Why the West Needs AI Weapons and Why Western Weapons Don’t Work

I want to write about AI weapons, especially since they were recently mentioned by Sikorski, and since it’s connected with the reason why Western weapons don’t work. You can often find articles saying Western weapons don’t work, and that’s true because Russia found a way to neutralize our weapons. Our Western weapons are advanced and often called smart, but they are not smart—not yet, at least. Western weapons are very advanced but rely on connections and sensors, which can be jammed or disabled. This is exactly what Russia is doing. Since Russia is not so advanced in technology, they just created techniques to disable electronics because it will hurt Russian forces less in case of affecting their own forces. Even ATACMS missiles are now used with cluster warheads because they can’t directly hit targets due to Russian electronic interference. Here you have a short video describing one of such Russian tactics and technologies.

The only response to this situation is AI weapons, and it’s well described and explained in the first video I linked:

15:25

“For decades now, militaries have been getting better and better at networking themselves together. Considering we live in a world where your fridge is increasingly likely to ask for your personal information before figuring out that, yes, you probably want your food to be kept cold, it’s probably not surprising to hear the military has become pretty reliant on tech and networks of its own. But organizations like NATO have also spent a lot of time theorizing what the response might be to a spectrum-contested or spectrum-denied environment. Where opposing electronic warfare or anti-satellite weapons, or some combination of systems, robs part of the Joint Force from their ability to access and leverage that wider network.

In the early 21st century, those environments were often mostly theoretical. But in Ukraine, we’ve often seen them first-hand, with Russia routinely blocking or spoofing GPS signals, interfering with drone control signals, and intercepting or interfering with Ukrainian communications. This is perhaps most visible in its impact when you talk about drone operations. According to organizations like RUSI, the single largest driver of losses among small reconnaissance drones or FPVs is opposing electronic warfare, whether you’re talking about the Russians or the Ukrainians. And for a lot of the drone systems out there, losing control signal can be about as impactful as a kinetic solution, shooting the drone down. Some off-the-shelf drones are programmed to just land in place if they lose control signal. But if you add a degree of autonomy to those systems, it may be that soft-kill isn’t really a kill at all.

An FPV with a visual targeting function, for example, might put a bounding box around potential enemy armored vehicles and ask its operator, “Hey, do you think that’s a target?” Assuming the operator says, “Absolutely; run for your life, mate,” from that point on, losing signal is no longer fatal. The drone can continue to guide itself into that target using its onboard sensors. And if you’re willing to dispense with the check and balance of that final engagement decision entirely, you may be able to operate these systems even in a completely EW blacked-out environment. You program a drone with a database of what valid targets look like, give it an area to operate in before it launches, and then potentially just send it on its way. It might use systems like inertial navigation and terrain recognition to figure out where it is, its onboard sensors to identify potential targets, and then, well, be able to get on with the job even if the local electromagnetic environment looks kind of like an artist’s impression of the bloody warp.

In that sense, what autonomy might be able to do is cure some unmanned systems of one of their greatest weaknesses, their intense attachment and reliance on their human handlers. Another potential take on that particular advantage is that just as autonomous systems might not need to be receiving instructions, they might also be comparatively less reliant on transmitting themselves. And on a modern battlefield where emissions are signature, transmitting less might translate into greater survivability. Not only, it has to be said, potentially for the drone or autonomous system itself, but also now potentially for the operator who might not have to broadcast as much if the system is capable of autonomous or semi-autonomous operation.”

29:14

“75% of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine are lost to electronic warfare. And while you’ll find different figures in different places, they all tend to concur that jamming is the greatest threat (or one of the greatest threats) that small drones currently face. But as we said right at the start of this presentation, one of the potential advantages of fully-autonomous systems is they might not give that much of a shit about EW. So what might be likely to happen if countries find themselves in a situation where they are losing a lot of their drones to EW, but they could press a button that meant those drones didn’t care about the jamming anymore? What if they could field systems that were capable of continuing to target even if they did lose connection to their operator? Either because of EW systems or because the earth isn’t flat and line of sight can be a bit of a bitch.

To me, that feels like the kind of impetus that might push a force towards deciding to accept the risk of turning up the dial on autonomy. If you want to get a really firm understanding of the potential incentives there, just take a hypothetical LAWS capability and apply it to Ukraine as we see it now. If both sides had ready access to fully functioning and developed LAWS already, the mathematics on drone engagements could change fairly dramatically. Not just because you could convert some of those cases where systems are lost to EW into successful engagements, but because you might be able to do things like use those drones to go hunt the electronic warfare assets themselves. Using autonomous systems to punch holes for semi-autonomous or human-operated systems to do their work. A hypothetical LAWS might be less effective than a human-guided system, but if they’re cheap enough and available enough, they don’t have to be as good as a human, they just have to be good enough. And the mere existence of that sort of system might force the opponent to adapt and change the way they operate.

So from a purely military perspective, I’d argue that going forward LAWS are likely to have a pretty significant wind at their back. They have the potential to offer significant military capability, including a potential counter-measure to one of the normal counter-measures to unmanned systems. And to potentially do it in a way that might tick a lot of defense economics boxes.”

So that’s why our weapons don’t work, and we need AI weapons. Russia has created simple electronic jamming devices that disable our whole technological advantage. Like the author of the video said: “And if you’re willing to dispense with the check and balance of that final engagement decision entirely, you may be able to operate these systems even in a completely EW blacked-out environment.”