Future wars may depend as much on algorithms as on ammunition
Future wars may depend as much on algorithms as on
ammunition, report says.
By Christian Davenport December 3 at 5:14 PM
The Pentagon is increasingly focused on the notion that
the might of U.S. forces will be measured as much by the advancement of their
algorithms as by the ammunition in their arsenals. And so as it seeks to
develop the technologies of the next war amid a technological arms race with
China, the Defense Department has steadily increased spending in three key
areas: artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, according to a
recent report.
Investment in those areas increased to $7.4 billion last
year, up from $5.6 billion five years ago, according to Govini, a data science
and analytics firm, and it appears likely to grow as the armed services look to
transform how they train, plan and fight.
“Rapid advances in artificial intelligence — and the vastly
improved autonomous systems and operations they will enable — are pointing
toward new and more novel warfighting applications involving human-machine
collaboration and combat teaming,” Robert Work, the former deputy secretary of
defense, wrote in an introduction to the report. “These new applications will
be the primary drivers of an emerging military-technical revolution.”
The United States “can either lead the coming revolution,
or fall victim to it,” he added.
In an interview, Work, who serves on Govini’s board, said
the advancements in technology are transforming war just as the advent of the
rifle, telegraph and railroad did generations ago. Much of the current work is
being driven by companies with large presences in the Washington area,
including Leidos, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, CACI and SAIC,
according to the report.
Service members are using virtual reality to simulate
battle conditions in training. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) has been investing in better computing power designed to handle vast
amounts of data, including quantum computing and what’s known as neuromorphic
engineering, helping develop incredibly complex computing systems designed to
mimic biological systems.
There are signs that AI and human-machine collaboration
are already making their way into American weaponry and its intelligence
apparatus. The Pentagon is working toward using drones as the wingmen of
fighter jets and ships, which can probe into enemy territory on their own. The
Marine Corps has been testing cargo helicopters that can fly autonomously and
that would allow Marines, using a tablet, to “easily request supplies even to
austere or dangerous environments,” according to the Office of Naval Research.
The stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, with 8 million
lines of code, is called a “flying computer” that is as much a sensor in the
skies as it is a fighter jet, officials say. As an example, officials point to
how F-35s communicate with one another on their own. If one jet in a sortie
detects an enemy fighter on its radar that is out of the range of the other
F-35s along with it, that information is automatically relayed to the other
jets.
Another example is Project Maven, a computing system
being designed to sift through the massive troves of data and video captured by
surveillance and then alert human analysts of patterns or when there is
abnormal or suspicious activity.
The technology in robotics is fast improving, as well. In
2015, when DARPA sponsored a challenge to test how robots could navigate
certain obstacles, many of the semiautonomous machines tumbled and fell,
crashing in sometimes comical fashion. But last month, Boston Dynamics released
a stunning video that showed a humanoid robot doing a back flip off a raised
platform and landing on its feet.
But despite those advancements, the Pentagon and others
are worried that the United States is not moving fast enough.
“The bad news is our competitors aren’t standing still,”
Work said.
China in particular has been investing heavily in AI,
defense analysts say.
“China intends to seize the initiative to become the
‘premier global AI innovation center’ by 2030, potentially surpassing the
United States in the process,” according to a recent report by the Center for a
New American Security.
That should serve as a call-to-arms “Sputnik moment,”
Work said. “I personally believe that a national challenge like this has to be
met with a national response,” he said.
For the past several years, the Pentagon has been wooing
Silicon Valley firms that have driven much of the innovation, but have
traditionally been loath to work within the Pentagon’s plodding and cumbersome
bureaucracy.
In September, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan
wrote in a memo that he was “directing aggressive steps to establish a culture
of experimentation, adaptation and risk-taking to ensure we are employing
emerging technologies to meet our warfighters’ needs and to increase speed and
agility technology development and procurement.”
He also signed a directive to accelerate the development
of cloud computing for the Pentagon, which he said “is critical to maintaining
our military’s technological advantage.”
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