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Comment by jeisc | Hacker News Reader

Will the next major war see only drones fighting?

The U.S. military's current approach, the "Third Offset" which is still in development, is based on the theory that AI is good at defined tasks (e.g., identifying enemy planes) but not at handling the chaos of war (e.g., everything involved in flying a plane on a mission); that is, it's not good at general intelligence. AI can park your car, but the other cars aren't intelligent adversaries who are trying to stop you from parking, destroy your car, and kill you.

The general design is to combine AIs and humans in what they call "centaurs", utilizing the strengths of each in a team. At least, that is what is said publicly.

But autonomy already is deployed. For example, in ships, the last line of defense against incoming missiles are basically large, autonomous machine guns; a human could never act quickly enough against supersonic incoming missiles. Computer system attack and defense ("cyber") is expected to be run by AI, simply because humans can't keep up with an attacking AI. Autonomy also is necessary because you can't depend on having secure, effective communication with your drones; that would be a huge vulnerability.

But autonomy is much trickier to define than it first appears: If you shoot a 'dumb' artillery shell at a target, you lose control of the shell the moment after you pull the trigger. If a group of children subsequently enters the target area, that 'autonomous' shell is going to kill them and you can't stop it. (An AI weapon might be safer in that kind of circumstance; it can change course.) Is it different to shoot a dumb shell to kill everything in the target area than to send an AI-operated drone to the same target area with the same instructions?

> If you shoot a 'dumb' artillery shell at a target, you lose control of the shell the moment after you pull the trigger. If a group of children subsequently enters the target area...

Nitpick: The children would have to move very quickly to get there during the time of flight of the shell (a few seconds). The interval during which you can intervene is actually the time from the forward observer (remember, arty gunners don't see their own targets) making the call for fire to the time at which the shell is fired. If the notional target is assessed as a high priority (target priorities are pre-assigned), and you trust the forward observer to have checked for collaterol damage, this could be a very short period.

If loitering munitions are used instead of conventional arty, and they can accept targeting updates in-flight, then the interval could be as long as you like (within weapon endurance constraints).

[Edit - clarity]

> Nitpick: The children would have to move very quickly to get there during the time of flight of the shell (a few seconds).

Double nitpick: 155mm artillery rarely has a time of flight of a "few seconds" - as they usually call "splash" 5 seconds before the anticipated impact in order to give the forward observer a heads up. A TOF of a minute isn't unusual - in that time a lot can happen.

Don't they have a range of something like 20 miles, which would take much more than a few seconds? And that is measured in a straight line from the gun to the target; the shell, of course, takes the long way.

funny, your words sound like someone explaining a high frequency trading war on the stock exchange between two financial operators...

Thinking of a huge swarm of cheap drones with an explosive charge attacking a target?

Unlikely. But see Ukraine (and isis) for how the drone thing is playing out. Drones are now integrated into the battlefield more and more. But they haven't replaced humans, and they won't until they're multi-purpose and able to adapt.

When that happens I'll be scared.

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