I built the AI that worked really well for this back in the’90s. But DARPA had to spend billions on the big companies for crap. I also told them to use the F-16 as a test bed, but it took them over 20 years to figure that out. And the current winning AI for air to air is essentially useless.
It seems to me that AI controlled aircraft have been around since computer games. Those are virtual but could they be ported over to a real aircraft? Some flight sims have some very realistic flight dynamics built into them.