AI-powered Human-Machine Collaborations to Transform Warfare

According to certain technology experts, the entry of innovative commercial software developers into the arms market is posing a challenge to the traditional defense industry’s dominance. This industry is known for producing expensive weapons, often with slow development processes.

It is too early to say whether large manned weapons such as submarines or reconnaissance helicopters will go the way of the battleship, which became obsolete with the rise of the Air Force. But aerial, ground and underwater robots along with humans are poised to play a major role in warfare.

Evidence of such a change has already emerged from the war in Ukraine. There, even rudimentary groups of humans and machines, operating without significant AI-powered autonomy, shape the battlefield. Simple, remote-controlled drones have greatly improved the lethality of artillery, rockets and missiles in Ukraine, according to military analysts studying the conflict.

Kathleen Hicks, the US assistant secretary of defense, said in an August 28 speech at a military technology conference in Washington that conventional military capabilities “remain essential.” However, he noted that the conflict in Ukraine has shown that new technology developed by commercial and non-traditional companies can be “crucial in defending against a modern military attack.”

A Reuters special report published today explores how automation powered by artificial intelligence is poised to revolutionize weaponry, warfare and military power.

Both Russian and Ukrainian forces are combining conventional weapons with artificial intelligence, satellite imaging and communications, as well as smart and roving munitions, according to a May report by the Special Competitive Studies Project, a nonpartisan U.S. expert panel. The battlefield is now a patchwork of deep trenches and bunkers where troops have been “forced to go underground or huddle in basements to survive,” the report said.

Some military strategists have observed that in this conflict, attack and transport helicopters have become so vulnerable that they have almost been forced from the skies, and their role has now increasingly been ceded to drones.

“Unmanned aerial systems have already removed manned reconnaissance helicopters from many of their missions,” said Mick Ryan, a former major general in the Australian army who regularly publishes reports on the conflict. “We’re starting to see ground-based artillery observers being replaced by drones. So we’re already starting to see replacements.”