Army Prepares to Fight Massive Armies of Autonomous Attack Robots

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The Pentagon may have no intention of deploying fully-autonomous “lethal” terminator-type robots that kill without human intervention, but that does not mean the Army and its fellow services are not preparing to fight them. Sure enough, enemy forces are quite likely if not fully expected to deploy thousands of autonomous armed robots programmed to attack without human intervention. 

Army Futures Command is working on a cutting edge dual trajectory, which includes recognizing and applying the breakthrough merits of AI in areas such as surveillance, networking, automated defensive weapons and data scaling and management, while at the same time anticipating a future warfare environment in which adversaries send fully autonomous attack robots to kill without regard for ethics.

“We are a value-based military and will remain so. Through experimentation we will determine what levels of autonomy are needed and are acceptable on the future battlefield. That will be incorporated into doctrine by our teammates over at TRADOC,” Mr. William Nelson, Deputy, Army Futures Command, told Warrior in an interview.

Can the US military, and the Army, prepare to destroy autonomous, terminator-type enemy robots? Anticipate and counter their movements? Stay in front of their sensor-to-shooter time curve and targeting precision? … all while maintaining its clear ethical and doctrinal stance that humans must be “in the loop” making decisions about the use of lethal force,