Army Conducts Collective AI — “AI on AI”

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byKris Osborn– Warrior Maven

(Washington D.C.) A forward-operating Army unit is under heavy fire and poised to attack. The soldiers are armed with small arms weapons, shoulder-fired missiles, drones and even helicopter support, yet commanders need to know which among many targets to hit. Which targets should be hit first? Are any target points about to fire incoming weapons? Do any of the target vehicles contain innocents or non-combatants? What if there are integrated threats woven together from several different angles and points of view at one time? Essentially a non-linear attack? Which comparable previous scenarios might offer the best course of actions to consider? If squad leaders simply do not know the answers to these questions, they cannot attack, leaving themselves more vulnerable with little time to react. 

Dr. Bruce Jette, former Assistant Secretary of Army, Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, examined this predicament in a conversation with Warrior several years ago, explaining that emerging applications of AI are beginning to “perform AI on AI” in a collective decision-making fashion. 

“I have eight targets and four enemy vehicles. Which ones are the best ones to shoot? Or does everyone have to decide on their own? Or could I have an AI program that is looking at all eight vehicles seen and decide how I would distribute fire most effectively? It would be an AI program on top of an AI program,” Jette explained. 

After all, combat decisions invariably involve a complex tapestry of interwoven variables, including things like sources of incoming fire, enemy size and location, terrain and identifying multiple points of attack. Other important variables are also additional air or surface supportive fires options and, clearly and simply, deciding which weapons to use and where to use them across an entire unit. 

Artificial intelligence can already gather, fuse, organize and analyze otherwise disparate pools of combat-sensitive data for individual soldiers. Target information from night vision sensors, weapons sights, navigational devices and enemy fire detection systems can increasingly be gathered and organized for individual human soldier decision-makers. So, what comes next?