Enemies planning to attack often deliberately move in short, unexpected spurts to elude detection, emerge from undetectable areas and often use decoys or dummies to confuse overhead drones and surveillance planes. Insurgents, enemy vehicles, dismounted fighters and even some aircraft try to vary their patterns, change routines and regularly take specific steps to reduce their chances of being seen by drones. This is why there is so much work now taking Processing Exploitation Dissemination (PED) to a new level using artificial intelligence (AI) to sift through hours of video data and identify those critical moments of importance to commanders. The PED process, which regularly faces the challenging task of organizing massive volumes of incoming data from electro-optical/infrared cameras and infrared sensors, increasingly draws upon advanced computer algorithms to bounce new information against an existing database and perform analytics to support fast decisionmaking. With a similar goal in mind, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and several industry partners such as Raytheon Intelligence & Space, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems are now fast-tracking a technological system engineered to find and transmit only images or pixels that have "changed" in order to pinpoint moments of relevance.

WASHINGTON: In a clear sign of the fundamental importance of ethics and human control to the coming age of artificial intelligence in the US military, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declared his department will "do it the right way," even as competitors like China use AI to better monitor and suppress their citizens. "In the AI realm, as in many others, we understand that China is our pacing challenge. We're going to compete to win, but we're going to do it the right way," Austin told a day-long conference of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NACAI). "So our use of AI must reinforce our democratic values, protect our rights, ensure our safety, and defend our privacy. Of course, we understand the pressures and the tensions. And we know that evaluations of the legal and ethical implications of novel tech can take time."

WASHINGTON: In an extraordinary meeting that highlights how crucial artificial intelligence is becoming to the US and its allies, some 100 officials from 13 democratic countries met online Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss how their militaries could ethically use AI, the first summit of its kind. Hosted by the Pentagon's Joint AI Center, the virtual conference kicked off what JAIC's calling the AI Partnership for Defense, an international forum it hopes will evolve from broad principles and policy to technical cooperation on data and algorithms. "This is historic," said Mark Beall, who's been working on international cooperation since he became the JAIC's chief strategy and policy 18 months ago. "This group of my countries, to my knowledge, has never been brought together under one banner before." Defense Secretary Mark Esper officially adopted a set of AI ethics principles in February, although implementation is still nascent.

The Multi-Spectral Targeting System is a turreted electro-optical and infrared sensor used in maritime and overland intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. Raytheon Intelligence and Space is integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning across ISR capabilities to help warfighters make decisions faster with reduced workload. If a swarm of heavily armed fast boats barreled full speed at an aircraft carrier, the crew would have very little time to react. But if that crew had artificial intelligence and machine learning at its disposal, that blitz of boats probably wouldn't pose nearly as much of a problem. Raytheon Intelligence & Space, one of four businesses that form Raytheon Technologies, is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities of the U.S. and allied armed forces.