Services Infusing AI Into Air, Land, Sea Robots.

• Author: Mayfield, Mandy

To stay ahead of near-peer competitors, the Defense Department is advancing the development of a variety of robotic systems and boosting their autonomous capabilities by leveraging artificial intelligence.

"We believe that we have adversaries who are rapidly building up their forces ... and are definitely applying AI to their operations," said Nand Mulchandani, chief technology officer at the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

Artificial intelligence can aid the military in reducing costs, enhancing operational efficiency, improving healthcare outcomes for soldiers and enabling new weapons systems, he said in an interview with National Defense.

AI is usually at the top of the list for military leaders and lawmakers when they speak about defense technology modernization priorities, he noted.

Special Operations Command wants to give its unmanned aerial vehicles more autonomy, said Col. Joel Babbitt, program executive officer for SOF Warrior.

The work the command is doing in AI will also benefit the joint force as a whole as its systems "flow" to the other services, Babbitt said during a panel at the Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict conference, which was hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association. The event was held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We're working toward building tactical partners that can mitigate the danger to our operators and handle a lot of the tactical load," he said. "As we work with industry to solve these... problems, the solutions that we come up with can immediately transition out to the big services."

The command is using autonomous systems in areas where it cannot necessarily operate manned platforms, he said. "We've got loitering missiles, precision strike systems that are helping us to identify targets and strike them themselves when an aircraft can't necessarily be present."

The command is working to expand autonomy specifically on its unmanned aerial systems that perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, Babbitt said.

Flight-enabled behaviors such as a drone's ability to autonomously dodge obstacles are "absolutely critical," he said.

"We have to move beyond those baby steps to full autonomy, to where the operator doesn't have to enable the drone. Instead, we need to get to the point where the drone acts as a tactical partner with the operator, much like another operator would," he said. "We need partnering drones to enable tactics...