With the transformative potential of artificial intelligence, we are entering an era of national security reshaped by revolutionary technology. AI offers the potential to improve future military operations by enhancing decision-making, combat effectiveness, and operational efficiency.
The U.S. military is already using AI for autonomous reconnaissance, combat systems, data analysis, and cybersecurity. Within the next five years, AI will enable new and advanced applications such as swarm intelligence to enhance situational awareness, predictive analytics to predict enemy movement, and enhanced cybersecurity. These developments, driven by increased computing, big data, and the convergence of emerging technologies in wearables and embedded systems, have the potential to make militaries more efficient, agile, and capable.
Given that a global “AI arms race” is at stake, we must take steps now to ensure that the U.S. military remains prepared to remain at the forefront of this evolving landscape. It doesn’t have to be.
Keep up and adapt to the benefits of AI
Managing investments and policies for deploying AI will help the military maintain its technological edge. However, traditional Department of Defense funding strategies, contract vehicles, and procurement channels are unable to keep up with advances in AI. That has to change. An immediate response could be to reallocate R&D budget resources to include both short-term applications of AI and long-term basic research. This change requires parallel preparation by the acquisition office and operational end users, and once basic results are obtained, it can be scaled up to a mission-ready state.
New data repositories from cross-functional training and mission operations must continually feed into a robust corpus designed for interoperability and rapid use in hypothesis and performance validation. A new investment ecosystem that fosters low-risk, no-barrier, fast-fail basic science feasibility exploration with necessary guardrails will move beyond the Pentagon’s infamous technology valley of death and more. This will also result in the acquisition of candidate technologies.
To facilitate more agile AI procurement, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement and other policies must be revised. For example, adopting a modular contracting approach based on other trading authorities and indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity vehicles will allow AI technology providers to quickly ramp up without the burden of traditional primary oversight. There is a possibility.
Additionally, a central repository of AI best practices and development frameworks can also incorporate standardized data formats for non-AI technologies, facilitating cross-sector learning and accelerating research and development efforts.
It is also important to strengthen partnerships with industry and academia, accelerate the transition of AI technology, and invest in startup R&D. To encourage a partner’s contributions, the Department of Defense should not restrict his IP or data rights. The access-controlled data sharing ecosystem invested by the U.S. military and its allies will enable AI models to be trained more quickly and thoroughly. Benefits will accrue to countries that apply these models most effectively to achieve the right results.
AI increases risks as well as rewards in military operations
AI systems that operate without human oversight pose moral, sociopolitical, and legal implications, especially when automating parts of the “kill chain.” Careful consideration of the ethical and legal framework for AI-enabled actions and decision-making will require changes to national and global policies and standards.
This must go beyond simply retaining human stakeholders. AI outperforms humans in countless technical, creative, and strategic areas. Using AI to quantify risk under valid operational scenarios could free up humans to focus solely on establishing ethically acceptable risk thresholds that partner countries can follow. . Remember that blanket policies that prohibit or downplay the application of AI create opportunities for foreign actors with less oversight to gain technological advantages.
AI also raises security concerns regarding increased vulnerability to cyber-attacks and the possibility of data manipulation. Every sensor, data transfer, and endpoint creates an attack surface that a skilled attacker can target. The Department of Defense needs policies and technology investment strategies that address these data collection points. Resilience becomes important when the enemy finds an area to attack. Security methodologies from other high-risk technology areas, such as nuclear power, provide valuable lessons on how to approach risks in complex AI-based systems.
Accountability and responsibility for the development and use of AI in military operations is essential. Ensuring the reliability, robustness, and security of AI systems requires rigorous testing, validation, and safeguards. Existing practices in medical devices provide a useful analogy.
There are also legal issues, such as those seen in social media litigation. Who is responsible for policing and enforcing content? ISPs, service providers, or the users who provided the data? Policies that penalize new AI developers seeking to establish market share or The mechanism could drive technology innovators away from DoD applications.
Data privacy is another consideration. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and similar laws require a “right to transparency.” Similarly, we all want AI to be able to explain how it arrived at its results. The challenge is how to define acceptable standards to achieve such transparency, which requires an understanding of how AI works.
Finally, there is the question of how to restore trust in AI once it has been lost. If an AI learns a behavior and behaves in an unexpected or undesirable way, how can we not only prevent that behavior in the future, but also unlearn it so that it is never considered again? How far back in the verification process does AI need to go in order to achieve trust? This will be a difficult question to negotiate, as different governments and cultures have different risk tolerance standards. However, given the speed at which AI is advancing, lengthening the discussion schedule may not be enough.
human-machine dynamics
Humans have always evolved with tools and technology that make our lives more productive. Future AI-based systems will need to embrace both humans and AI as users of the system itself. People must learn to approach AI systems and think of them as new team members. As with any team, productivity often comes from sharing situational awareness and understanding goals, motivations, actions, and/or how actions impact teammates. In the military, much of this understanding is gained through rigorous joint training and clear tactics, techniques, and procedures that foster trust and create common ground.
Future AI systems may need to start at this level, simultaneously onboarding and training humans and AI users as a team. However, when the tandem actually needs to perform the work, the interface required by each is significantly different.
For example, humans are visually oriented and rely on graphical human machine interfaces (HMIs) to identify and understand visual patterns. Even with AI as a collaborator, people still need a natural HMI to understand their role in the operation of the system. We will also need some means of productive interaction with AI, such as natural language models or training in the emerging field of “prompt engineering” to direct AI behavior. AI itself requires consistent and well-formatted data so that it can be properly integrated into model structures and influence outcomes.
The future of AI is rapidly approaching
While AI holds great promise for the future of U.S. military operations, it is clear that there are many complex problems to solve. There’s no time to hesitate.
To fully exploit the potential of AI, the Department of Defense must understand its current uses, anticipate future developments, and act quickly to address associated risks. By adapting investments, policies, and strategies, the U.S. military can maintain its technological edge and ensure the security and success of future operations.
Michael P. Jenkins Noumadix Co., Ltd..
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