The tiny tech lab that put AI on a spyplane has another secret project February 11 A U-2 flies above the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, California, Mar. 23, 2016. (Staff Sgt. Robert M. Trujillo/U.S. Air Force) WASHINGTON It started as a dare. When Will Roper, then the Air Force’s top acquisition official, visited Beale Air Force Base in California last fall, he issued a challenge to the U-2 Federal Laboratory, a five-person organization founded in October 2019. The team was established to create advanced technologies for the venerable Lockheed Martin U-2 spyplane, and Roper wanted to push the team further. “He walked into the laboratory and held his finger out and pointed directly at me,” recalled Maj. Ray Tierney, the U-2 pilot who founded and now leads the lab. “He said, ‘Ray, I got a challenge.’ We didn’t even say hello.”
Maj. “Vudu”, a U-2 Dragon Lady pilot assigned to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, prepares to taxi after returning from a training sortie at Beale Air Force, Calif., Dec. 15, 2020. This flight marks a major leap forward for national defense as artificial intelligence took flight aboard a military aircraft for the first time in the history of the Department of Defense. The AI algorithm, developed by Air Combat Command’s U-2 Federal Laboratory, trained the AI to execute specific in-flight tasks that would otherwise be done by the pilot. The flight was part of a specifically constructed scenario pitting the AI against another dynamic computer algorithm in order to prove both the new technology capability, and its ability to work in coordination with a human. (Air Force photograph by Airman 1st Class Luis A. Ruiz-Vazquez)