In a future conflict, American troops will direct the newest war machines not with sprawling control panels or sci-fi-inspired touchscreens, but controls familiar to anyone who grew up with an Xbox or PlayStation in their home. Over the past several years, the US Defense Department has been gradually integrating what appear to be variants of the Freedom of Movement Control Unit (FMCU) handsets as the primary control units for a variety of advanced weapons systems, according to publicly available imagery published to the department's Defense Visual Information Distribution System media hub. Those systems include the new Navy Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) launcher, a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle–based anti-ship missile system designed to fire the new Naval Strike Missile that's essential to the Marine Corps' plans for a notional future war with China in the Indo-Pacific; the Army's new Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) system that, bristling with FIM-92 Stinger and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and a 30-mm chain gun mounted on a Stryker infantry fighting vehicle, is seen as a critical anti-air capability in a potential clash with Russia in Eastern Europe; the Air Force's MRAP-based Recovery of Air Bases Denied by Ordnance (RADBO) truck that uses a laser to clear away improvised explosive devices and other unexploded munitions; and the Humvee-mounted High Energy Laser-Expeditionary (HELEX) laser weapon system currently undergoing testing by the Marine Corps. The FMCU has also been employed on a variety of experimental unmanned vehicles, and according to a 2023 Navy contract, the system will be integral to the operation of the AN/SAY-3A Electro-Optic Sensor System (or "I-Stalker") that's designed to help the service's future Constellation-class guided-missile frigates track and engage incoming threats. Produced since 2008 by Measurement Systems Inc. (MSI), a subsidiary of British defense contractor Ultra that specializes in human-machine interfaces, the FMCU offers a similar form factor to the standard Xbox or PlayStation controller but with a ruggedized design intended to safeguard its sensitive electronics against whatever hostile environs American service members may find themselves in.

This paper explores the changes that pervasive AI is having on the nature of combat. We look beyond the substitution of AI for experts to an approach where complementary human and machine abilities are blended. Using historical and modern examples, we show how autonomous weapons systems can be effectively managed by teams of human "AI Operators" combined with AI/ML "Proxy Operators." By basing our approach on the principles of complementation, we provide for a flexible and dynamic approach to managing lethal autonomous systems. We conclude by presenting a path to achieving an integrated vision of machine-speed combat where the battlefield AI is operated by AI Operators that watch for patterns of behavior within battlefield to assess the performance of lethal autonomous systems. This approach enables the development of combat systems that are likely to be more ethical, operate at machine speed, and are capable of responding to a broader range of dynamic battlefield conditions than any purely autonomous AI system could support.

A critical factor in utilizing agents with Artificial Intelligence (AI) is their robustness to novelty. AI agents include models that are either engineered or trained. Engineered models include knowledge of those aspects of the environment that are known and considered important by the engineers. Learned models form embeddings of aspects of the environment based on connections made through the training data. In operation, however, a rich environment is likely to present challenges not seen in training sets or accounted for in engineered models. Worse still, adversarial environments are subject to change by opponents. A program at the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) seeks to develop the science necessary to develop and evaluate agents that are robust to novelty. This capability will be required, before AI has the role envisioned within mission critical environments. As part of the Science of AI and Learning for Open-world Novelty (SAIL-ON), we are mapping possible military domain novelty types to a domain-independent ontology developed as part of a theory of novelty. Characterizing the possible space of novelty mathematically and ontologically will allow us to experiment with agent designs that are coming from the DARPA SAIL-ON program in relevant military environments. Utilizing the same techniques as being used in laboratory experiments, we will be able to measure agent ability to detect, characterize, and accommodate novelty.

The next era of war and deterrence will be defined by AI. The AI winner of this decade will be economically and militarily dominant for the next 50 years. The faster that we confront this reality, the faster we can act in ensuring America does not lose. China is currently outpacing the United States (for which there are numerous supporting facts). The United States, both the government and AI technologists, need to start acting. The AI War is at the core of the future of our world.

Earlier this year, two Berkut 540 aircraft -- codenamed Red 1 and Red 2 -- raced down the runway of Santa Monica Airport and climbed into the California skies. As the two planes flew over Ventura County, a KC-46 Pegasus Tanker came into the pilots' view. The tanker flew adjacent to Red 1, and the pilot navigated into position so the KC-46 could refuel the aircraft while Red 2 observed. However, anyone looking up from the ground would have only seen two planes in the sky. The third plane that "refueled" Red 1 wasn't real -- it was generated using augmented reality.

When forward-deployed Army soldiers need air support, an operations center is tasked with identifying and assigning aircraft aid. With traditional software, an operator moves through a multistep process to search for available aircraft, identify their call signs and assess the munitions they carry. Pulling this relevant information can take several minutes--a long time to wait when making "real-time" decisions for immediate support. Considering the massive amount of information the U.S. Department of Defense must sift through every day and increasingly sophisticated UAVs and UASs collecting even more data, it's no surprise the Pentagon has turned to artificial intelligence for help. The newly launched Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office and efforts and strategies such as the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration initiative, Joint All Domain Command and Control and JAIC shows that DoD recognizes the potential of AI in decision compression.

Booz Allen Hamilton announced the creation of HELworks, an innovative developer of directed energy and high energy laser (HEL) weapon systems designed to meet the needs of warfighters in the modern battlespace. "Booz Allen's significant investment in HEL technology maturation and operational prototypes ensures that HELworks solutions are operationally relevant and producible at scale--ready for use by warfighters, today. We are proud to be on the forefront of innovation and mission-focused leaders in this area." Booz Allen has made significant investment in independent research and development projects focused on developing directed energy solutions over the past 5 years, based in the firm's understanding of Department of Defense (DOD) needs and mission requirements. HELworks leverages Booz Allen's 25-plus year heritage of directed energy expertise to optimize size, weight, and power (SWaP); deliver enhanced military utility; and provide rapid deployment of first-of-its-kind HEL solutions.

'The Six Million Dollar Man' Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors, is an astronaut who is seriously injured when his spaceship crashes. When Austin recovers, his "bionic" parts give him superhuman strength, speed and sight. With these powers, Austin goes to work for the Office of Scientific Information, battling evil for the good of humanity. The popular 1970s television program spun off a second TV series, 'The Bionic Woman' starring Lindsay Wagner. 'The Terminator' series of action films stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cybernetic organism (cyborg), programmed from the future to go back in time and kill the mother of the scientist who leads the fight against Skynet, an artificial intelligence system that will cause a nuclear holocaust.

Excerpted from War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future by Roberto J. González, published by the University of California Press. The blistering late afternoon wind ripped across Camp Taji, a sprawling U.S. military base north of Baghdad in an area known as the Sunni Triangle. In a desolate corner of the outpost, where the feared Iraqi Republican Guard once manufactured mustard gas, nerve agents, and other chemical weapons, a group of American soldiers and Marines solemnly gathered around an open grave, dripping sweat in the 114-degree heat. They were paying their final respects to Boomer, a fallen comrade who had been an indispensable team member for years. Days earlier, he had been literally blown apart by a roadside bomb.

The first aspect of cyber defense of AI starts with the networks, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael S. Groen said today during a virtual fireside chat at the Billington CyberSecurity Summit. "The department is undergoing a little bit of a mind shift on networks and architecture. Our networks are a core piece of our warfighting architecture. Our networks are weapons, and, so, we have to treat them like weapons. We have to, we have to plan to protect them, make them resilient because everything that we're going to do in an artificial intelligence or data-driven way will depend on the security [of] those networks," he said.