An experimental F-16 fighter jet has taken Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on a history-making flight controlled by artificial intelligence and not a human pilot. Kendall said he came out of Thursday's flight in California, witnessed by The Associated Press, confident enough in AI's capabilities that he would trust it to fire weapons. The flight is serving as a public statement of confidence in the future role of AI in air combat. “We tend to use AI and we think of it like it's a thing. It's really software that works. It does very complicated tasks and using new technologies that involve very powerful computing and advanced mathematics to solve problems that you couldn't solve previously with computers,” Kendall said. The military is planning to use the technology to operate an unmanned fleet of 1,000 aircraft. “We will be able to use these uncrewed aircraft tactically in ways we would not want to use a crewed aircraft. And they're not expendable. We're not throwing them away. We're going to reuse them. That's the intent. But we can let them be a trade, we can put them in places where some of them were intentionally sacrificed, in order to draw fire or to find out where the other side is, find out where the enemy is. And I think our pilots in general appreciate that that's going to give them a competitive advantage,” Kendall said.