Military Robots With Artificial Intelligence Capabilities Ready To Change The Face Of War

Jol Hicks, deputy defense minister of the United States, (photo: twitter @DepSecDef)

JAKARTA - Some tech experts believe that innovative commercial software developers who are now entering the arms market are challenging the dominance of traditional defense industries that produce high-value weapons, but sometimes at slow paces.

It is too early to say whether large manned weapons such as submarines or reconnaissance helicopters will follow the fate of warships, which are declared obsolete by the emergence of air power. But aerial, ground, and underwater robots, in collaboration with humans, are ready to play a major role in warfare.

Evidence of the change has emerged from the war in Ukraine. There, even teams of humans and machines operating with significant artificial intelligence are changing the battlefield. Simple remotely controlled drones have greatly increased the destruction power of artillery, rockets and missiles in Ukraine, according to military analysts studying the conflict.

ung Hicks, deputy defense minister of the United States, said in a speech on August 28 at a military technology conference in Washington that traditional military capabilities "maintained important." But he noted that the Ukrainian conflict has shown that emerging technologies developed by commercial and non-traditional companies could "determine in self-defense from modern military aggression."

A special Reuters report published Sunday, September 10 explores how artificial intelligence-backed automation is ready to change weapons, war, and military forces.

Both Russian and Ukrainian forces integrate traditional weapons with artificial intelligence, satellite imagery and communications, as well as smart and defensive ammunition, according to a May report from the Special Competitive Studies Project, a panel of US non-partisan experts. The battlefield is now a deep ditch and bunker network in which troops are "forced to hide underground or narrow in the basement to survive," the report said.

Several military strategists have noted that in this conflict, attack helicopters and transport have become so vulnerable that they are almost forced to descend from the sky, their role is now being replaced more and more by drones.

"The unmanned aerial system has taken the role of manned reconnaissance helicopters on many of their missions," said Mick Ryan, a former general major of the Australian army who routinely published comments about the conflict. "We are starting to see ground-based artillery observers replaced by drones. So, we've started to see some replacements.