Tank Gunners ID Targets in Seconds With AI

Video Above: If You Want to Prevent a War, Send Tanks

By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

(Washington, D.C.) When tanks, armored vehicles, helicopters and dismounted soldiers are closing with an enemy and “moving to contact” amid heavy incoming fire, an ability to quickly discern and execute targets can determine survival. In a fast-moving, dynamic combat environment, targets can emerge and disappear in seconds, often confusing or at least presenting complications for attacking forces. A tank gunner, helicopter pilot or rifle-armed soldier will need to successfully identify a target before using lethal force, making timing of crucial importance. Therefore, Army scientists, engineers and weapons developers are working to test, assess and refine emerging technologies intended to massively expedite this process to give forces a timing and target-ID accuracy advantage in war. This overall approach, often referred to as sensor-to-shooter time, represents a massive focal point for the Army across the force, as it pertains to all levels of military firepower, targeting and combat decision making.

Army soldiers are now testing new generations of infrared and electro-optical targeting technologies, one of which is called Advanced Targeting and Lethality Aided System, or ATLAS.

“ATLAS uses an aided target recognition system that scans a field of regard, so the Soldier is assisted by an artificial intelligence system that is also searching the scene,” Dr. John Graybeal, lead engineering psychologist for the Center’s Human Perception Laboratory, Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center, Army Futures Command, said in an Army report.

Part of the intent of the assessments is to place emerging systems in the hands of soldiers for quick combat evaluations to determine what works, in order to streamline, expedite and optimize development. For example, Graybeal explained a scenario wherein soldier input led developers to make an essential tweak or adjustment to the system.

“When the system thinks it detects a potential target, it takes a picture of it and sends it to the Soldier. When we created the virtual prototype of this system and tested it, one of the things the Soldiers talked about was what happened when they selected a picture of a potential threat. When a picture is selected, the system moves the Soldier’s sensor feed to interrogate the potential target. While this should accelerate target engagements, one of the problems Soldiers encountered was they could easily lose track of where they were scanning previously,” Graybeal said.