(U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Alison Strout)
I recently had the privilege of interviewing two top experts in Drone Warfare Technology. You can view the full interview below, and underneath it is a full transcript if you’re more of visual-spatial learner than an auditory one. I enjoyed it tremendously and found their insights very interesting, especially in the light of recent events in the Ukraine. I hope you enjoy it as well!
– Anthony ‘AB’ Bourke
AB: Hello, I’m Anthony Bourke. Most people call me “A.B.” Welcome to our interview today on drones where we’re talking about current aerial warfare drone technology. What we’re seeing lately and maybe what we will see coming in the future. Most importantly is the U.S. military prepared and on the cutting edge of drone technology, or are we being leapfrogged by others? Today I’ve got two superstar drone guests with me, captain Jim Reining, and that is Navy Captain Jim Reining, retired, and US Air Force Colonel Sean Navin also retired.
Jim and Sean are experts in this field and both can provide deep insights into today’s subject. Because Sean is my Air Force brother, I’m gonna start introducing you first. Service does have its privileges Sean and I want to just hit on some high points of your very extensive career and bio. Colonel Sean Navin is a highly experienced F16 and F15 fighter pilot. He started flying F16s in Burlington, Vermont with the famous Green Mountain Boys of the 134th Fighter Squadron.
He moved to California in the late 90s where our paths first crossed with the 144th Fighter Wing of the California Air National Guard, where we flew F16s together, and Sean ultimately flew F15s. During his time in California, Sean served as the squadron commander of the 194th Fighter Squadron, as well as the vice wing commander of the 144th Fighter Wing. Colonel Navin finished his military career as the commander of the 163rd Attack Wing, where he commanded a group of 900 personnel that operated the MQ9A reaper drones in a number of different missions.
He currently serves as the program director of Cal Fire Aviation. Cal Fire is a world-renowned aviation program that responds to thousands of wildland fires throughout California each year. Cal Fire’s current aviation fleet includes Grumman S-2T Airtankers, Bell UH-1H Super Huey Helicopters, Sikorsky S-70i Helicopters, North American OV-10A (& 1 D Model) Bronco Air Tactical Aircraft and C-130 Hercules Airtankers. As we conduct this interview, Colonel Navin has been actively working to keep California safe from wildfires, including the L.A. fires over the past winter, and a number of forest fires currently burning in California. Welcome, Colonel Navin, great to have you.
When I think of fighter attack wings and certainly drone wings I think of multiple squadrons. In your 163rd drone wing, did you have a number of squadrons and what was your mission?
Sean: We did. So, there’s several, actually there’s two that are very specific AB and then there’s one that we’ll talk about here in a little, in a minute. So, the first two are we were training both Air National Guard and Air Force MQ9 drivers at our base at the 163rd. We had a training squadron called the FTU, the formal training unit where we train multiple Air National Guard and Air Force pilots to get through the MQ9 program. The second mission that the 163rd is charged with is a combat line.
The combat line for those who don’t know the MQ9 Reaper, it’s deployed all around the world and the airplane needs to be line of sight to be taken off and landed. So, if you don’t have line of sight with the airplane, it doesn’t know what to do. We have Conexes around the world where there are people who take the airplane off and then they hand it off to us at the 163rd. We pick up the airplane once it’s airborne and then we complete the mission anywhere. It could be any mission, quite frankly. And there’s a lot of them out there and I don’t know how deep we wanna get into the mission set, but you know when people are disappearing off the planet sometimes that MQ9 probably had something to do with it.
And then the airplane comes back to the field, wherever that might be, and it’s landed by again somebody with line of sight on the airplane, and then we release the airplane back to them. So, those are the two primary missions of the 163rd. The third mission that isn’t actually written into our program that we started doing in 2017 was we became an uplink downlink which the MQ9 has the ability to do, to film with the sensor to look at a fire. And then we would send the downlink of a real time fire to the incident commander for the state of California.
The Commanders would experience a one and a half second delay, but they could see fire behavior from above which for any of you who have ever been around a fire, if you’re standing next to it, you have no idea where it’s going ’cause you have no perspective. But when you’re above it and you can look down on it and provide the incident commander with, “Hey, we have limited resources, where am I gonna put ’em?” The MQ9 delivered them literally with a second and a half latency delay and because of this we were so much more successful in fighting fires.
I’ve been out of the military for a few years now, they’re not using MQ9 anymore in that capacity, which is unfortunate, but I think the state of California is moving towards finding a way and it might be drone worthy to deliver the same message or the same fire picture we were giving them several years ago. So, those are the two plus one that we were doing at the 163rd.
AB: It’s fascinating, and I’m always amazed by this idea that someone in Riverside, California can be controlling a drone real time 10,000 miles away, putting precision munitions on target. It’s mind boggling. It must be incredible technology to make that happen.
Sean: It’s incredible technology. It’s delicate as well, right? You’re depending on satellites and everything else in the world to make it work. But I’ll tell you what, they’re really good at what they do, and I think we’ll get into this discussion a little bit later. But it’s also tough to understand when you’re sitting on the ground in a safe place, in this case, the state of California, but you’re out there fighting the fight, there’s some maybe loss of sense of what’s really happening out here? Because you don’t know. You can’t see it, you’re not sure. So, it’s a bit of a, it’s an interesting conversation, which I know, I think we’ll get into here over time.
AB: Yeah, I’d love to. Okay. Welcome. Great to have you and, second, and certainly not least, I want to introduce Navy Captain, retired Jim Reining, my friend also and neighbor in beautiful Park City, Utah. Captain Reining had an exceptional United States Navy career. Jim, and I have to bring this up, made most notable by the fact that after 28 years on active duty, he flew airplanes for 26 of 28 years, and I think you may be the only Navy pilot to ever have pulled that off. Maybe at some point you could explain to everyone and certainly the future aviators on this podcast, how you did that.
Jim spent the majority of his career as a test pilot, a naval test pilot, a high percentage of that out of Pax River, Patuxent River on the Chesapeake Bay, where he served as the program manager and commanding officer of the ACAP 1D advanced sensors technology program. He also served as the MQ4C Triton integrated project team lead, the P8A Poseidon government flight test director and the chief engineer for the P3 Orion fleet. Pretty impressive career there. Jim earned his bachelor’s in aerospace engineering from the United States Naval Academy. He also earned a master’s in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, and he currently serves as senior vice president at STR, Science and Technology Research. Is that correct, Jim?
Jim: That is correct.
AB: STR is a cutting edge defense contractor where he heads up their systems development division and he’s grown that division quite dramatically. I’d love to hear more about that. Welcome, Captain Reining, great to have you with us today. I know many people probably mostly from movies, know about the MQ9A Reaper drone. What is the primary mission of the MQ4C Triton drone?
Jim: Sure. Thanks, AB, really happy you invited me to join you today. The MQ4 is a derivative of the original NASA Global Hawk, so it’s, as we watch and track drone technology, it was originally designed to do long range surveillance and then the Air Force took on Global Hawks and did about three different block versions. Everything from battlefield management and control to long range surveillance and persistence.
The Navy’s version, the MQ4, is to take over that maritime domain awareness task where we can put a bird up for almost 24 hours and let it loiter, bring everything in and downlink it to improve the operational picture for not only Naval aviation, but Naval Surface, Air Force, Army, Marine Corps. So, we’ve deployed it. It’s actually deployed right now and we’re on the second generation of it that will be deployed in the next year.
AB: Can a drone like that, certainly I know they can see the surface. There’s a lot of maritime fog and weather. Can it see through weather? Can it see through water?
Jim: Yeah, from a radar perspective weather doesn’t have an effect on us. From a visual perspective we developed something called EOIR. One of the things that the Navy changed when they transitioned from the Global Hawk to the MQ4 is we strengthened the wings, and we gave it an ability to do a dip in profile so that we could address that very question. If there were clouds and we needed a visual identification we can descend. Global Hawk originally wasn’t designed with wings to enable that kind of flight profile. So, the loads on the wings as you go lower would be too high to do that consistently over the life of a platform.
[Note – EOIR camera is an advanced dual-sensing technology that integrates electro-optical (EO) and infrared (IR) capabilities to provide comprehensive surveillance and tracking functionalities.]
AB: Interesting. Great to have you both. I want to get right into the primary focus of today’s session and that is drones, unmanned aerial vehicles. And most specifically, it was just over a month ago that Ukraine, and I assume most of our viewers saw this on TV or read about in the news, put some drones in some shipping containers, moved them inside of Russia’s borders, and then at a predetermined time launched these drones, had them attack Russian military bases, took out at least from what I’ve heard, almost 30 percent of Russia’s air capability airplanes on the ground. It’s just remarkable technology.
This points to the rapid innovation that is going on in the world of aerial combat. And I would say particularly in Ukraine, which about the size of Texas, trying to defend itself against the U.S. and yet Ukraine has done such an incredible job. Sean, I know you have spent a lot of time flying and training with the Ukrainians. Would you just talk about their innovative spirit and what was your reaction when you saw this attack?
Sean: So yeah, so I’ve had the pleasure of being over there several times. The first thing that dawned on me after about a week or so of being there the first time was their resolve. When I say that people are willing, regardless of age to pick up arms and fight, that’s exactly what it means. There’s no pun intended in that they actually, anybody will pick up, and they are so proud of who they are that you get a sense of understanding why today they’re still defending themselves after two years-ish roughly of fighting with, like you said, the U.S. versus Texas. And they refuse in any way, shape, or form to quit.
They refuse, they will not do that. And can you find that resolve everywhere in the world? No, not necessarily. But in the Ukraine, you absolutely can. It’s not just there – this is kind of twofold. I think the Ukraine, and we helped them understand how to defend themselves without giving away any U.S. not secrets, but U.S. tactics if you will. We didn’t wanna give too much, but we tried to help them understand, hey, if you’re gonna set up a defense, here’s how we might do it. And so, they have set themselves up for that.
But I think it also points to, and I know this is gonna be on a podcast, but I’m retired now, so it points to a weakness in a country that everyone thought was gonna be overpowering, and they just aren’t. It’s not very skilled, in my opinion, and Jim may have a different one. I don’t think, there’s plenty of people, right? They just keep throwing people at the problem. But from a tactical skillset, I’m not sure Russia stands up there. Like with China, that’s a whole ‘nother problem. That’s a whole ‘nother problem there. From the Ukrainian standpoint like I said, you can go all the way back to World War II, AB when Hitler thought he was gonna run over Kiev in a week, and it took him like two months because everyone stood up and fought.
And that’s exactly how they see what they do. There is so much pride in that country. That’s the part that blew me away. It wasn’t just the military. When we were out having lunch or having dinner, everyone had the same resolve, and we weren’t talking about fighting. It’s just the discussions they had were, “No, we will never. Oh, by the way, we don’t speak Russian. We speak Ukrainian.” Yeah. You go to Ukraine and say, “Hey, I can hear your Russian speaking” you might get tossed in the corner somewhere and get beat up.
I’ve been there three times, and I will never forget the resolve that those people have and now that we’re watching it in action, which is very unfortunate, but they are defending themselves like nobody else. And when you’re outweighed by that much and you’re still standing, I don’t think you need to say anything else.
AB: Yeah. Jim, this just brings up a really important question in my mind, and I certainly don’t equate our security with Russia security, but man, if little Ukraine can slip these shipping containers and drones across the border into Russia and launch them and take out military bases, can that happen to us? Are we vulnerable on the same level?
Jim: Sure. I don’t see how it couldn’t happen, maybe. You look at, just go to a global port and watch the containers come off, I mean, thousands of ’em an hour. And we have all kinds of technology to scan, to do all kinds of things, but it’s a cost imposition and the idea that others aren’t gonna follow suit would be a little bit naive in my opinion. Now, when we talk about how we protect our bases, our layered defense, and our systems actually work much more than what we see our Russian counterpart do, do we have a better chance of defending against something like this? Absolutely.
Do we need to continue to evolve the technology for the counter UAS? Oh, yeah. And there’s lots of efforts going on in that regard right now. How do we continue to be both aggressive, which is employing these as weapons and defensive? And how do we protect our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen across the globe because it’s going to proliferate.
AB: How do you currently protect yourself against drones? How do we, on the battlefield and how do we in the civilian world, how do we protect ourselves against drones?
Jim: I think there’s a number. I was doing a little prep and current counter UAS companies went from like 16 about a decade and a half ago to over 600 in this country alone right now. And we’re not the country that leads in that. A lot of this drone technology, I mean, Israel is very deep in both offensive and defensive maneuvering as you could imagine with the situation that they face. China produces the most by far. They produce capability. I don’t know that they produce the backend smarts of how do I counter this? More so just the manufacturing might.
But I think we are spending a lot of effort. There’s multiple ways. There’s the simple old way, I take a stick, and I beat it. I shoot it out of the sky, which is just kinda just the brunt force. There’s the how do I with electronic warfare take away the signal and cause the system to crash? Then there’s the more advanced, leading into some of the cyber things, why do I want to take her out and break the signal? Why don’t I just capture the signal and turn it around and send it right back to where it came from? Then I get a dual use out of it. And there’s more things that are out there that we’re doing including how do I have sensors 24/7 around the places I’m really concerned about? And how do I put that up temporarily and take it down and move it to the next place I’m worried about?
So, I think there’s a lot of really good technology. The problem is if someone can buy a drone for $1,000.00 and I’m spending $10 million to defend a place, now I’m spending money on that, not spending money on other things. So, it is a challenge for us. There’s no doubt about it.
AB: Yeah. Just in terms of VIPs, presidents’ limousines. Are we getting to a point in the United States, and certainly if I were an Afghani I would be very aware of this, but are we at a place in the United States where drones could be attacking us, or if not today, is that around the corner or are we staying ahead of that threat?
Jim: Well, I think much like I talk all the time about the evolution of the airplane from just simple, basic reconnaissance to transportation, to all the things we use airplanes for right now. Drones have been on that same path. The mission space, the availability is going to increase. I think it’s a cat and mouse game like it always is with these kinds of technologies that we’re gonna advance, we’re gonna bring, I break it down into the airplane, I break it down into the sensors and then the automation and each of those have vulnerabilities that can be exploited. So, we’ve gotta be smart about how we go about that and how we can use a single solution for multiple threats.
AB: Wow. Sean, any thoughts on that? How do we stay safe from what feels like a very real threat today?
Sean: Yeah, it’s totally a real threat and I echo Jim’s sentiments, everything he said. I wanted to circle back to, how did the Ukraine get those drones inside of the borders of Russia? And I don’t know the answer, I’m speculating, but the USA in conjunction with many other countries has one of the greatest intelligence services in the world, right? We hear most things happening. Do we get surprised every now and again? Sure. Look at 9/11. We got surprised. I don’t think Russia has that capability and if they do, they’re not using it. And here’s why. They’re too, like Putin who is shoulders up saying nope we’re gonna fight and I don’t need any of this other technology. Which by the way, does not mean we couldn’t be attacked. It absolutely can happen because even with the best intelligence in the world, you could get something by us. And again, we use 9/11 as an example. However, I feel like we probably are a little bit more, what’s the right word? Like we are looking and listening a little more, especially after what happened in Russia, my guess is we’re listening a lot more. We’re listening.
We’re hearing things and when we hear things, we try to figure out where that’s coming from and we try to put two and two and three together and make a oh okay, hey, guess what? This container coming from X might have something. I feel like we’re ahead in that sense. Do I think that it could happen? Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. But I feel like we’re ahead of the world in that sense and we’ve cut off more attacks than most people can ever even dream about. Because we only hear about the ones that happen, which is unfortunate, obviously.
However, if you want to talk about all the ones that have been stopped, you don’t have enough time for the next three weeks to walk through every single attack that has been thwarted by the U.S. government in some fashion. So, that’s the only thing I wanna throw out there.
AB: Yeah, it is remarkable, and we definitely owed a debt of gratitude to many people working behind the scenes that never get any thanks. I couldn’t agree with you more. Gentlemen, I wanna switch subjects to a topic that I am so interested in and is so cool, certainly as a former fighter pilot, and that’s this idea of loyal wingmen or CCAs, collaborative combat aircraft. I was trying to describe this to someone the other day, and so just to set the table I went into my favorite new friend ChatGPT and asked, what is the definition of a loyal wingman or a CCA? And this is what I got.
Loyal wingman drones, also known as collaborative combat aircraft, CCAs, are a rapidly developing technology and military aviation. These AI powered unmanned aircraft are designed to operate alongside crude fighter jets, such as the F35 and future sixth generation fighters, enhancing their capabilities and reducing risks to human pilots.
Jim, I’m gonna ask you this first. What is a CCA, collaborative combat airplane in plain English? Do they exist today? Are they out there? What will their roles be and how will they operate today and in the future?
Jim: Thanks, AB. Yeah, they’re out there. We’re on increment one. We the government, we the U.S. gave contracts to five different manufacturers and then selected a version from General Atomics and Anduril. They entered ground testing. They were built and now passed a critical design review testing as of May of this year with flights expected later this year. So, we’re absolutely 100 percent involved in it and moving forward.
And we’ve done other things in the past. We’ve flown a Valkyrie with your favorite plane, the F16, to demonstrate the technology and the F15 to cover Sean. It’s not something that has just started recently, but the commitment to the loyal wingman has been ongoing. Actually, one of our allies, Australia started a version with Boeing over a year and a half ago. So, they’re probably a little bit further along with their program right now. But as I’ve been told many times, consider Australia our 51st state as a friend. They’re one of our best. And so, there’s a lot of collaboration, pun intended, between the two countries on this topic.
And again, go back to history. How do we start flying? We started flying as a solo jet solo plane, quickly figured out, hey, it’d be better if I had a wingman with me because now I can employ some tactics that I can’t do by myself. And you get to the fifth gen fighters, and you look at ’em and they’re not fighting in a section, they’re fighting as a four ship. And this is the next extension of how do I fight as a four ship, and how do I minimize the cost and the human life that’s at risk?
So, I see it going full forward. I see the technology being pushed at the boundaries much like we pushed the boundaries when we did the initial flight tests into lots of different fourth and fifth gen aircraft. So yeah, I see it going forward full speed.
AB: Sean, if you had a loyal wingman flying with you, and you’re flying a F15/F16, or more likely an F35, and you’re single ship, or maybe you’ve got one other F35 wingman with you. What role do you imagine a loyal wingman is going to provide? Or three loyal wingman or four loyal wingman?
Sean: Yeah. Or seven or eight or 10 or 12. Be great. The more I have, the better.
AB: Tell me about that.
Sean: Gimme 16 if you want for this, for that sake of argument. So. no I hear, and again, I’m not nearly as advanced in that particular part of the drone program. I understand where we’re going. I like it. I think it evolves to a point where in my opinion I still think you need someone, somebody as a human being needs to be in the space of the battle that’s happening. And I only say that because you can’t replicate the situational awareness from the air on the ground. So, you’re sitting on the ground in a Conex box flying an airplane. It’s really difficult to feel or figure out what is actually happening.
Can you be successful? Of course. No doubt. And if we can save U.S. Navy/Air Force, Marines, Army folks, I’m all in. But I do feel like somebody has to be in that arena to get a feel for what’s happening. Because there may be times where, like I said, when you’re sitting on the ground, MQ9 is a perfect example, right? They’re over in wherever they are. And you just, that feeling is so different. You’re just sitting in a Conex and you’re trying to execute a mission, but you’re not actually there. I think having the drone program, amazing, but with manned fighters calling the shots.
Give me as many as you can, but I would like to have one or two men and/or women leading the parade saying, “Hey boss, here’s where we’re at right now.” Talking to the RC, talking to whomever to say hey, this environment is changing rapidly. We might need to take a step back, like regroup and then come back tomorrow. Versus, hey, I’m on the ground. I’m just slinging crap everywhere. So, I think there’s a great balance in there. And like I said, I love what Jim said. I love going forward with this thing.
And trust me, I will take, if you wanna gimme 15 of them, I’m in, but I’ll be the guy out there. I can’t wait to be out there in front giving direction. That’d be awesome. But at the end of the day, I think somebody has to understand what’s happening in the moment. I think. I could be wrong. So, those are my thoughts.
AB: I love it. And Jim, you’re probably more advanced in AI than anybody else on this call. We’re not talking about drones that are gonna be directed by somebody on the ground. We’re talking about autonomous drones that are operating on AI based on inputs from their flight lead. For the sake of argument, lets use an F35 driver. What missions do you give them? Do you send one to go jam targets? Do you send another one to drop bombs on target? What will they do?
Jim: I think that’s the great advantage of it maybe, is that, you take your F35, you take your modern day fighter, it’s a jack of all trades, right? I’ve gotta do counter air, I’ve gotta do offensive, I’ve gotta do defensive air. Now I can load out one of my loyal wingmen with an entire ECM suite and say, okay, I’m gonna position you ahead of me. So far, you’re gonna intercept any kind of jamming.
I’m gonna be able to react in time. I’m gonna be able to shift my forces, which is my other loyal wingman. Maybe I load one up with weapons, maybe I load one up with optical systems. The ability to do all the things that you can’t fit on a single jet, but in a single mission set it’s what’s so powerful in my opinion.
AB: Can these loyal wingmen currently, I’m going to use the word “keep up”? Do they have the “thrusties” to fly at the kind of speeds our fighter jets are operating? I certainly don’t think of that with traditional drones.
Jim: The drones get classified in a classification one through five, and we’re talking about class one drones here that are going to be able to cruise with our modern day fighters. Obviously that incurs a cost in order to have that big of an engine to suck, squeeze, bang, and blow at the rate we need. The whole part of this is how do we manage the cost? How do we reuse the intelligence, the sensors from platform A to platform B, to platform C, so that we can build as many of these as all of us who have been there would love to have on our wing and love to be able to control?
AB: Yeah. I think I heard Sean say, “I still like having a human out there, one or two F35 drivers” or whatever the next six generation fighter is. Jim, do you think there’s a chance we’re heading to a world of aerial warfare where there are no humans in the sky?
Jim: Well, I think long term, yes. Eventually we will be, what’s the most vulnerable limiting factor of a sixth gen fighter? It’s the pink, squishy server we put in the seat. That’s it. Aerodynamically, we could fly so many cool things. But as a human, we couldn’t be in the airplane to do it. So, do I think it’s close? No. We have a lot of challenges. Just how do I detail the mission? How do I call the audible? How do I switch up? How do I manage 16 people on my wings? What’s the interface to the guy in the seat doing this? All of those are challenges we’ve gotta get through.
But yeah, again I love to look at history as a guide. Back in World War II the belief was the battleship was the queen of the Navy. Well, that kind of changed, didn’t it? Do I think this is gonna change? Sure. I think so. I think we’ll eventually figure it out. Question is, are humans still in control or is whoever that we’ve created now controlling? But that’s kind of a dark sentence, but I think we’ll get there. You look at all the things we can do. We have a lot of challenges, but it will happen.
AB: Yeah. Sean, you touched on China earlier. Everything I read and you two can correct me, please correct me, is that China is so far ahead of anybody else on certainly drone technology. I think there’s a company in China that built a million drones this year. Should we assume that they are ahead of us on this loyal wingman technology, or is that our realm?
Sean: That’s a tough question, AB. I’m gonna equate from what I know in studying China, they have a very similar resolve as the Ukraine does. And so, if we’re gonna find an advantage, that might be where they’ have an advantage and Jim’s gonna probably step into the drone world, ’cause I don’t know, actually, I really don’t know from a drone standpoint how far forward they are. What I do know is, in a world broad perspective, the U.S. and China do not want to fight each other. This is one of those, this is a no-win situation. Everybody loses. I know it’s hard. I’m trying to answer the question, but I don’t have all the pieces I need to maybe answer it.
So, this is more philosophical. I think that the U.S. and China have no interest in becoming, they’ll do it in public, right? They’ll chitchat and they’ll talk on TV. But to actually get to an actual, “Hey, let’s go”, I don’t think either side wants any part of it, because I know the U.S. will stand tall, but I also know China. They are not gonna just lay down and like you said, are we behind in the drone world?
My friend, I’m not sure, I haven’t done enough studying on that piece. Jim, again, he’s up next, maybe he’ll be able to help me with that. But I know this, if we wanna pick a country, that’s not the country we wanna fight. Not for me anyway. I’ve got no interest in that. Hence I’m retired.
AB: Jim, you must have a take on this.
Jim: I think, I don’t know. And even if I did know, I’m sure I couldn’t say, but when you think about the components of technology needed, AB, I think there’s, it’s not just a single technology to be able to create a CCA and execute these missions. It’s multiple technologies. It’s sensor technology, it’s propulsion technology, it’s AI technology. One comment I can make, we heard about Deep Seek and all of a sudden we freaked out. Like China’s so far ahead of us, and now you kinda watch, and you read the news, what is it? Two months later?
Oh, maybe they’re not, maybe it’s not quite what we thought it was. I always caution China is a formidable adversary. They are a peer adversary. They are not a near peer. We have to consider them a peer adversary. So, do I think they’re ahead of us in some areas? Absolutely. Do I think we’re ahead of them in some areas? Absolutely. Back to Sean’s comment, it really comes down to resolve and I’ll bet on our country every time over anybody else, but like Sean, I’m retired, I’m not gonna be at the pointy end. I don’t wanna send our kids that way either.
AB: And Jim, you just mentioned deep seek. Would you just clarify the meaning of deep seek for our audience?
Jim: Yeah. Deep Seek is an AI company that was rolled out in the media about two months ago as an example of where the U.S. is losing this battle in AI. And when it first came out, everybody was like, oh my gosh, we’re so far behind. Recent news reports have kind of put it back into focus that maybe they’re not as far ahead in some areas, but they’ve done some things better. And when we talk about AI, there’s components to AI.
So, you’ve gotta break those down into understanding what that is. And behind those components is the computer architecture that’s necessary. And that computer architecture is different than what we think of as like a CPU, a computer processing unit versus a graphical processing unit, versus the next generation. So, have they challenged us on all those fronts? Absolutely. Which is why they’re now a peer, not a near peer.
AB: Yeah. Gentlemen, we’re getting near the end of our time together. Before we go, first I’ll ask you was there anything on drones and loyal wingman that I should have covered that we didn’t? And then the second thing would be what else is out there in the future of aerial combat that the audience might be interested in knowing about or hearing about what’s potentially coming? And Sean, I’ll start with you.
Sean: So, I don’t think there’s anything to add, AB. I think Jim covered the drone piece very expertly and again, I’m just pitching in. I didn’t spend nearly as much time in that program as flying fighters, but I think the combination of the two makes for the most lethal force. And again, I’m not saying that in 20 years or 30 years from now that it won’t be an all AI/drone force. I just feel the combination of the two are currently, as we speak, are most lethal. And what was the second part, bud? I’m sorry, what was the second part?
AB: Anything we didn’t cover as far as the future of aerial combat, aerial warfare that you imagine or is coming down the line?
Sean: Yeah. So, don’t know, but imagine, I’m actually gonna jump on Jim’s bandwagon here. I imagine that we get 20 or 30 years down the road and maybe AI gets to a point where it’s actually not 100 percent reliable. That’s never gonna happen, but maybe it’s 95 percent reliable, which quite frankly, as Jim said earlier, we’re asking a human being to be reliable. And for the most part we absolutely are. But can we be fallible? Sure, we can.
Maybe we get to a point where someone figures out that we have built a program that only allows for a very small latency, maybe a 1 or 2 percent, like hey, I made the wrong decision 1 or 2 percent of the times, unlike the human being who might make it 10 percent of the times. So, no, I think where Jim is talking about we’re going probably long past my lifetime, I hope. I hope we don’t have to get in a big battle. But if we do currently, I’d love to see us stay joint. I like a human being in there with CCA. I think it’d be amazing. 40 years from now, they’re gonna find technology that we didn’t even know existed.
They’re gonna find something that we didn’t know, and there’s gonna be another smart kid out there, whoever it is, wherever it is, they’re gonna build the next program that says, hey, by the way, I’ve got us to 98 percent. I will not fail at this percentage. And so, if we can get to that point and we can avoid human loss, who wouldn’t be in? Yeah, I’d be in.
AB: I love it. Jim, thoughts on the subject?
Jim: I’m gonna close with a couple thoughts, AB. First of all, I thank you for having me here and I will tell you it’s most timely. We just, the president just signed a presidential action called Unleashing American Drone Dominance, signed on June 6th. Last week in Alaska the defense innovation unit and numerous U.S. manufacturers went up there to play with all the drones, to test it, to do all these kinds of things. Why Alaska? Because all the emissions, we’d disrupt civilian traffic. We cause all kinds of issues.
I think your hosting this as most timely. This is an issue that’s at the front of many people’s minds, so thank you for doing that. I think that’s great and there’s lots of things for people to read going forward. Where do I think we’re going? I think, and we’ve seen it, we are more connected than ever. Fighter world is gonna be more connected than ever. The sensors coming into the platform are well beyond what’s on the platform. How do we fight that? What’s our moral obligation? What’s our rules of engagement? How do they change?
And this kind of goes to where Sean was talking about that it takes more people. Unmanned is not un-crewed. It’s just no man in the airplane. The people on the ground, and Sean can probably speak to this from experience, far outnumbered the number of people in a single airplane in order to make this all happen. So, we’ve got a lot of things to think about as we go forward.
And what does that architecture construct of decision making have to be? And it’s gonna put different challenges on our pilots of the future. Unlike us where it was pretty much see and point and click, they’re gonna have a lot more to deal with than whatever I had to deal with. So, thank you again. I think it’s been a great discussion.
AB: Yeah. Thank you both for joining. Great to see both of your faces, great to hear your thoughtful comments. And hey, maybe we can get together on another one like this or a different subject in the future.
Sean: Yeah, I look forward to it, AB. Thanks for having us, Jim. Look forward and I gotta get myself to Park City, Anthony.
AB: Yes you do. And we’ll get together for one beer with Jim.
Jim: There you go.
Sean: Like your one.