China's 'Mind-Boggling' Claims – New AI System Can Design Hypersonic Weapons By Itself Without Human Intervention

Although the US remains the leader in the anti-submarine warfare and artificial intelligence domain, China's efforts to harness "quality data" for military use have put Beijing way ahead of the Pentagon, a former admiral of the US Navy said. A new paper published in a journal run by China's aerospace defense industry claims that Beijing has made significant progress in building an AI (artificial intelligence) system that can design new hypersonic weapons autonomously. "It was frustrating for all of us working with large excel spreadsheets, in deciding which programs to advance and which to curb", said Admiral Bill Moran (retired), a former Vice Chief of US Naval Operations, while speaking at a Navy League webinar on artificial intelligence in November 2021. On March 16, a team of researchers led by Professor Le Jialing with China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre in Mianyang, Sichuan, published their findings in the Journal of Propulsion Technology. Le has been an advisor to the Chinese military on hypersonic weapon technology for more than three decades, according to the publicly available information. As hypersonic research in China advances to Mach 8 – eight times the speed of sound – and above, the volume of experimental data to be processed and analyzed has also been increasing significantly, researchers say.