WASHINGTON—The Pentagon intends to field a vast network of AI-powered technology, drones and autonomous systems within the next two years to counter threats from China and other adversaries.
Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, provided new details in a speech Wednesday about the department’s plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to produce an array of thousands of air-, land- and sea-based artificial-intelligence systems that are intended to be “small, smart, cheap.”
The U.S. is seeking to keep pace with China’s rapidly expanding military amid concerns that the Pentagon bureaucracy takes too long to develop and deploy cutting-edge systems.
“We’re not at war. We are not seeking to be at war, but we have to be able to get this department to move with that same kind of urgency because the PRC isn’t waiting,” Hicks said during an interview Tuesday, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
One approach could be to build on the capabilities demonstrated by Task Force 59, the U.S. Navy’s network of drones and sensors designed to monitor Iran’s military activities in the Middle East.
“Imagine distributed pods of self-propelled [autonomous] systems afloat, powered by the sun and other virtually limitless resources, packed with sensors aplenty, enough to give us new, reliable sources of information in near-real-time,” Hicks said during the speech before a conference hosted by Defense News in Arlington, Va.
Other capabilities that are being considered are autonomous ground-based systems to provide logistics, space-based autonomous systems that would be so numerous they would be difficult for an adversary to destroy and autonomous systems that could defend against incoming missiles.
Autonomous systems use artificial intelligence to detect and engage enemy targets, and can include self-piloting air- and sea-based drones. The Defense Department has long invested in such systems—including self-piloting ships and no-crew aircraft.
Hicks’s speech included important new details about the “Replicator” initiative the Pentagon announced last week to offset the growing Chinese military. At that time, the Defense Department said it hoped to deploy thousands of the systems but said little about how they might be used.