Ukraine War Shows AI Potential and Limits
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- July 25, 2022
In July, two nations oversaw two significant developments as they looked to Artificial Intelligence (AI) for an advantage in their defense strategies.
In the U.K., the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory announced the creation of a Defence Centre for AI Research as part of the country’s new defense program.
In India, meanwhile, the Government tied the announcement of the first ever AI in Defense symposium into celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of Indian independence.
There is no mystery about the timing of these announcements. The Russian-Ukrainian war has underlined the comparative advantage AI innovations can deliver on the battlefield. Where once the debate on AI in defense was around ethics, this seems to have been superseded as the AI arms race steps up.
Linking AI with geospatial data can give smaller armies — like Ukraine’s — more chance to compete with larger forces, delivering faster and better intelligence, speed, and accuracy to weapons systems.
All nations have been watching this closely but perhaps none more so than India.
The Indian armed forces have already engaged in skirmishes with China on the northern borders, and China is perceived as the country’s main strategic threat.
The Chinese armed forces are investing heavily in AI capabilities, partly to compensate for underinvestment in the capabilities of non-commissioned officers. This has opened up a new arms race with its southern neighbor.
Stunned by AI
An Indian military expert, Pravin Sawhney, has just published a book — The Last War: How AI Will Shape India’s Final Showdown with China — in which he predicts that India faces the prospect of losing any war within 10 days, mainly because of China’s AI capabilities.
While the Indian military is preparing for a long war, Sawhney says, China’s military would stun India with its use of AI, emerging technologies, multi-domain operations, and collaboration between humans and robots.
Indian planners would seem to have taken some note of this already because, at the symposium, the Indian Defence Minister launched 75 defense products powered by AI, some of which are already deployed.
“China’s military would stun India with its use of AI, emerging technologies, multi-domain operations, and collaboration between humans and robots”
The Indian Army has been setting up Quantum Computing Labs, the real-time application of AI in border areas, robotic surveillance platforms, 5G communications, and systems backed by augmented reality.
In the air, the Indian Air Force has inaugurated its Centre for Excellence for AI, with plans to embed AI and industry 4.0 in new applications for warfighting.
The U.K.’s approach is similar. The new research center is tasked with exploring areas such as applying AI to war gaming, human-centric AI, and “low-short learning,” or the ability to train machines to learn without vast amounts of data.
The U.K. is nothing if not ambitious, and the Ministry of Defence has a published ambition that, in terms of AI, it will be the “most effective, trusted and influential defense organization for its size” worldwide.
AI co-pilot
The U.S. is also watching events in Ukraine very closely, and some of its most advanced artillery systems are now being used by the Ukrainian army.
There is an understanding, however, that AI might have its limits in the short term.
At one point, it was expected that the F35 fighter, which began operating in 2015, would be the last of the piloted fighter jets. But now, the thinking is that human pilots will fly with AI-powered co-pilots.
“Twenty years ago, everyone thought drones would replace fighter jets, and that hasn’t happened,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, said in an interview with a U.S. defense publication.
Now, the thinking is that the AI co-pilot in the cockpit will replace the human co-pilot and that AI will be used to analyze data from sensors located on the aircraft, drones, land, and missiles in the air.
Pilots could launch drones close to enemy positions, with the AI on the device making final decisions on when to fire.
In July, a U.S. company Shield AI was included in the first set of projects selected to receive funding under a program called “Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies” or APFIT. Shield’s project involves the procurement of unmanned aircraft systems, and the company’s mission is to “build the world’s best AI pilot.”
The Pentagon is reportedly planning for a fighter aircraft that can fly itself even in combat, but that is believed to be some way off despite the advances being made.
“I don’t think we can do it for a few decades,” Gareth Jones, aviation editor at miliary intelligence publication Jaynes, said recently.
“We won’t be there, and we won’t be there for another 30 years or so.”
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their entire business models. You can reach him at [email protected].
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