AI fighter drones for the Pentagon looks unlikely for 2025, too

If you’ve been waiting for Congress to approve the wide deployment of the XQ-58 Valkyrie for the Air Force, you might need just a little more patience.

As Congress is looking down the barrel of another possible government shutdown in the next couple of days, it seems increasingly likely that the result will be another Continuing Resolution, freezing spending at 2024 levels with no new funding for the Valkyrie.

This should get Congress through Christmas to pass appropriation bills in «regular order.»

Just a «pathway» for now
Looking at next years defence bill, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 (NDAA) as it currently lies in the Senate, leaves little doubt about the Valkyrie program, however — it is only mentioned as an “Autonmous system” with a «pathway.»

There is some language about development, but not deployment, according to Drone life.

Still testing and developing at Eglin
The Valkyrie XQ-58 is a cutting edge fighter aircraft run entirely by artificial intelligence, and has been designed to fly risky missions instead of piloted craft. It can act on it’s own to deploy internal or external weapons systems, and they can act in drone swarms.

Currently undergoing advanced testing at Eglin Air Force Base, pilots of «regular» fighter planes are already flying with this so-called «loyal wingman» and are deploying new capabilities as the system evolves.

The latest addition is that of a landing gear, making it possible to take off and land at airstrips, which makes operating the drone a little cleaner. Up until now, the drone has been launched off a ramp and landed with parachutes, according to this article from The Warzone.

Kratos, which develops the Valkyrie for the Air and Marine Forces, sounds positively giddy about it’s future in this writeup, talking about delivering for their «customers» and seemingly unfazed by the prospect of more delays to the procurement of the 2000 drones that the Pentagon asked for in 2023 and was delayed in 2024.

Washington in deadlock, as always
The difficulty of procuring leading edge equipment for the Pentagon is marred by several factors. According to Pew Research, Congress hasn’t passed appropriations bills on regular order since 1997, relying instead in some form of omnibus, minibus, and continuing resolution to fund the government.

These last few years, Congress has also been hamstrung by the 2023 debt ceiling deal, capping any budget increases at 1% for the fiscal year 2025. Even with this deal in place, Republicans in the House have pushed for far smaller bills in the name of austerity.

This caused the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, to write a serious letter to key member of congress on September 9, complaining about the constant Continuing resolutions and lack of adequate defense funding.

— [This] ties out hands behind our back while expecting us to be agile and to accelerate progress, wrote Austin, noting that it would slow progress on «a number of key nuclear, ship-building, high tech drone and other weapons programs.»

Austin also notes in the letter that there have been 48 continuing resolutions during 14 of the last 15 fiscal years, lasting a combined 1 800 days — and says, basically, that this is no way to compete against China.

See also: Kunstig intelligens fløy jagerfly-drone i tre timer, Pentagon ber om 600 milliarder kroner til å bestille 2 000 AI-droner, and — Om 10-15 år er en tredel av militæret robotisk.

Read more: Nytimes visits Eglin Air Force Base, The NDAA text @ Congress, Upgrades to the XQ-58, and SecDef Austin’s letter.