by Kris Osborn, President, Warrior
Pentagon developers of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber have for many years now discussed plans to operate the new platform as a command and control “sensor” node in the sky connecting groups of drones, manned aircraft and ground locations.
Former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made this clear at the aircraft’s formal unveiling several years ago, explaining that its sensing, computing and communications technologies would prove even more impactful than its stealthy external configuration. Pentagon and Air Force developers have also explained that not only will the B-21 control groups of drones from the cockpit but it will itself be capable of flying unmanned missions.
B-21 as Sensor Node
The advantages of this kind of aerial manned-unmanned teaming are clear, as it enables forward sensing, reconnaissance targeting and even weapons delivery with a manned platform performing command and control. The prevailing consensus among top weapons developers has for many years now maintained that the optimal use of advanced computing and AI results precisely from this kind of “manned-unmanned” teaming in which the speed and processing power of advanced computing is blended with those attributes unique to human decision-making and consciousness.
The Pentagon and US Air Force seem to recognize that there are many critical elements of human decision-making, cognition and consciousness which mathematically-generated algorithms simply cannot replicate.
Without human decision-making in air operating in support of unmanned systems, stealth bombing missions would suffer from a massive tactical deficit.
Human Cognition
There are many air-war scenarios which could easily be mis-calculated should they be managed exclusively by algorithms used to quickly analyze and interpret new information. Many warfare decisions require intangibles or more subjective-kinds of decision-making. What about intuition? Emotion? Moral considerations? Perhaps changing targeting dynamics assess that a given high-value target quickly became filled with innocent civilians? Clearly an algorithm could be created to determine this and potentially change course or avert the attack, yet what if an AI system makes an error?
This is quite realistic and the reason why the Pentagon and its industry partners are working quickly and intensely upon what’s called “Zero Trust,” an ability to make AI more reliable. Why? The problem is an AI system is only as effective as its database, and an advanced AI-system might not accurately recognize or analyze new information or details which are “not” part of its existing database? While advanced AI can determine context such as the difference between “ball” as in football and “ball” as in “dance ball” by analyzing the surrounding words, it is still believed that there are many potential circumstances wherein an AI-system could not perform fast and accurate “real-time analytics” to avoid potentially catastrophic errors.
For this reason, it seems airwar planners of stealth bombing missions would be best served by keeping “human” decision making ultimately in control of many decisions from the air. This will also reduce latency and enable much faster information processing and transmission than having to push data down to a ground-based control center for human decisions to take place.
A fully unmanned fleet of stealth bombers would very likely place the most sensitive missions at risk of making catastrophic mistakes or simply taking too long to develop given the latency associated with transmitting time-sensitive data to the ground for humans to make decisions. Tactically and technological speaking, this is simply not necessary anymore given that AI systems are increasingly capable of operating at the “edge” at the point of collection.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
