Artificial Intelligence is beginning to influence various aspects of our society and multiple domains in our daily life. Technology is always a deciding factor for society and it re-defines the social parameters with some unique outputs.
Global powers are preparing themselves to control and maneuver AI technologies to gain superiority in this and convert it to a new paradigm of power. Research centers and scholars are continuously analyzing implementation of AI and its counter effect.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a form of intelligence represented by the machine and it is similar to natural intelligence exhibited by humans and animals. Most of the AI text book advocated the concept of “Intelligent Agent” as any device which reacts according to the external environment known as intelligent agents. Such devices perceive the external environment and reacts according to optimized requirements. They are programmed with cognitive functions to perform the learning and reasoning capabilities.
Technology is a necessary actor which decides the effective power of the Military. It enables armed forces to encounter challenges in an effective and innovative way. Most of the researchers believe that AI would be deciding factor in future warfare. Military Institutions are engaged to decode the need and deployments of this new metallic or chip-based intelligence. The nature of modern warfare is more complex due to high volume of micro parameters. Change in any parameter could affect the result of war in exponential manner. AI represents a paradigm shift from mechanized industrial age warfare to intelligent-robotic-digitized warfare. Artificial Intelligence/Metallic Intelligence is future of war and Armed Forces must prepare themselves to leverage AI technologies in contemporary warfare. The AI-Technology could help to improve the multilayer capability of land forces to handle various undefined war conditions/situations and most importantly provide rapid clarity in information dense environment and also in information sparse environments.
Due to iterative research development in the field of AI, when a machine acquires a capability equal to human intellect it is classified as Strong AI. Weak AI represents the extensive sphere of AI technologies to assist the human for intelligent work. The nature of Strong AI could be identified in AI based games such as AlphaGo. AlphaGo is a programed game which defeated the world champion unfailingly in all five games played. Amazon’s Alexa could be considered as one of the best representations of Weak AI. Because Alexa is using metallic intelligence to scan the voice and response. Through this approach it is supporting the human activities.
For the Armed forces the AI could be pursued under the following heads in a phased manner: –
- Development of different AI techniques for the Armed Forces
- Deployment of AI techniques for armed forces functional applications
- Discovery of applications of AI techniques for armed forces
- Preparation of future Roadmap for the Armed Forces
The deployment of Narrow AI could improve logistics, administration, maintenance, training, personnel management and routine operations/exercise planning to reduce work load and free up warriors for core functions. General AI can close the OODA loop faster, create combat clouds with secure gateways and redesign the Command-and-Control capabilities of armed forces. AI could provide the sharper insights to higher formations to design more effective and efficient battle plans for a better control on operations.
The combat capability of future forces could be enhanced under the following heads: –
- AI-based Smart Logistics & Transportation System for forces
- AI-Enabled Target Recognition System for Naval, Air and Land forces.
- Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, Unmanned Intelligent Ground Vehicles etc
- AI Enabled analysis of “Different Warfare Theaters (Land, Naval, Air)”
- Cyber Security/Cyber Warfare
- Robotic Battle Fields
- War Simulators and Training for forces
- Predictive Analysis of Threats and Situations
- Use of AI-Techniques for Military Data Processing and Analysis
In modern warfare deep strategic intelligence is required with more integration of technological components to deal with situational requirements of war theaters. Global powers, with China, the U.S. and Russia in the lead are aggressively working towards modelling a common platform to handle the context-based challenges from ocean floor to space using a convergence of disruptive technologies combined with the tools of AI. This process is creating sophisticated instruments that are making wars more knowledge based rather than quantity based – a shift from attrition and destruction to one of effects and outcomes. This blending is leading to new doctrinal concepts of war that is based on rapid and accurate decisions, deployments and destruction of the adversary’s ability and will to fight and not merely targeting its armament and arsenal. Physical Bravery on the battlefield as we know it has now shifted to courage in the cyberspace of digitized warfare
AI is the next generation weapon required to transform the ways in which the armed forces operate, train and fight from the barracks to the trenches. AI-Based models are necessary for each country to demystify the hidden war behavior of the enemy-country. The accurate decisions with AI could create an exponential effect in the conduct and outcome of war.
It may also be mentioned that it is possible to tweak existing algorithms from the commercial space and find use cases of the same for military applications. This requires a larger understanding of the technology and a deeper understanding of the entire design of battle. A silo based approach would be highly expensive, time consuming and only duplicate algorithms that are already residing in other domains as solve problems. AI by themselves would not provide the complete solution and the requisite underlays of hardware and the overlays of networks and systems is a necessity.
The machine learning and deep learning may be use to decode the unsupervised learning between the hidden nodes of the war.
The operational knowledge AI is competent to enhance the operational capabilities of submarines on sea-beds. Cognitive quality of AI may help submarines to sense the qualitative observations of environment for react more sophisticated approach. International maritime always creates high volume of data from sea-profiling to ship-movement. The hidden strategic information from those data could be extracted with the help of AI for the smart maritime strategy. The likelihood of success may be increased by the association of different maritime domain knowledge through the integrated nature of AI technology.
The emergent challenges are always occurred in Air-Warfare and absolute response is required to face such issues. The AI based situational responses may provide more accurate context to our aircrafts. Effective encapsulation of AI with Human Intelligence may create more accurate air attacks from fighter planes and choppers.
The fusion of AI with War-Strategy may generate deep strategic insights for the commanders and may help countries reduce war losses due to its predictive and subjective nature and achieve objectives through outcome driven engagements.
References:
- Hanlon, M. E. (2018). Forcasting Changes in Miliraty Technology, 2020-2040. BROOKINGS.
- Maddison, P. (2020, November 30). Op-Ed: Artificial Intelligence and the future of command & control. Retrieved from Defence Connect:
https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/key-enablers/7286-op-ed-artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-command-control - Morgan, Forrest E., Benjamin Boudreaux, Andrew J. Lohn, Mark Ashby, Christian Curriden, Kelly Klima, and Derek Grossman, Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence: Ethical Concerns in an Uncertain World, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, RR-3139-1-AF, 2020. As of January 12, 2021: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3139-1.html
- Centre, G. A. (n.d.). Artificial Intelligence in Land Forces. Retrieved from https://www.bundeswehr.de/resource/blob/156026/3f03afe6a20c35d07b0ff56aa8d04878/download-positionspapier-englische-version-data.pdf
| About the author: Prof. Amit Das is alumni of BHU with 18 years of teaching experience in higher education and research. Presently heading the Centre for AI & Machine Learning, The ICFAI University Dehradun. His area of research is AI, Cognitive Computing and Nature based Computing. Prof. Das also takes interest to deploy such technologies in the field of Defense, National Security & Digital Diplomacy. He is constant China Watcher for Strategic AI & Technological warfare. |
Professor Das after reading your article it seems that you have very done deep study about present status of world and IA. It gives immense pleasure to me to know about your deep interests about IA. Keep it up.
Interesting article