AI is transforming the way we work and live. It has significantly improved productivity across different sectors like business, education, and governance. Recognizing its immense benefits, the global militaries have been actively integrating AI. It has helped them to achieve benchmark improvement in various areas for both offensive and defensive measures like surveillance, cybersecurity, training, and risk management. Here are some of the key benefits of using AI technology in military:
Military Intelligence
Through Big Data analysis AI can aggregate and assimilate the massive data from different mediums like sensor, surveillance, and satellite which enables it to assess opponent’s activity, surrounding landscape and emerging threats in real time. It helps the army to identify and avoid pitfalls before them and take strategic defensive and offensive measures. Based on the latest patterns AI can also forecast the next moves of the enemy thus increasing the time window to foil upcoming attacks.
Improved targeting
Autonomous drones are a breakthrough achievement that has accelerated the capabilities of aerial, ground, and sea warcraft. These AI powered unmanned drones can survey the territory, strike the targets, and help the military to locate hidden enemies with higher accuracy. Leveraging the deep analytical capabilities of AI, these drones can also detect hidden mines that are not obvious to the human eye. In that capacity it empowers the military to improve their success rate while also protecting their manpower.
Informed military decisions
Through 360 degree analysis AI can evaluate diverse data streams, both related to the physical battlefield and digital ecosystem. It equips military commanders with precise information to make strategic decisions and determine the most effective course of action for both proactive and reactive action.
Cyber Warfare
Large scale digitization in the military has resulted in a surge in cyberattacks aimed at destroying digital infrastructure and operations. AI can help in this area in both defensive and offensive measures. For instance, AI algorithms can be trained to instantly detect suspicious network activities hinting at cyberattacks like unusual traffic surge. It can also decide and execute the best course of defense to foil the attack. Also AI can help in spotting and flagging security gaps and may also be trained to patch those gaps.
AI can also help military personnel to disrupt digital operations of the opponents by detecting and revealing the system vulnerabilities. Based on the discovery it can also attack the underlying systems associated with infrastructure, communications and weapons.
Improved missile and drone defence system
UAI can autonomously identify and track missiles and execute attacks with better precision than humans both in terms of accuracy and scale. Advanced Machine Learning models enable AI to strike aircrafts and missiles more efficiently in terms of targeting, thrust and timing.
Likewise, AI powered anti drone technology can help in defeating the drone systems with minimal human supervision by accurately detecting, tracking and striking the combat drones.
How are different countries using AI in military operations?
Here are some of the ways in which different countries worldwide are employing AI to improve battlefield performance, improve retaliation measures and safeguarding the soldiers:
Ukraine
Ukraine has employed autonomous drones powered by AI that can automatically collect information about the enemy’s activities and terrain, and also hit the target accurately, leading it to increase its success rate by up to 20%. Ukraine has successfully employed these drones over 100 times with encouraging outcomes.
United States
NATO has significantly improved its battlefield capabilities by employing MSS NATO- an advanced AI system for planning and streamlining diverse operations- right from collecting intelligence to planning the attacks. NATO purchased the system from a US software enterprise called Palantir. It can perform tedious desk tasks like battlefield data sifting with very less human supervision as compared to earlier. It can also help the army in searching targets and boosting attack frequency by cogently aggregating the satellite images with diverse information sources to provide comprehensive insights.
Israel
Israel is one of the forerunners in adopting AI in its military operations. It has developed multiple systems with different capabilities to enhance its performance across different fronts of the battlefield.
For instance one of the tools nicknamed The Gospel helps the Israeli army to boost its retaliatory action against terrorists by identifying the potential structures where militants might be hiding. Moreover, another system called Lavender can go a step further by recognizing the faces of suspected militants and disperse the information to the entire military unit which significantly improves their success rate in anti-militant operations.
Along with individual militants, AI also helps the Israeli army to damage their entire establishments through phone-tracking tools like where’s the Daddy? that autonomously tracks, gathers and shares live location of the militants.
Israel Military has significantly improved its target intelligence by deploying Gospel, an AI system that can recommend as many as 100 targets daily, with very high accuracy.
China
China is also working relentlessly on R&D (research and development) of AI powered offensive and defensive tools. It has helped the country in developing a diverse set of artillery like AI-guided autonomous weapons, intelligence tools, and self sufficient drones.
India
The Indian Army is also marching fast on AI journey. For instance tools like Akashteer, Machine guns, and Indrajaal enable India to significantly enhance interception capability of drones, automating various defense activities and building better coordination between different wings of the military.
Along with that other nations like * are continuously developing AI systems for better surveillance, crisis management, retaliation and damage control measures.
Challenges for AI in military
Along with unlocking many opportunities AI also raises many concerns. The autonomous decisions by AI are guided by algorithms which poses many ethical challenges due to its lethal execution. For instance, the opponents may hack the system or corrupt the algorithms that can have disastrous effects.
As AIs knowledge is based on the data, any errors during the learning process can lead to biased decisions or be inaccurate. It can cause it to miss the targets and more importantly launch lethal attacks on civilians.
With AIs used in battlefields, it has become extremely important to create a legal framework for ensuring control and answerability. At the same time this framework needs to be updated periodically as AI is continuously evolving and collecting more data, which can influence the future potential of AIs in defense.