New Delhi: In a bid to increase use of artificial intelligence in the military, the US Air force conducted a major exercise with robot dogs trained to scout for threats before their human counterparts enter the field. The four-legged, headless, mechanical creatures were made to exit an aircraft and look for signs of danger at the Nellis Air Force Base in the US state of Nevada last week. They are part of an Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) that the US Air force is building, which will use artificial intelligence and data analytics to detect counter threats to the US military. "Valuing data as an essential war fighting resource, one no less vital than jet fuel or satellites, is the key to next-gen warfare," Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, told CNN. The dogs have been manufactured by Ghost Robotics, a company based in Philadelphia, and are called Vision 60 UGVs, or "autonomous unmanned ground vehicles".