artificial intelligence accelerates the process of weapon autonomy
2024-09-12
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artificial intelligence accelerates the process of weapon autonomy
■ pei shuai, shi haiming, huo jianglei
for some time, driven by scientific and technological progress and military needs, the world's military powers have been actively developing and deploying various weapons autonomy projects to enable them to autonomously perceive, learn, and make decisions with the empowerment of artificial intelligence.
the us x-62a fighter takes off from edwards air force base.
in may this year, us air force secretary frank kendall publicly tested an ai-controlled f-16 fighter jet (x-62a) at edwards air force base, which attracted widespread attention from all parties. analysts believe that autonomous weapons enabled by ai will not only change the form of future wars, but will also have a new impact on the current international security situation, and the risk of its loss of control will become a problem that human society cannot ignore.
a weapon of war to accelerate r&d
in the eyes of the u.s. military, artificial intelligence, unlike the next generation of weapon platforms and advanced ammunition, has the potential to change almost all aspects of the battlefield. one important area is to accelerate the autonomy of weapons. the u.s. military has invested a lot of resources in this regard, and the x-62a that kendall rode is a landmark achievement. during the approximately 1-hour flight, all the actions of the fighter were completed autonomously by artificial intelligence. in addition, the "cooperative combat aircraft" being developed by the u.s. air force will be equipped with the "sky borg" unmanned autonomous core system, and will form a formation with manned fighters in combat, taking on multiple tasks such as surveillance, strikes, electronic interference, and acting as bait to maximize the safety and combat capabilities of the formation.
on the naval side, in the "autonomous underwater vehicle requirements in 2025" and "future fleet platform alternatives" reports, the united states plans to realize the concept of a distributed fleet by 2030, equipped with 183 medium-sized unmanned underwater vehicles and 48 large unmanned underwater vehicles that can be carried by nuclear submarines, which can perform anti-submarine, reconnaissance, surveillance and other tasks for dozens of days in ports, international waters and major waterways.
russia also started research on artificial intelligence early. the russian ministry of defense established an artificial intelligence weapons research department in 2022 to strengthen the use of artificial intelligence technology and develop new special equipment. the "depesha" and "baji" multifunctional unmanned systems developed by the russian state technology group can not only transport goods and wounded, but also attack enemy positions and manpower. it was previously reported that the russian military's "lancet"-3 cruise missile uses a convolutional neural network, which can analyze the collected image and video data to achieve accurate detection and strikes.
israel's m-rcv unmanned combat vehicle.
germany, israel and other countries have also increased their research and development efforts in related fields. with the support of nato, germany's arx robotics is developing a series of unmanned ground vehicles. with the help of artificial intelligence, these vehicles can operate autonomously on the battlefield and communicate with each other, and can also be remotely controlled when necessary. analysts believe that this move means that nato has started the process of "building an autonomous robotic force." the israeli army's m-rcv unmanned combat vehicle has a high level of intelligence and can perform highly autonomous frontier reconnaissance, firepower strikes, and diverse tasks such as carrying and recovering drones without human intervention.
the coming revolution in military affairs
autonomous weapons powered by artificial intelligence have appeared in regional conflicts. in the libyan military conflict in 2020, the turkish-made kagu-2 drone tracked and attacked the retreating libyan national army without relying on an operator. this may be the first recorded case of a drone attacking a person without a human command. in the russian-ukrainian conflict, the ukrainian army not only obtained a large number of drones powered by artificial intelligence from the united kingdom, the united states and other countries, but also actively carried out related research. artificial intelligence has also been used in this round of the israeli-palestinian conflict. when israel attacked gaza, it used an artificial intelligence system called "lavender" to help identify hamas militants.
autonomous weapons empowered by artificial intelligence are subverting the form of war. last september, the x-62a successfully completed an aerial combat with an f-16 fighter jet piloted by a human pilot. this is considered "a transformative moment in the history of aerospace", indicating that future operations will be partially or completely controlled by artificial intelligence. unmanned system clusters, which are basically composed of unmanned combat units such as various types of drones, unmanned vehicles, unmanned boats and unmanned submarines, will account for an increasingly large proportion of future combat force systems, and even reach a position on par with manned combat systems. with the improvement of autonomy and intelligence, unmanned system clusters will increasingly become the "protagonists" in war. researchers believe that coordinated operations with manned systems are only the initial stage of autonomous operations of unmanned systems, and the ultimate goal is to achieve autonomous operations of all unmanned systems.
autonomous weapons enabled by artificial intelligence impact geopolitical stability. geopolitical stability depends on the relative balance of regional military power. however, the large-scale use of unmanned autonomous weapons will inevitably impact the original pattern, leading to a new arms race. taking individual hegemonic countries as an example, once autonomous weapons enabled by artificial intelligence are put into use on a large scale, their concerns about launching regional military interventions will be reduced, and the threshold for external military action will be lowered. the security and stability of the relevant regions will face great challenges. in addition, more and more non-state actors will master autonomous weapons technology and use it for lethal purposes, which will also pose a threat to the regional situation.
the risk of abuse cannot be ignored
"humanity is standing at a crossroads, and autonomous weapon systems will soon be everywhere on battlefields around the world. this is our generation's 'oppenheimer moment'," said austrian foreign minister schallenberg at the international conference on autonomous weapons held in vienna this year. although artificial intelligence can help with precision strikes, differentiated warfare, and reduce material losses, due to its inherent "black box mechanism" and "machine illusion", unmanned warfare in the future will face unavoidable risks and challenges.
risk of disordered command. over-reliance on the autonomy of weapons can easily increase the risk of loss of control of the command and control system. in a simulated test by the us military, a drone performing an air defense suppression mission chose to "kill" the operator who prevented it from scoring in order to score points in the test. when it was "told" that killing the operator would deduct points, it attacked the communication tower to interrupt the operator's contact with itself and seized autonomy. in the real battlefield of the future, the risk of autonomous weapons losing control cannot be completely ruled out, and the consequences will be even more difficult to control.
risk of uncontrolled violence. the combination of artificial intelligence and weapons means that the difficulty of killing is significantly reduced, while the efficiency and intensity of killing are greatly increased, which can easily lead to the expansion and escalation of armed conflicts. however, the machine learning algorithms that artificial intelligence relies on are inherently unpredictable, and there are still some unexplained parts of the internal mechanism. in extreme cases, humans may even completely lose control of autonomous weapons, and the resulting humanitarian disaster will be difficult to estimate. it is precisely because of this awareness that the united nations is calling on many parties to formulate common norms and guidelines for autonomous weapon systems and to complete relevant negotiations as soon as possible.
risk of ethical misconduct. lethal autonomous weapons automatically select and attack targets without human intervention, which means that the right to deprive natural people of their lives is handed over to cold-blooded robots. some experts said that after the battlefield is handed over to autonomous weapons, human perception of the cruelty of war will plummet, resulting in the consequence of "war gamification", which will lead to excessive use of force. this is not only a "lack of moral responsibility", but also poses a severe challenge to international humanitarian law and international peace and security, which is "unbearable" for mankind.
the photos in this edition are all data pictures
(source: china military network-liberation army daily)
