The First Matabele War, fought between 1893 and 1894, foretold the future.
In its opening battle, roughly 700 soldiers, paramilitaries and African auxiliaries aligned with the British South Africa Company used five Maxim guns — the world’s first fully automatic weapon — to help repel over 5,000 Ndebele warriors, some 1,500 of whom were killed at a cost of only a handful of British soldiers. The brutal era of trench warfare the Maxim gun ushered in only became fully apparent in World War I. Yet initial accounts of its singular effectiveness correctly foretold the end of the cavalry, a critical piece of combat arms since the Iron Age.
We stand at the precipice of an even more consequential revolution in military affairs today. A new wave of war is bearing down on us. Artificial-intelligence-powered autonomous weapons systems are going global. And the U.S. military is not ready for it.
Weeks ago, the world experienced another Maxim gun moment: The Ukrainian military evacuated U.S.-provided M1A1 Abrams battle tanks from the front lines after many of them were reportedly destroyed by Russian kamikaze drones. The withdrawal of one of the world’s most advanced battle tanks in an A.I.-powered drone war foretells the end of a century of manned mechanized warfare as we know it. Like other unmanned vehicles that aim for a high level of autonomy, these Russian drones don’t rely on large language models or similar A.I. more familiar to civilian consumers, but rather on technology like machine learning to help identify, seek and destroy targets. Even those devices that are not entirely A.I.-driven increasingly use A.I. and adjacent technologies for targeting, sensing and guidance.
Techno-skeptics who argue against the use of A.I. in warfare are oblivious to the reality that autonomous systems are already everywhere — and the technology is increasingly being deployed to these systems’ benefit. Hezbollah’s alleged use of explosive-laden drones has displaced at least 60,000 Israelis south of the Lebanon border. Houthi rebels are using remotely controlled sea drones to threaten the 12 percent of global shipping value that passes through the Red Sea, including the supertanker Sounion, now abandoned, adrift and aflame, with four times as much oil as was carried by the Exxon Valdez. And in the attacks of Oct. 7, Hamas used quadcopter drones — which probably used some A.I. capabilities — to disable Israeli surveillance towers along the Gaza border wall, allowing at least 1,500 fighters to pour over a modern-day Maginot line and murder over 1,000 Israelis, precipitating the worst eruption of violence in Israel and Palestinian territories since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
Yet as this is happening, the Pentagon still overwhelmingly spends its dollars on legacy weapons systems. It continues to rely on an outmoded and costly technical production system to buy tanks, ships and aircraft carriers that new generations of weapons — autonomous and hypersonic — can demonstrably kill.
Take for example the F-35, the apex predator of the sky. The fifth-generation stealth fighter is known as a “flying computer” for its ability to fuse sensor data with advanced weapons.
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{Categories} _Category: Takes{/Categories}
{URL}https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/opinion/ai-drones-robot-war-pentagon.html{/URL}
{Author}Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff{/Author}
{Image}https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/09/14/opinion/06shah/06shah-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600.jpg{/Image}
{Keywords}Drones (Pilotless Planes),Israel-Gaza War (2023- ),Artificial Intelligence,United States Defense and Military Forces,International Relations,Defense and Military Forces,Start-ups,Government Contracts and Procurement,Defense Contracts,Military Aircraft,Smartphones,F-35 Airplane,Defense Department{/Keywords}
{Source}POV{/Source}
{Thumb}{/Thumb}