Reply to post: Isn't this all bollocks though?

Isn't this all bollocks though?

It's still just science fiction. We don't have this kind of AI. People are talking about it real soon now, but they've been saying that for decades. File it along with nuclear fusion and flying cars...

As someone said above, we've had automatic targetting for ages. Many modern air defence systems have an automatic target selection mode, anything designed for multiple missile defence pretty much has to. If dealing with a single aircraft you might command it to fire on that specifically, but often you're monitoring it while it priotirises targets.

Or humans are assigning the targets and the computer is determining the order they're engaged.

The UK also used to have an air launched anti-radar missile with a parachute, that could slowly float to earth waiting for a radar of certain programmed characteristics to turn on, and then go and blow it up.

But the idea that battlefield infantrymen are going to be equipped with AI auto-targetting anytime soon is ludicrous! They'd all fall over trying to carry the server racks for a start! Some sort of info using noise and cameras to track incoming rounds and suggest where they're coming from is probably possible now, and mini-homing missiles must be possible as well. But the military do worry about blue-on-blue quite a lot. It's why they train their forward air controllers so much - and I just don't buy that this tech is likely, or that frontline grunts have got the time to operate it. There have been trials of augmented reality type helmets for infantrymen since the 80s at least, and very little of that tech seems to have been deployed, because it's so damned distracting. And fragile - military tech must be "squaddie-proof".

One are where we're closer to danger is the modern digital battlefield management stuff. The integration of so many sensors with comms, so that data is shared around different units and HQs. If you can build a picture of where the enemy are back at HQ, where you can have loads of computing power, that's where the temptation might be to have firing orders issued to your weapons platforms automatically, or more likely semi-automatically. But the human intervention time probably isn't as critical there as the suggested defensive auto-fire systems they're worrying about.

I much more buy the idea of humans being set to priorities computer actions - such as dogfighting for example. Except that how many air-to-air engagements get to dogfights, and how many are done at missile range? And if you're engaging the enemy over the horizon, you're already relying on IFF now, and have been for decades. Making a fighter that can pull higher G's than humans requires the computers to be able to reliably do everything, something we're years from. Otherwise you're stuck with keeping the meatsack pilot alive and conscious, which means they'll need a role.

And actually current military doctrine in Western forces has been about making firing decisions harder, not easier. Because the price of causing casualties (civilian or blue-on-blue) is so high. So why would everyone suddenly reverse course?