Over a two-week span in December, a heavily modified F-16D Fighting Falcon took to the skies no fewer than a dozen times with an empty cockpit and an artificial intelligence (AI) pilot at the stick. But while pilot-less aircraft aren’t all that uncommon in the skies over warzones today, this Fighting Falcon was packing something different in its memory banks: AI algorithms complex enough to allow it to dogfight all on its own.The AI fighter pilots came from two different efforts, DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program and the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Autonomous Air Combat Operations, or AACO, program.