September 7, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Kelsey Atherton
WASHINGTON — A killer robot by any other name is far more palatable to the general public. That may be part of the logic behind the Army Research Laboratory Chief Scientist Alexander Kott's decision to refer to thinking and moving machines on the battlefield as “mobile intelligent entities.” Kott pitched the term, along with the new ARL concept of fully autonomous maneuver, at the 2nd Annual Defense News Conference yesterday, in an panel on artificial intelligence that kept circling back to underlying questions of great power competition.
“Fully autonomous maneuver is an ambitious, heretical terminology,” Kott said. “Fully autonomous is more than just mobility, it's about decision making.”
If there is a canon against which this autonomy seems heretical, it is likely the international community's recent conference and negotiations over how, exactly, to permit or restrict lethal autonomous weapon systems. The most recent meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems took place last week in Geneva, Switzerland and concluded with a draft of recommendations on Aug. 31st.
This diplomatic process, and the potential verdict of international law, could check or halt the development of AI-enabled weapons, especially ones where machines select and attack targets without human interventions. That's the principle objection raised by humanitarian groups like the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, as well as the nations that called for a preemptive ban on such autonomous weapons.
Kott understands the ethical concern, drawing an analogy to the moral concerns and tradeoffs in developing self driving cars.
“All know about self driving cars, all the angst, the issue of mobility... take all this concern and multiply it by orders of magnitude and now you have the issues of mobility on the battlefield,” said Kott. “Mobile intelligent entities on the battlefield have to deal with a much more unstructured, much less orderly environment than what self-driving cars have to do. This is a dramatically different world of urban rubble and broken vehicles, and all kind of dangers, in which we are putting a lot of effort.”
September 7, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
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April 29, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Charles Forrester, London - Jane's Defence Weekly Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Military Industries (GAMI) announced on 27 April that the country was procuring six unmanned systems from local firm Intra Defence Technologies for delivery in 2021, and a further 40 systems within five years. The type of UAV was not disclosed in the Tweet from the organisation's official account, but Intra advertises the Karayel tactical UAV, developed by Turkey's Vestel, and the Asef VTOL UAV, which was launched at the Dubai Airshow in 2019. Jane's notes that a Karayel was lost over Yemen's Al-Hudaydah in late December after being shot down by a surface-to-air missile near the port of Al-Salif. The Karayel has an endurance of 20 hours at 18,000 ft (5,486 m) and a cruise speed of 60-80 kt. Maximum payloads for the platform are 70 kg under the fuselage and 60 kg per wing across a total of four hardpoints. The platform's datalink range is 200 km from the GCS. The platform shown at the Dubai Airshow was armed with Roketsan MAM-L and MAM-C munitions. The platform was also shown with a Hensoldt Argos II EO/IR pod to provide day-and-night surveillance capabilities. Intra signed an agreement with Hensoldt South Africa's Optronics division to develop an electro-optical payload for UAVs in Saudi Arabia ahead of the 2019 Dubai Airshow as part of efforts to improve self-sufficiency in the unmanned aerial vehicle domain. Intra representatives told Jane's at the Dubai Airshow last year that the company was primarily orienting its marketing efforts for the Karayel towards the Saudi military, and potentially exporting the platform to Brazil and Kuwait. GAMI, which was announced in 2017 and formally convened in 2019, has roles ranging from the management of procurement for the Saudi military to the supervision of defence-industrial research and development (R&D) and the transfer of technology to Saudi industry. https://www.janes.com/article/95813/saudi-arabia-announces-uav-procurement
February 6, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence
By: Vivek Raghuvanshi NEW DELHI – India's defense budget for 2019 included a marginal 6.87 percent bump to $49.68 billion, which is unlikely to meet modernization demands or ‘Make in India' manufacturing increases. Out of the total allocation, $16.91 billion has been set aside to buy new weapons and other military hardware, compared to $14.68 billion in the previous financial year. But not accounted for are the liabilities, say some defense analysts, which could chip away at available funds. “As of now, one doesn't know about the extent of committed liabilities to be able to say how much money will be available for new purchases,” said Amit Cowshish, former financial advisor for the Ministry of Defence acquisition. "But it can be said with reasonable certainty that the allocation must be much less than the requirement projected by the ministry. That being the case, the ministry will have to make do with whatever money they have got, just the way they have been managing in the past.” India's defence budget is more than five times that of Pakistan, pegged at $9.6 billion — barely enough to maintain its basic operational capability. Presenting the interim budget for 2019-20 in parliament, Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Piyush Goyal said additional funds, if necessary, would be provided to secure India's borders and maintain its defense preparedness. Under capital outlay, the Army was granted $4.60 billion and the Navy granted $3.61 billion — both nearly flat compared to the year before. The Indian Air Force was allocated $6.14 billion, combared to $5.58 billion in the previous year. One MoD official said the majority of funds will go towards past committed liabilities for Rafale fighters, S-400 missile systems, warships and helicopters. Still, the fact that the budget saw an increase is noteworthy to some. “The allocation for defense, which for the first time has crossed the $49 billion threshold is encouraging," said Baba Kalyani, chairman of leading private sector defense enterprise Bharat Forge Ltd. In terms of manufacturing, "we hope that ‘Make in India' will result in a greater role for the private industry in this critical sector of the country's economy.” Cowshish is less encouraged, seeing very few noteworthy programs on the horizon. “It doesn't seem likely that many big contracts for fighters, helicopters, submarines, etc. will get concluded in the coming year," he said. "This is not because of paucity of funds but on account of the fact that none of these procurement proposals are likely to reach anywhere near the contract conclusion stage any time soon. “ https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2019/02/05/indias-new-defense-budget-falls-way-short-for-modernization-plans/