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Battlefield AI

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  • Richard Martin
  • February 4, 2024
  • 11:12 am
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Richard Martin

Richard Martin empowers leaders to outmaneuver uncertainty and drive change through strategic insight and transformative thinking.
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By Richard Martin

War is evolving before our eyes, and it’s hard to gauge the full impacts long or short term.

AI has been used for years for sensor fusion, e.g., for staff planning and command decision-making. Systems like the SM2 air defence missiles on warships depend heavily on AI processing already. Same goes for the helmets of F-35 pilots. What happens when the Apple Vision Pro starts being used in a few months for battlefield tasks?

Another point is that missiles have been largely if not totally autonomous for decades. Whether guided or ballistic, missiles have been pretty much fire and forget since the air-to-air Sidewinder was introduced in the late 50s and the first ICBMs.

Think of the Javelin antitank missile. It has something like a 2-km range and, when fired, acquires a target, and can hit it without further guidance from the gunner or firing platform. Tanks and other AFVs are increasingly being fitted with defensive systems that integrate AI. I read about a Merkava in Gaza that had activated its active defensive system twice to counter RPGs while the crew was completely unaware that they had been engaged. They only realized it afterwards when they got out of their tank and saw the systems had worked automatically.

The real issue at this stage is whether there will be truly autonomous systems that can seek and destroy targets based on facial recognition and other biometric or situational information. Whether or not that is technically feasible, I don’t think it will happen, because there is a need to maintain positive control throughout the kill chain. Look at how the IDF has insisted on maintaining the human in the loop in Gaza, despite the ability to fire and forget.

AI-enhanced, remotely operated systems are here now and will continue to develop. As with all AI, I don’t see it replacing the human in the loop, but it will be used more and more as a force multiplier and to enhance lethality, protection, and mobility. To me, AI is fundamentally no different than using a backhoe to dig a hole rather than a spade.

© Richard Martin


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Richard Martin, President of Alcera Consulting Inc.

Richard Martin

Richard Martin is the President of Alcera Consulting Inc., a strategic advisory firm collaborating with top-level leaders to provide strategic insight, navigate uncertainty, and drive transformative change, ensuring market dominance and excellence in public governance. He is the author of Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles and the creator of the blog ExploitingChange.com. Richard is also the developer of Strategic Epistemology, a groundbreaking theory that focuses on winning the battle for minds in a world of conflict by dismantling opposing worldviews and ideologies through strategic narrative and archetypal awareness.

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