Following the F-16 wingman aircraft, X-58 "Valkyrie" and X-62 VISTA autonomous flight projects that can independently carry out ground attack, the US military launched the "Venom" project, widely applying artificial intelligence engines to all types of aircraft at present and in the future, with the intention of enabling them to obtain autonomous flight capabilities. At the same time, the emergence of ChatGPT makes people marvel at the power of artificial intelligence. So, what role and impact will the application of AI play in the future military with informatization and intelligence as the important development direction?

Seeing the small and knowing the bright -- see the future from today's development

In 1956, artificial intelligence was first proposed. With the continuous development of more than 60 years, it has become a broad cross cutting and cutting-edge science and a major strategic means for countries to enhance national competitiveness and maintain national security.

In 2019, the United States released a series of strategic deployments on artificial intelligence to increase investment and development of artificial intelligence and related technologies; By the end of 2022, the number of China's national AI innovation application pilot areas has increased to 11, covering all major strategic regions and urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River; The AI used in Russia's economy accounts for about 20% of the total management volume, which is planned to increase to 50% in 2024.

The maritime destroyer, launched by Israel Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, uses artificial intelligence and decision-making algorithms, and can use artificial intelligence to conduct in-depth learning of cruise missiles to adapt to various scenarios. As the first high intelligent cruise missile in the world, the missile can automatically identify the target, and can still hit the target autonomously and accurately in case of GPS failure.

With the help of artificial intelligence, all kinds of unmanned equipment are carrying out corresponding work to meet the functions of early warning, detection, investigation, combat and so on. They can independently analyze the situation, obtain information, and make intelligent decisions, command and control based on this, finally reaching the goal of adapting to the complex, high intensity, and high uncertainty battlefield environment.

Sharp spears and sharp shields - promote growth by attacking and defending opposites

With the continuous development of informatization, modern warfare has become more and more intensive, dynamic, multi domain and other characteristics, gradually evolving from informatization to intelligence. It is necessary to compress the OODA ring, give full play to the advantages of intelligent weapons, constantly improve the ability to quickly perceive and quickly and accurately make decisions on the battlefield situation, and improve the cluster combat capability of equipment.

In actual combat, the real battlefield situation is changeable, and there are many factors affecting the weather, soldiers' status, material conditions, etc., resulting in a large amount of data, which is relatively difficult for AI to process. At the same time, if both sides use AI to guide the war, the amount of data that one side needs to process will increase exponentially with the amount of prediction. However, the weak AI currently used may not be able to process such a huge amount of data. Moreover, the analysis of battlefield data by AI belongs to the black box structure, and the commander cannot predict the logical judgment and expected effect of his decision, which is easy to be inconsistent with the real-time war situation and cause serious decision errors.

At present, all countries in the world have realized the importance of AI for war and are actively developing new and stable AI. As early as 2018, the United States has invested 5.1 billion dollars to establish a special artificial intelligence research institution, and countries are also constantly cooperating with civilian artificial intelligence systems, constantly strengthening military artificial intelligence, using it for automated unmanned machines, and adding weapons and identification systems to such machines. At the same time, the strong and effective analysis of communication encryption and data images by AI will lead to the close attention of satellites in various countries, which is easy to trigger sensitive nerves in various countries and break the strategic confrontation.

Look ahead and learn from the past -- learn from traditional experience and be good at regulations

Recently, the strong artificial intelligence ChatGPT has reached the level that can help people write papers, and even let the academic community sigh "erudite and professional". With the development of the information age, countries have realized that the traditional form of war is not fully applicable to modern war. Under the influence of today's high-intensity network information, use artificial intelligence to influence a country's scientific research and development, public opinion and even elections, and generate higher benefits at lower costs.

Considering the current performance of AI, it may gradually take over some affairs in the future war to handle and provide reference, but the main body of the war is still human, so we should work together to strengthen the management of AI, apply it to people's livelihood rather than military fields, and improve human life in an all-round way, To work together to safeguard national security and human peace and welfare. (Liang Tingyu, Li Yanda, Yang Jingkai, Mei Zhongwen, researchers of the Center for International Studies, National University of Defense Technology)

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