A.I. and the Next Generation of Drone Warfare

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ai-and-the-next-generation-of-drone-warfare

by fortran77 • 3 years ago

77 110 3 years ago

The inexorable development of killbots accelerates…

ChatGTP• 3 years ago

So having big expensive military assets is becoming worthless because they can be taken out by cheap, worthless drones for a fraction of the cost ?

mortureb• 3 years ago

Yes. On the flip side you’re never going to be able to hold onto territory with just drones.

willmadden• 3 years ago

I think that's up for debate if they take humans out-of-the-loop.

dv_dt2• 3 years ago

Missiles have traditionally cost less than jets

trashtester6• 3 years ago

Cruise missiles are a lot more expensive then bombs dropped from jets, as long as the jets survive.

A Tomahawk missile costs about $2M. A Mk 84 bomb is $16k for the "dumb" variant, and up to $35k in the JDAM version. It also has twice the payload.

An F-16 can carry 4 such bombs on one mission. Even when including the operating cost of the F-16, you can fly at least 5 missions, and drop 20 Mk 84 JDAMs for 40x payload using F-16s at the same cost as one Tomahawk.

UberFly• 3 years ago

The defense against drone swarms and the like will be interesting. Warfare is looking more and more like Starcraft.

Fauntleroy• 3 years ago

It's a speedrun to see who can make the cheapest, most effective laser systems. Once you have that, knocking drones out of the sky will be pretty straightforward.

RandomLensman2• 3 years ago

Not sure drones will be cheaper than some kind of shotgun or AA shell...

bagels• 3 years ago

Yes. The expensive stuff will have to have a swarm of drones to protect it from drones if they remain relevant at all.

Ukraine is destroying billions of dollars in ships, planes and submarines with drones that surely cost a fraction of this.

paganel6• 3 years ago

The same discussion was had at the end of the 1800s, as the torpedo had become a thing, so that the big warships with 300mm guns and more (even 430 for the Italians) were thought of (by some naval strategists) as mere sitting ducks. Which they were.

Fast forward to today and big warships are still a thing, for one reason or another (mostly for fighting goat herders from Central Asia who don’t have access to torpedo-launching vessels), but the idea has remained the same. Of course that the very big and the very important US Navy will never get rid of their big warships, they’d rather sink praising Mahan until the very end than changing their strategic world-view (which would also most likely imply them losing their big warships jobs).

This wiki link about the French Jeune École is a good starting read [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_École

droopyEyelids• 3 years ago

America is kind of stuck here unless china agrees to sell us the parts.

Something tells me that even if we could make them ourselves, they wouldnt be cheap.

jschlesser• 3 years ago

A self replicating supply chain is obviously the basis for success and scalability of the ‘replicator program’.

happytiger• 3 years ago

America already has a number of domestic manufacturers that don’t rely on foreign supply chains.

https://www.thedronegirl.com/2020/06/23/american-drone-compa...

red-iron-pine9• 3 years ago

they're not cheap because the US has to rely on the free market hegemony that it created and sits on top of.

If WW3 breaks out and we're hitting total war with levee en masse those prices will come down right quick...

atleastoptimal• 3 years ago

I think developing AI for diplomacy would be a better net use of resources for humanity

pixl97• 3 years ago

I tried, not going well so far...

Diplo.A.I: "Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die."

ftxbro2• 3 years ago

I think developing AI for diplomacy would be a better net use of resources for humanity

they did it! https://ai.meta.com/research/cicero/diplomacy/

Nevermark2• 3 years ago

Wars are not always caused by the breakdown of diplomacy.

Many wars are the desired outcome of the leaders that started them.

Diplomacy is important, but most effective when war is also deterred by credible response.

swader9992• 3 years ago

"Where there once might have been a thirty-day process for submitting a form, Pahon said, the department could potentially shorten that period to five"

Who writes this nonsense?

MilStdJunkie• 3 years ago

Yeah, it's not great. I'm kind of in the middle of this kind of thing at the moment, and explaining it all the way - from where I am, at least - would require suspension of disbelief at the sheer amount of waste that exists today.

AI's a perfect tool for generating a lot of the paperwork because the paperwork's just MIL-STD talky words in the first place. Unfortunately, 5% of it isn't, and that's kind of a problem, because like with civil engineering it's not fault tolerant at all. This is the part that's taking a lot of work right now, just the identification of critical bits.

To do so we need a complete transparency from industry CAD and MATLAB environments all the way down to how they pack up the mechanic toolbox and what sort of staff we got. The LLM training works hand in hand with simulation, see? It writes and tests in concert. But that's a tall order because, well, an awful lot of companies don't know how to make solid models right, or what they pack into the box doesn't have anything to do with the lists in their ERP, or they send out the janitor as a Level III Tech. This "universal simulation" thing all rides with the fashionable but reified ideal of "Digital Twin", which hopefully doesn't end up providing a real-world proof of Goodhart's Law.

As if you couldn't guess by now, I'm skeptical about this thing, but I'm also extremely hopeful. If there's one theme to my professional career, it's been to clear out as much meaningless crap from MIL-STD work as humanly possible. These LLM "AI" people are at least on the right side . . for now. They might eventually get co-opted into the big Goodhart Machine so that they can make powerpoints about powerpoints about powerpoints about powerpoints about . .

swader9992• 3 years ago

The irony is palpable, we will end up with a Powerpoint presentation meticulously outlining how to avoid falling victim to Goodhart's Law, only to realize that by making it the focus, we've just proved Goodhart's point.

ooterness• 3 years ago

Where I have seen digital models work well is in the initial planning phase, where you don't even know what you want to build yet. Iterating on abstract requirements in a simulation is faster than iterating on prototypes, but it can still get you (some) of the necessary intuition.

Where it goes off the rails is when management drinks too much of the kool-aid, and gives all the R&D funding to the model-based-system-engineering experts. Then they start building models for every other domain without consulting those domain experts. (They're the experts on models so obviously those other folks will just slow things down, pointing out ways that theory and practice aren't quite the same.) Then it's all garbage-in, garbage-out.

Turns out that the map is not the territory.

EGreg2• 3 years ago

We already have it for years

https://youtu.be/DjUdVxJH6yI?si=7R9pWtAApymrPr3I

DARPA is testing it but the Navy already deployed it

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/24/1062039/us-navy-...

raydiatian2• 3 years ago

“I flew stealth fighters in the Air Force. I flew the F-22. It’s an amazing airplane, but we only bought a hundred eighty-seven of them.“
“When we look to the future, we just think that this economic model doesn’t work—so we’re going to increase the mass, just the number of physical things, that we’re able to bring into the theatre.”

I mean generally speaking wouldn’t you not want your enemies to get hands on your tech? Like, with solution it’s basically like saying “come join us, let’s make a shit show of it.”

fbdab103• 3 years ago

While I have no doubt that "military" grade drones have different capabilities (autonomous, target detection, payload size, etc), the technology is already here today. You can buy toy drones for $10s of dollars. There are instances where consumer drones were used to drop bombs in Ukraine.

nyolfen• 3 years ago

There are instances where consumer drones were used to drop bombs in Ukraine

this is underselling it a bit -- armed COTS drones are being fielded by the thousands, by both sides

qp11• 3 years ago

After the recent 20 year shit show and its cost what is "amazing" is how such people actual believe they are credible. The I flew F22s and its amazing and therefore I am amazing is what is supposed to give them credibility. But it all doesnt matter. High interest rates will set the course of this story.

ceejayoz• 3 years ago

I mean generally speaking wouldn’t you not want your enemies to get hands on your tech?

We care about someone getting an F-22. We don't care about someone getting a M-16. Drone swarms would probably be more like the latter.

red-iron-pine9• 3 years ago

we don't even really care about the whole F-22, just pieces, like IFF, EW, and other stealth components. and chances are the Chinese and Russians got some of that from the stealth bomber shootdown in the Balkins in the 90s and then the stealth helicopter that was abandoned in Pakistan killing Osama.

raydiatian2• 3 years ago

Imagine throwing away all of this lithium for batteries on “attritable war technology”

borissk• 3 years ago

When it comes to drone warfare China probably has the factories to make 10x more drones than the US and the rest of the Western world combined.

threeseed• 3 years ago

That is changing though.

Vietnam and India have been eating into China's manufacturing dominance as their economy weakens and wages rises.

paganel6• 3 years ago

Vietnam doesn’t have the manpower (plus, in case of an East vs West war I’m not sure Hanoi will side with Uncle Sam), and India doesn’t have lots of things compared to the Chinese (ignoring the fact that there’s an extra ocean to navigate between any Indian coastal city and any of the two US coasts, compared to China, that is).

devjab• 3 years ago

Isn’t Turkey the main provider or drones to Ukraine? One thing is building drones, another is building ones that actually work in real world warfare. America obviously has the ability to make children afraid of blue skies, and have had so for decades, but it’s not actually conquered any country and kept it yet. It’s only helped perpetuate a state of eternal warfare in the countries where it was employed. Yes, yes, I know that’s not entirely fair since it’s hard to invade another country and then make them like you, but still, are the American drones sort of similar to the German WW2 ranks that while better lost to mass production of “good enough” easily maintainable swarms of allied tanks?

If you want to look to actual working solutions I think that you need to look to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to some degree to Israel. Because those are the areas where people are actually using these technologies to take, defend and hold territory. NATO is going to get those lessons while China isn’t, not really, as a lot of the strategic usage of drones isn’t exactly available for us to see.

What I’m personally the most worried about is how easy and effective these cheap drones seem to be. Like the reaper type drones are nationstate weapons. It would be rather “easy” to get your hands on some of the drone types used on Ukraine, and then how would anyone ever really be safe? If the narko cartels get these it’ll, and they will, then how on earth are South American countries supposed to fight them? Hell, how would you stop a set of radicals in the US from using these to assassinate someone like Elon Musk?

I fear it’s going to be a very cyberpunk world.

baybal2• 3 years ago

Turkey is the biggest provider of bigger UAVs, but not toy sized ones. For that China takes the lead supplying both sides.

agapon• 3 years ago

Isn’t Turkey the main provider or drones to Ukraine?

No.

hackerlight2• 3 years ago

The capability of the AI software is also important. Not saying China can't do that, but it's a factor to consider.

radium3d• 3 years ago

To be honest, I think our only chance / defense is to build these and put 100% of the emphasis on training them to eradicate any ground or air based killbots as quickly as possible. Humans are not even remotely a threat when it comes to AI powered autonomous killbots. We need defensive bots. These wouldn't need anti-human designed weapons most likely.

pyinstallwoes• 3 years ago

"Klaatu barada nikto"

- The Day the Earth Stood Still

trashtester6• 3 years ago

In my imagination, the optimal antibots for use against the current generation of tiny drone (like converted commercial quad copters), are miniature versions of WW1 and/or WW2 era fighter planes, armed with automatic guns in the 3-5mm range. If accuracy gets good enough, the cost of shooting down a drone may come down to $10 or so worth of ammo, and unlike robots catching other robots using nets, these could shoot down serveral enemies before running out of ammo.

The problem is that I don't know how to prevent these drones from being able to fire at humans, if the software allowed it.

tlrobinson• 3 years ago

See “Slaughterbots” short film: https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU

gwnywg2• 3 years ago

I have seen this short some time ago, and I was wondering, if such weapon was ever deployed, what ideologies would be labeled as 'evil'.

somenameforme2• 3 years ago

Even without knowledge of the film, that question can be answered pretty easily: 'The ones that lost.'

ilaksh2• 3 years ago

See also Netflix documentary episode "Unknown: Killer Robots".

ilaksh2• 3 years ago

Related: Our Oppenheimer Moment: The Creation of A.I. Weapons, an article in which Alex Karp of Palantir advocates for a Manhattan Project to build superintelligent AI weapons control systems.

https://archive.ph/rCMnE

These systems will output new plans and asset movements etc. so quickly that keeping humans in the loop will severely disable them. This will push towards greater and greater autonomy, eventually emulating life-like qualities like survival instincts.

It's a dangerous trajectory for humanity.

Filligree2• 3 years ago

I can't believe I have to say this, but:

Terminator wasn't a how-to guide!

lettergram• 3 years ago

Problem is first to adopt (assuming the AI is successful) will win.

Imo, because most AIs are trained on real data, then augmented with simulations, im not sure how well this will work in practice.

Simple example, if it’s trained on historical data, it may try to use tanks where today tanks are not nearly as useful.

Simulations would have to be VERY good and even then could have errors subtle enough for the Ai to fail.

Finally, let’s say a country deploys this. It’s likely going to face nuclear annihilation.

I really don’t see this working, not saying we couldn’t have a devastating effect short term (ie AI launches drones on battle field), but any sufficiently successful deployment would face destruction.

paganel6• 3 years ago

I think quite regularly about that engineer and his family from Terminator 2, the engineer that the Terminator has been sent to, well, terminate. He looks so “like us”, so normal, so engineer-like, and yet, his work is so malevolent and dangerous.

sifar• 3 years ago

That's a great tshirt line. Especially at AI conferences :).

janalsncm• 3 years ago

It’s a bit silly to me that Karp can say that the existence of democracy depends on the United States developing superhuman AI weapons. There are absolutely no guarantees regarding how the government or those with access to such a problem solver will choose to use such a system.

Perhaps Karp should consider the fact that any executive with superhuman AI will no longer need politics either. With no executive action, an attack by a foreign power is exceedingly rare. But the president losing office within 4-8 years is all but guaranteed. A system capable of navigating the complexities of a battlefield could find more action defeating political opponents and crushing all opposition.

simon_000666• 3 years ago

Does no-one remember the 1992 Robin Williams film - Toys? This has been coming for a lonnng time. Question is when there are two armies operating on the same principle do we reach some kind of nash equilibrium?

_boffin_• 3 years ago

Personally, I think there’s too many variables that are spread across political, geographical, and technical to ever reach a Nash Equilibrium in a near peer / peer conflict scenario, unless it pertains to total distraction—that’s why I think MAD was so successful.

Would love to hear your thoughts

somenameforme2• 3 years ago

Might want to edit the word distraction into destruction, as it creates a somewhat confusing post at first otherwise. Beyond that, I think there was more to nukes than just mutually assured destruction. I think most world leaders are cowards. Just envision in your mind Joe Leader somehow being captured and being given a choice, which he somehow knew to be 100% honest. He could immediately and permanently end a conflict, and be spared. Or he would be killed on the spot. How many leaders are going to go, "No. This conflict is just and right. Do what you must, but I will not betray my country and conscience."?

They'd all be pissing their pants just to live another day. And so like any coward they'll happily make the "tough decision" to casually sacrifice millions of other peoples lives - billions if necessary, but they would not, in a million years, accept a scenario where they, themselves, might be killed. And nukes created just such a scenario. Drones, especially given the existence of extremely effective (but distance constrained) electronic warfare and other technology, doesn't intuitively threaten their own mortality. So I expect to see full steam ahead.

trashtester6• 3 years ago

It may not be the equilibrium you want. A prisoners dilemma game is a very likely outcome.

red-iron-pine9• 3 years ago

I assume the eventual outcome will be more like PK Dick's The Second Variety, or maybe the Nier: Automata games

countWSS• 3 years ago

Ukraine proved drones outplay any defense and at far cheaper cost. You can train pilots, soldiers, tank drivers for years and they are going to die like cannon fodder(or drone fodder) because drones are much cheaper and faster to produce. These are just manually operated, cardboard junk drones. AI drones will probably make modern armies non-viable in principle: its like defending against flying I.E.Ds.

boredtofears• 3 years ago

Oh... is the war over?

serf2• 3 years ago

it doesn't have to be over, it's obvious to the spectating public that low-cost drones are going to be a major tool of war from this point forward.

woodpanel• 3 years ago

You do realize that both sides make heavy usage of FPV drones?

euroderf• 3 years ago

Armies will be like flash mobs. Remain dispersed and conceal intent until absolutely necessary.

hoseja• 3 years ago

Effective countermeasures will soon be created. As you say, these are cardboard junk, it's not very hard to destroy them in great numbers cheaply once it's figured out.

rich_sasha• 3 years ago

Is that right?

Russians keep sending the Iranian Shahed drones but Ukraine seems to shoot them down quite easily. They struggle more with the more advanced weaponry.

There's of course cost/benefit, the drone may well be cheaper than the fancy rocket that shot it down.

But then there's a deluge of new anti drone weaponry so it's hard to know what that balance will look like in even 5 years time.

Gud• 3 years ago

There is a major difference between the small anti personnel kamikaze drones Ukraine are sending into the Russian trenches and the 500kg Shahed drones Russia are using to terrorize Ukrainian civilians though.

In Drone warfare, smaller definitely wins. I suspect we'll start seeing anti-drone drones soon enough.

red-iron-pine9• 3 years ago

Shahed drones are big, slow, and have a notable radar signature. A lot of smaller drones are mostly cardboard and are hard to spot, both in terms of radar as well as Mk1 eyeball.

Smaller drones are a perfect use case for older systems like the Zhilka -- no need for a rocket.

EW and HARMs are also a big discussion topic there.

tomjen3• 3 years ago

You are overestimating the value of drones. They will not outplay any defense, as can be with the Russian drones getting shot down by Gepards. They will also have a hard time against directed energy weapons.

However they are indeed a huge asset on the battle field, and they do mean that we need to rethink everything about how war is conducted.

Disclaimer: I am 100% on the side of Ukraine and will remain so no matter what happens with the war, upto and including a complete genocide of Russia.

kakwa_• 3 years ago

It's more the case drones have not meet their counter yet.

It's kind of logical to see expensive AA systems designed to shoot down expensive planes struggling to answer swarm of cheap drones cost effectively.

But the good performance of very old systems like Gepard indicates solutions exist. For example, systems with a decent and modern radar plus a few short range low caliber and cheap AA guns will probably get designed and fielded in the near future.

And new weapon systems is not the only answer. Jamming also has proven to be effective. And even simple doctrine changes can be effective.

Drones are enjoying an happy time, but it will end and to a degree already has (tb2 is far less prevalent for example).

eimrine2• 3 years ago

What benefits give AI over a meat pilot?

hnben2• 3 years ago

scalable, autonomous, small, lack of morals

i.e. can be deployed 100,000 times at once; doesn't need a stable internet connection; can fit into a drone; if civilians are hit, it's only a software-error, not a war-crime.

serf2• 3 years ago

lack of morals

you wouldn't say that about a bullet or a missile -- the morality isn't negated, it's moved up the chain to whoever operates the device.

I make this point because I find the thought that drones somehow negate moral responsibility to be wholly irresponsible and destructive, not as a pedantry.

eimrine2• 3 years ago

can fit into a drone;

More hardware than rc though

red-iron-pine9• 3 years ago

1/3 of a fighter by weight is life support for the pilot, plus controls, ejection seats, etc. Scrap all that and you can do more for the same weight, or make a lighter, longer-ranged plane.

Plus pilots get tired, spooked, etc. Drone operators can switch over to someone else in the room and hit a bathroom and smoke a cig, and AI doesn't even have that problem.

AI can also, in theory, react faster, and is not constrained by high-G maneuvers, that would push a pilots blood out of their brain to their feet. You can find Stroke-3 vids on youtube, which is a pilot in an F-16 (Stroke-3) dodging SAMs during Gulf War 1 -- you can actually hear him strain and groan under the high-Gs.

EW and Jamming are also a concern, and controlled drones are ultimately dependent on someone on the ground being able to see and react. Most drones have an autopilot function if they lose contact, but once ECM and ECCM start going hard it may be hard to control them; they'll need to be autonomous, sort of a more tactically flexible loitering munition.

scotty792• 3 years ago

Have you seen modern anti-drone defence?

https://youtu.be/pb5_F4_Eod8?si=f8rmhs4ouaCKO0UE

Basically a cannon that fires sort of smart bullets that contain shape charge that aims at the drone as it gets close to it and detonantes. Also targets are smartly assigned so you can shoot down small swarm of drones with a short burst from the cannon.

red-iron-pine9• 3 years ago

why would it use a shaped charge?

scotty792• 3 years ago

To aim the blast at the drone from close by. Shaped charge is like a small single use gun. It's super efficient when you can still aim precisely but don't need a barrel, all the mechanics and don't care what happens to the things in close proximity of where you are shooting from.

noworld• 3 years ago

The article keeps saying they will "collect intelligence on enemy-troop movements" like they won't eventually put guns/bombs on them.

ftxbro2• 3 years ago

journalism is biased toward assuming good faith to look like the adults in the room and not appear shrill or alarmist

red-iron-pine9• 3 years ago

this is sarcasm, right? what journalism have you been reading?

more_corn• 3 years ago

Training AI to kill is literally the stupidest thing humanity will ever do. And perhaps the last stupid thing we will ever do. It’s sapient but not sensible. It’s really good at doing stuff. Not so good at deciding if stuff should be done. It’s very trainable and gets very good very fast.

It doesn’t take a super smart person to realize this will go very wrong, very fast.

A.I. and the Next Generation of Drone Warfare

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