it is a reasonable thing to let it be known the actual state of autonomy in unmanned vehicles.

Over the past 18 months or so I've been working with various aspects of sensory and information dispersion and interpretation for UAV's.
I therefore believe that I have perhaps a small amount of knowledge when it comes to this particular subject.



The state of autonomous technology for UAVs:

Great strides have been made in recent years concerning autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, for example the Global Hawk and it's autonomous flight from California to Australia.

But the term "unmanned" is a bit missleading at least in the current state of technology. There may be no man actually in the aerial vehicle, but rest assured nearly all UAV systems depend on human interaction and command for completion of any mission.

"Autonomy" has been the longstanding goal for unmanned vehicle development and that by definition would mean the capability of completing a mission without any input from external influences... But by this definition autonomy will probably not happen for many years to come - at least with UCAV's conducting weapon deliveries on targets - more on that later.

There are 2 essential areas of technology that are being developed in order to accomplish autonomy for a UCAV:
1. Visual interpretation of video images (Visual recognition)
2. The ability to Act on the information provided via visual recognition.(Decision making and Action)

More on Visual Recognition:

A typical UAV mission of reconnaisance & attack (multimission platform) would be greatly enhanced with visual recognition. This will be and is accomplished by loading into the the UCAV's ISR management module 3 dimensional images of nearly all the possible targets the UCAV may encounter. If there is a question the UCAV's operator may intervene.

The UAV "learns" what is a target of opportunity and what is a benign or innocuous object by comparing the imaging it gathers in realtime via it's variable bandwidth electro-optics to the images it has stored in it's library of 3D potential targets.
The archived images are warped using sophisticated alogorythms to match the altitude and angle that the UCAV "sees", thereby enabling the system to discern whether the object is friend or foe.

These sophisticated alogorythms are called "Fuzzy Logic" which applies logic to variables thus utilizing less math than linear regression which requires much more processing power.

Acting on Information:

Even though this is being worked on don't expect the DoD to permit an autonomous UCAV to attack without final clearance and permission from the human operator or overseer. The legal ramifications of a mistake are huge and no defense industry company wants to be liable for a machine of their creation attacking the wrong target.

A word on UCAV's and the Kill Chain:

The Kill Chain consists of 6 "links"; Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage and Assess, (FFTTEA). To put it in more detail, it is the ability to locate, discern, and track targets and to employ the best weapons available to achieve the desired lethal effects; then to assess results and to reengage speedily as required.

Expect to see more and more Multi-mission platforms containing both C4ISR and weapons delivery systems for a further enhancement of the FFTTEA doctrine - the F-22, F-35 and nearly all UAVs from this point forward are being developed as multi-mission platforms.

What autonomy of multi-mission platform UCAVs accomplishes is an efficient compressing of the "kill chain" and enabling realization of the USAF's doctrine of putting weapons on time sensitive targets in single-digit minutes as opposed to half hours or hours...

And now, Back to the Movie...

Anyway, I've sort of been rambling, but do remember... as the movie "Stealth" comes out and questions are asked regarding "Terminator" UCAV's trying to destroy humanity - Just say NO. With all the technical sophistication of todays systems and tomorrow's... a human will still have to give the system permission to engage a target.


Natalie~








[edit on 11-7-2005 by intelgurl]

Hmmm..Nice movie poster!!
I think the plane to be used is something like the switchblade...

Btw..intelgirl.. whats the latest on those honwywell rotor UAVs?

[edit on 11-7-2005 by Daedalus3]

That was a very good post.

I was thinking that this kind of thing would happen, I'm glad someone as knowledgable as yourself started a post about this.

If I see something like this, I will be sure to point them to this thread.


Oh and:

You have voted intelgurl for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have one more vote left for this month.

Yeah, that movie is due out around July 29th, right about that time I would expect some postings asking questions on this subject.
It would also bear mentioning that these aircraft are highly hijack resistant (impossible) - it would be far easier to bring one down with EMP or other electronic disabling than it would to take over control.

Great post, Intelgurl.

You dont wanna know how many emails I got about the plane in that movie. I got dozens of highly-classified-new-fighter-pics-offer!!! emails and that sort of stuff

Here are some pics: www.globalsecurity.org...

Nice to hear from you Intelgurl.

And about the F/A-37 Talon, has a real size aircraft of it been built for the movie or is it a small model that is shown as a large thing using CG etc? and can that thing even go airborne in real life ?? is it based on any existing USAF black project ?? on which carrier has shooting of the movie been carried out ??

July 29 is the official rlelase date...i can assure everyone that it will hit pirated VCD/DVD stores in India atleast one week in advance making its way though China & Malaysia atleast 15 days in advance.

And the cable operator in Bangalore will put it on TV for free atleast 4 to 5 days in advance.

Malaysian & Chinese piraters would have alredy got their hands on the movie.

And i'm not joking around here, but this the ground reality in Asian countries and i myself have seen almost all the Hollywood & Bollywood(Indian Cinema) and Kannada movies on TV for free several days prior to the worldwide primere.

well that's very uncool stealth spy.. I urge you to report these felons to the concerned authorities.. THe guys who make the movie won't get their just returns otherwise..

Anyways.. as I was saying.. the "stealth movie" plane F-37 talon or whatever has switchblade features.. Esp. the two way folding wings as seen here

www.globalsecurity.org...


Mod edit of oversized picture/image: changed to a direct link

[edit on 11-7-2005 by Seekerof]

Well said Intelgurl, and good to see you posting again.

You know the stupidest thing? if robots or AI do become self aware....just implement a semi or equivelent or reduced, assimovs three laws of robotics..easy, robots cant rebel against their hard coded masters, that simple...movies like this just help make people paranoid.

intelgurl! Good to hear from you again!

Anyways, the F/a-37 Talon is not based on any real USAF Black Project aircraft(to my current knowledge). It may look like it was based on the AX-29 Switchblade, but the AX-29 is an experimental assault aircraft that has foward swept wings that come out and in. The believed designed of the AX-29 looks different from the Talon, however there are similarities.

The Switchblade keep in mind, may not even be real, there is no solid proof of its existence, it is as real as the Aurora, no one can really prove the Switchblade's existence.

The movie producers created a full size mock-up of the aircraft and the extensive filming was done on the U.S.S Enterprise.

Hope this information helps.

Shattered OUT...

I’m just asking but scientists say that they are progressing toward higher AI each year and when they plot the patter of growth on a timeline around 2045 is the year where the tech will be sufficient enough for robots or machines to have AI equivalent to a human brain. This does not mean that they will rebel or kill us just that we will all be unemployed and the military wil be happy when they come out.

Here are a couple of pictures of the plane being offloaded from the carrier at North Island.

The planes in the movie seemed to be the replacements for the F-18 and F-35's.

About the UAV, Artificial Intelligence still is a science fiction thing that doesn't seem to be a very good idea, at least in the eyes of science fiction writers. Hal 9000 comes to mind...

[edit on 12-7-2005 by iris_failsafe]

I could swear I've already seen about 10 movies in which an AI goes crazy, and about half of those involved an electrical shock or something. Hmm....

Anyhow aside from my rantings I agree, evil UAV's are a no go. Theres so many safety features on those things they'd never let one operate on it's own. It's more practical to just have a remote control pilot. That and let's be honest, what're the chances of a lightning bolt re-writing the programming in a way that it makes it evil but still retains it's combat abilities?

BTW, great to hear another one of your posts intelgurl.

[edit on 7/12/2005 by cyberdude78]

I highly doubt computers will ever be on par with the human brain. Especially the brain that has no damage or disfunctional traits. AI is great in theory, how ever they are not able to maintain/repair themselves. The body constantly regenerates cells, yes even the brain. So all you smokers, if you slow it down or even quit, you may get some cells back faster.


It just is theory, AI tech is awsome don't get me wrong. It is man made, and there for, not perfect. True, not every brain is perfect, but it is more so than any computer will ever be. If I'm wrong, then Terminator and the movie mentioned above would be more real than we believe.

Zion, ZION!

Is it really you...

I have to spend more time here, than I have been. I'm starting to miss many of my favorite members, all too many of who are a part of this very thread.

Originally posted by ADVISOR
AI is great in theory, how ever they are not able to maintain/repair themselves.

umm.. well I thought that too, and I've tried building my share of pseudo sentient robots (basically mazesolvers).. And man if you try and incorporate ONE single extra decision box, it takes #loads of extra memory!!
In terms of a "learning" m/c one can visualise

1. a massive matrix of interconnecting/looping decision boxes
2. the ability of the m/c to modify its own source code (i.e. learn) based on its experiences
3. Shieeeeeeeeeeeeetloads of excess memory to incorporate "learnt stuff"

If a m/c has the above three pre-requisites and is allowed to "learn freely"for an indefinite amount of time then it has SOME probability of achieving some sort of basic "awareness" somewhere down the line..
(a million years maybe??! )

Having said this, I've seen pretty remarkable stuff on ATS itself:

1. A video of a robot which has the capability to replicate itself!!
The bot consists of cubical units, is snake-like (made up of many units attached end to end) and can replicate if it finds any lone cubical units lying around!!

2. A community of robots that talk to each other to find out if one of them is "lost"; if so identify "who" is lost and then try and locate him in circular search patterns..

I'm sure there's lots of other amazing out there that's already been done..

Originally posted by ADVISOR
AI is great in theory, how ever they are not able to maintain/repair themselves.

umm.. well I thought that too, and I've tried building my share of pseudo sentient robots (basically mazesolvers).. And man if you try and incorporate ONE single extra decision box, it takes #loads of extra memory!!
In terms of a "learning" m/c one can visualise

1. a massive matrix of interconnecting/looping decision boxes
2. the ability of the m/c to modify its own source code (i.e. learn) based on its experiences
3. Shieeeeeeeeeeeeetloads of excess memory to incorporate "learnt stuff"

If a m/c has the above three pre-requisites and is allowed to "learn freely"for an indefinite amount of time then it has SOME probability of achieving some sort of basic "awareness" somewhere down the line..
(a million years maybe??! )

Having said this, I've seen pretty remarkable stuff on ATS itself:

1. A video of a robot which has the capability to replicate itself!!
The bot consists of cubical units, is snake-like (made up of many units attached end to end) and can replicate if it finds any lone cubical units lying around!!

2. A community of robots that talk to each other to find out if one of them is "lost"; if so identify "who" is lost and then try and locate him in circular search patterns..

I'm sure there's lots of other amazing out there that's already been done..

Originally posted by iris_failsafe
The planes in the movie seemed to be the replacements for the F-18 and F-35's.
[edit on 12-7-2005 by iris_failsafe]

The F-35 hasn't come out to be needing a replacement.

The Talon is based on pure fantasy.

Shattered OUT...

ok let me get this straight?

is the Talon in the photo different than the Evil UAV the movie is about?

im assuming the evil UAV goes nuts; and they have to get their new talons out to destroy it right???

because that talon is not a UAV
its manned notice the cockpit lol