Future wars may depend as much on algorithms as on ammunition, report says.

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 6:59 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Future wars may depend as much on algorithms as on
ammunition, report says.
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


Future wars may depend as much on algorithms as on ammunition, report says.
By Christian Davenport
Dec 3 2017
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/future-wars-may-depend-as-much-on-algorithms-as-on-ammunition-report-says/2017/12/03/4fa51f38-d6b7-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html
>

The Pentagon is increasingly focused on the notion that the might of U.S.
forces will be measured as much by the advancement of their algorithms as
by the ammunition in their arsenals. And so as it seeks to develop the
technologies of the next war amid a technological arms race with China, the
Defense Department has steadily increased spending in three key areas:
artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, according to a
recent report.

Investment in those areas increased to $7.4 billion last year, up from $5.6
billion five years ago, according to Govini, a data science and analytics
firm, and it appears likely to grow as the armed services look to transform
how they train, plan and fight.

“Rapid advances in artificial intelligence — and the vastly improved
autonomous systems and operations they will enable — are pointing toward
new and more novel warfighting applications involving human-machine
collaboration and combat teaming,” Robert Work, the former deputy secretary
of defense, wrote in an introduction to the report. “These new applications
will be the primary drivers of an emerging military-technical revolution.”

The United States “can either lead the coming revolution, or fall victim to
it,” he added.

In an interview, Work, who serves on Govini’s board, said the advancements
in technology are transforming war just as the advent of the rifle,
telegraph and railroad did generations ago. Much of the current work is
being driven by companies with large presences in the Washington area,
including Leidos, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, CACI and
SAIC, according to the report.

Service members are using virtual reality to simulate battle conditions in
training. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been
investing in better computing power designed to handle vast amounts of
data, including quantum computing and what’s known as neuromorphic
engineering, helping develop incredibly complex computing systems designed
to mimic biological systems.

There are signs that AI and human-machine collaboration are already making
their way into American weaponry and its intelligence apparatus. The
Pentagon is working toward using drones as the wingmen of fighter jets and
ships, which can probe into enemy territory on their own. The Marine Corps
has been testing cargo helicopters that can fly autonomously and that would
allow Marines, using a tablet, to “easily request supplies even to austere
or dangerous environments,” according to the Office of Naval Research.

The stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, with 8 million lines of code, is
called a “flying computer” that is as much a sensor in the skies as it is a
fighter jet, officials say. As an example, officials point to how F-35s
communicate with one another on their own. If one jet in a sortie detects
an enemy fighter on its radar that is out of the range of the other F-35s
along with it, that information is automatically relayed to the other jets.

Another example is Project Maven, a computing system being designed to sift
through the massive troves of data and video captured by surveillance and
then alert human analysts of patterns or when there is abnormal or
suspicious activity.

[snip]

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