Will the US-China Competition to Field Military Drone Swarms Spark a Global Arms Race? (apnews.com)
- Reference: 0173525444
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/14/2033200/will-the-us-china-competition-to-field-military-drone-swarms-spark-a-global-arms-race
- Source link: https://apnews.com/article/us-china-drone-swarm-development-arms-race-e5808a715415d709f466da00cdeab10f
> As their rivalry intensifies, U.S. and Chinese military planners are gearing up for a new kind of warfare in which squadrons of air and sea drones equipped with artificial intelligence work together like swarms of bees to overwhelm an enemy. The planners envision a scenario in which hundreds, even thousands of the machines engage in coordinated battle. A single controller might oversee dozens of drones. Some would scout, others attack. Some would be able to pivot to new objectives in the middle of a mission based on prior programming rather than a direct order.
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> The world's only AI superpowers are engaged in an arms race for swarming drones that is reminiscent of the Cold War, except drone technology will be far more difficult to contain than nuclear weapons. Because software drives the drones' swarming abilities, it could be relatively easy and cheap for rogue nations and militants to acquire their own fleets of killer robots. The Pentagon is [2]pushing urgent development of inexpensive, expendable drones as a deterrent against China acting on its territorial claim on Taiwan. Washington says it has no choice but to keep pace with Beijing. Chinese officials say AI-enabled weapons are inevitable so they, too, must have them.
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> The unchecked spread of swarm technology "could lead to more instability and conflict around the world," said Margarita Konaev, an analyst with Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
"A [3]2023 Georgetown study of AI-related military spending found that more than a third of known contracts issued by both U.S. and Chinese military services over eight months in 2020 were for intelligent uncrewed systems..." according to the article.
"Military analysts, drone makers and AI researchers don't expect fully capable, combat-ready swarms to be fielded for five years or so, though big breakthroughs could happen sooner."
[1] https://apnews.com/article/us-china-drone-swarm-development-arms-race-e5808a715415d709f466da00cdeab10f
[2] https://apnews.com/article/us-military-ai-projects-0773b4937801e7a0573f44b57a9a5942
[3] https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/u-s-and-chinese-military-ai-purchases/
Ukraine (Score:3)
It's an interesting situation in Ukraine.
Ukraine has essentially run out of artillery shells and anti-missiles. That's not an absolute measure, but effectively Russia is missile striking all the infrastructure in Ukraine, notably power generation facilities, with impunity.
The Russians are also slowly taking territory. You might have heard about the recent [1]fall of Avdiivka [wikipedia.org], which is officially a win for Russia except that Ukraine made it a very expensive piece of real estate. I've heard one estimate that Russian casualties are 10:1 against Ukrainian, so it's really a win for Ukraine. Except that Russia has so many people it can throw into the war effort it might not make a difference.
On the flip side, Ukraine has damaged several oil processing facilities inside Russia 200 miles East of Moscow. Two soldiers carrying small drones in a backpack can hike across the border, deliver a small munition (probably more than a hand grenade but not much more) right to the vertical distillation column using video feedback for targeting, and the distillation column is an integral part of the process and the most difficult piece to repair.
Ukraine has taken some 14% of Russian oil processing offline using this method, which is a huge bite out of Russia's federal budget. Also, Russia now has to allocate resources to protecting vital infrastructure all over Russia.
Ukraine has also had good luck with water-based drones: put a bunch of munitions on a motorboat with a GPS and video feedback for targeting, paint it black and send it at night, several hundred miles with pinpoint precision to sink a warship. Russia discovered experimentally that all of their anti-whatever guns are intended for incoming missiles and other ships, and so they can't point down low enough to hit a small motorboat within striking range. You have to get the crew to shoot at the drone from the deck with rifles and hope you hit something important.
Ukraine has basically kicked the black sea fleet out of the western half of the black sea using this method.
Of note, these drones are being built in Ukraine by Ukrainians. They're not donations from other governments.
Ukraine now has lots and lots of military observers from various countries across the world looking in on the military aspects of drone warfare, which is a completely new tactic for war. If it takes an anti-missile costing $100,000 to take out a drone costing $1,000, that's an obvious advantage to the side using drones.
And no one has tried drone swarms yet either, and I think that would be the next logical step. Exhaust your opponent's anti-missile shield over the city with one wave of cheap drones, then send in the second wave with incendiary munitions to set everything on fire all at once.
And all for the price of 1 anti-missile missile.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Avdiivka_(2023%E2%80%932024)
Re: (Score:2)
Old school flak systems should be able to stop drones. They're generally slow and noisy, both in terms of radar cross section and audible signatures. Their only advantages are being cheap and flying low, making them vulnerable to all kinds of equally cheap weapons.
Anyone using sophisticated anti-missile defense systems to stop drones is wasting high dollar tech.
AI based military may well be the "Fermi Filter" (Score:2)
Wars used to be limited by the amount of soldiers left on either side - when there was no humans left to fight, the fighting necessarily stopped. Once enough "AI based" military units have been produced, humans being left will no longer be the precondition for a war going on. Theoretically, autonomous "drones" or any kind of "killer robots" could keep on fighting ("for their producer's cause") quite a long time after the last human has been killed - as long as their energy supply lasts.
Somehow it seems th
Re: (Score:2)
I should add that this absolutely does not need an "Artificial Super Intelligence", as was discussed a few articles before. The AI based military units in the scenario I think of are still pretty primitive "seek and destroy machines", which just act according to their original programming.
Nope (Score:1)
But only because it's already started.