Robotics, automation and artificial intelligence may be a big part of future warfare, but human factors—not machine learning—will determine the outcome of war, said Brig. Gen. Miles Brown of the U.S. Army Futures Command’s Futures and Concepts Center.
In the very near future, soldiers on the battlefield may depend more on artificial intelligence than their own comrades.
Success in autonomous vehicles would be having a dozen spoof-proof Next-Generation Combat Vehicles operated by one human, according to Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, who leads the cross-functional team searching for vehicles that can provide more range, function and lethal punch on the battlefield.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper sees the landscape for artificial intelligence capabilities through the eyes of a young Army infantry officer during the First Gulf War.
Soldiers fighting alongside robots on future battlefields will build trust with their unmanned comrades only if they understand why the machine is doing what it’s doing.
Unmanned systems on the battlefield are an inevitable consequence of the rise in lethal, precision weapons that make human survival unlikely, said former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work.
Speaking April 24 at a Mad Scientist Conference in Austin, Texas, Work said the U.S. won’t be able to recruit or afford a force large enough to fight in future megacity combat and won’t be able to protect soldiers who could be deployed.
The application of artificial intelligence to solving battlefield challenges runs a risk of making it harder on commanders, warns Peter Schwartz, the lead enterprise systems engineer for the MITRE Corp.
Advances in robotics and autonomous systems hold the promise of giving the U.S. Army capabilities advantages over near-peer competitors in a close-combat fight, says a new research paper published by the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare.
The Army has been shifting more research and technology funding to autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles because future battles could be won by the side with the best robotics, Army Secretary Mark T. Esper said.
Artificial intelligence and robotics have “the potential to fundamentally change the character of warfare,” Esper said earlier this month at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “We want to get there first, and I tell you we will get there first.”
Robotics and artificial intelligence will be in widespread use on the battlefield as soon as within the next decade, which is why the Army is investing in those technologies now, the Army’s top leaders told a Senate committee.
In recent testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Army Secretary Mark T. Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley outlined a future scenario in which the Army will have manned and unmanned combat vehicles on the battlefield. There will be flexibility in how they are used, and they will provide better protection for soldiers.
