By Kris Osborn, Warrior
(Washington DC) As the Pentagon surges forward with early phases of testing and innovation for its Golden Dome homeland defense system, US military industry partners are assessing how artificial intelligence can support national defensive efforts.
While there are many potential applications, one critical area exists in the sphere of discrimination and target verification, as AI-enabled algorithms can bounce incoming sensor information off of a vast data base to distinguish targets from decoys and instantly support defensive intercepts.
"I think AI can play a couple of key different roles in Golden Dome, such as identifying targets and tracking targets against different fields of regard. I don't necessarily think identifying possible targets is the hard part, but it's deciding which of those targets are actually real targets and not decoys that the enemy has employed to try to overwhelm your system or make you use effectors against a non real threat," Mathew Steenman, Elbit America, Chief Technology Officer, told Warrior. "I think one of the other areas with AI we talk about is command and control. We talked about how big the defensive network will have to be. It's likely that anybody who's going to launch that type of attack at you is also going to attack your networks, and maybe through electronic warfare ..... so implementing AI at a layer where it's going to deal with healing the network and finding the most efficient way to get the data around despite those effects from the adversary, I think is really important," Steenman said.
AI can prove particularly significant in the realm of sensor-to-shooter pairing, as it can bounce verified target information against a database compilation to recommend an optimal shooter or countermeasure for a given threat scenario. Perhaps the area is cloudy so a laser weapon will not be effective? Perhaps it is a populated area, so a kinetic effector may not work as explosive material could damage civilians? Perhaps the attack is in the form of a drone swarm requiring a deep magazine of interceptors, proximity fuse to generate an “area” explosion against multiple targets or even EW to “jam” the RF signal of a group of attacking drones at one time. This kind of AI-enabled ability could support Golden Dome kinds of defenses against incoming rockets, mortars, ballistic missiles or even hypersonic attacks. Steenman said Elbit America is currently integrating a wide range of interceptors or countermeasures to support homeland defense.
"So I think everything is on the table at this point. Obviously, you know, we've got a long history with your more traditional kinetic type effectors, and that's a core functionality of what our engagement management application does, is suggesting to the operator very quickly which effector the system believes, you know, based on all the training that it's gone through, which effectors should be used at any one time and when it should be used, just as you mentioned, to prevent the collateral damage. Now, if you look at, you know, attacks in mass, especially against point targets, I think that's when you start to look at the other technologies, like you mentioned, with high power microwave......we've seen that be effective in situations or as you mentioned, directed energy. But I think it all depends on the threat and the number of threats and how fast that threat is coming at you. I think these systems that we employ, and hopefully through the use of AI are bringing those suggestions and courses of actions to the operators incredibly quickly," Steenman said.
C-UAS Series sponsored by Elbit America
