Manoeuvring in close air combat

Three years earlier, in August 2020, an agent built by Heron Systems had beaten a Weapons Instructor Course graduate five engagements to nothing, but inside a simulator with a fixed rule set and no consequence. The 2023 flights put the algorithms in a real airframe, with a safety pilot aboard who could take over, on a test range, against one opponent flying agreed profiles. DARPA reported the flights as a first and has not published a score, which is itself the reason this stays contested rather than ceded. What is at stake is a narrow slice of air combat, the turning fight inside visual range, and not the mission that surrounds it: the planning, the fuel, the rules of engagement, the tanker. The decision to fire is not part of the contest, and the programme has kept it under human control.