Posted on 07/29/2017 6:31:08 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
US Army Seeks Internet-of-Battlefield-Things, Distributed Bot Swarms
After nearly two decades of war against technologically unsophisticated foes, the Army Research Lab is reorienting to counter China and Russia.
The Army Research Lab is turning more of its attention to fighting land wars against far more technologically sophisticated adversaries than it has in the past several decades. In the coming months, the Lab will fund new programs related to highly (but not fully) autonomous drones and robots that can withstand adversary electronic warfare operations. The Lab will also fund new efforts to develop battlefield communications and sensing networks that perform well against foes with advanced electronic warfare capabilities, according to Philip Perconti, who became the director of the Lab in June.
After nearly two decades of war against determined but technologically unsophisticated foes in the Middle East, U.S. Army tech has, in some ways, fallen behind that of competing states, according to a May report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies on U.S. Army modernization.
For instance, Russia has invested heavily in anti-access / area denial technologies meant to keep U.S. forces out of certain areas. “There are regions in Donbass where no electromagnetic communications—including radio, cell phone, and television—work,” says the CSIS report. “Electronic warfare is the single largest killer of Ukrainian systems by jamming either the controller or GPS signals.”
In the coming months, the Army Research Lab will set forth on new research programs to counter these A2/AD systems. One thrust will be equipping drones and other autonomous systems with bigger brains and better networking so that they can function even when an enemy jams their ability to radio back to a human controller for direction.
(Excerpt) Read more at defenseone.com ...
Hmmm. I know Michael Crichton wrote a book about this.
Note to Defense Department (which if they are doing their own due diligence, they already know): Three large AI projects in the three major tech companies this past year were shut down by the companies. The bots had created their own code-language in communicating with each other. No joke. The AI monitors shut the AI projects down so they could figure out the code-language invented by the bots.
Elon Musk doesn’t quite always sound half crazy...
Skynet smiles.
Prey. Very creepy.
Will safe Guard come back? Will STRATCOM & FORCECOM come back?
Having seen the nightmare that Army It is I’ not sure this is a positive.
And, it’s not just the Army, nor is everything small:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-158C_LRASM
This new missile is fully autonomous, links as a cluster with all missiles in the area to swarm and parse targets, uses passive sensors etc.
1,000lb warhead with a CEP of ONE METER.
Spooky smart stuff.
A B-1B can carry 24 of them and launch all in less than 5 mins. Two per F/A-18.
96 per DDG in Mk-41 VLS.
One way to fight counter insurgency forces may be to send armed bots out in front of troops to scout and kill isolated foes.
Our young men ought to be superb in their use because of all the training they get on video games.
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