Time-honored principles of command get weird when you add the fundamentally alien thinking of an artificial intelligence.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Modernizing military simulation with open systems architecture
Best-of-breed common models and architecture enable virtual training and testing with the same data in a cyber-resilient posture.
Alarming headlines to the contrary, the US Army isn’t building robotic “killing machines.” What they really want artificial intelligence to do in combat is much more interesting.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) must have enough artificial intelligence to fly unmanned at least part of the time, a secure network to control drones, and combination of speed and range that’s impossible for traditional helicopters.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Science fiction taught us to fear smart machines we can’t control. But reality should teach us to fear smart machines that need us to take control when we’re not ready. From Patriot missiles to Tesla cars to Airbus jets, automated systems have killed human beings, not out of malice, but because the humans operating them…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY: Futurists worry about artificial intelligence becoming too intelligent for humanity’s good. Here and now, however, artificial intelligence can be dangerously dumb. When complacent humans become over-reliant on dumb AI, people can die. The lethal track record goes from the Tesla Autopilot crash last year, to the Air France 447 disaster that killed 228…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
It is not Iron Man. It isn’t even Iron Fist. Lockheed Martin’s newest exoskeleton is more like Iron Leg. But for a soldier humping his weapons, ammo and body armor up a mountain in Afghanistan or a high-rise building in a future urban battle, a device to take the load off would be welcome. And, unlike…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
ORLANDO: Want to defeat an enemy? Get inside his decision cycle. Hammer away at his forces, confuse his command, steal his intelligence. Sun Tzu said most of it ages ago, but it remains true today. The key to such success is, first, understanding what you and the enemy are doing and, second, communicating that understanding to…
By Colin Clark
How to ensure readiness of next-generation defense technology: Solving the issue of massive heat.
High-performance systems generate tremendous amounts of heat that can compromise missions and make high-tech systems less effective in tactical environments. But there is a solution to this modern-age challenge.
How does war change when your weapons can think? Do you trust a computer to decide when and whom to kill? Questions once asked only in science fiction are now becoming matters for policymakers. All four armed services are experimenting with artificial intelligence in every domain: land, sea, air, outer space, cyberspace, and the all-pervasive…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
This afternoon, Deputy Defense Secretary and robotics booster Bob Work will christen the largest unmanned surface vessel in history. At 130 feet long and not quite 140 tons displacement, DARPA’s Sea Hunter dwarfs previous robotic boats, giving it the ruggedness and fuel capacity, about 70 days’ worth, to cross oceans on its own power without a manned mothership. But…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
ARLINGTON: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing artificial intelligence that can help humans understand the floods of data they unleashed 50 years ago with the Internet and make better decisions, even in the heat of battle. Such “human-machine collaboration” — informally known as the centaur model — is the high-tech holy grail…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: I haven’t seen the new Star Wars movie yet — no spoilers in the comments section, please — but its vision of high-tech warfare is already looking quaint. Always at heart a fairy tale in space, the series puts humans in the cockpit and on the front lines, with droids as adorable sidekicks. Meanwhile,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: The Defense Department’s Third Offset Strategy is designed to create new advantages over adversaries now that Russia and China are developing stealth fighters, cyber weapons, and precision missile arsenals of their own. With studies well underway and up to $15 billion budgeted for experimentation in 2017, the emerging answer is a cluster of technologies related to…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PENTAGON: The Navy’s new offices for unmanned systems — that’s drones or robots to you and me — are a long-overdue reform, two top experts tell us. But, as emphasized by both our outside sources and the new Navy officials themselves, it’s equally important to understand the initiative’s limits. This is not an overhaul of the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
[UPDATED with TRADOC & additional Work comment] We’ve talked a lot in these pages about drones and robots, networks and swarms. But there’s new way of looking at these weapons that Bob Work made clear is at the heart of the Defense Department’s high-tech “Third Offset Strategy.” It’s an approach that relies not just on technology…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
