Artificial Intelligence at War
Ukraine offers further insights into the application of AI for knowing what is happening on the battlefield. Advanced digital technology has made the close and deep battlespace almost transparent. Strategy is now formed around finding enemy forces while fooling their surveillance systems to avoid being targeted. The result is that the frontline between the two forces, out to about 40km on either side, is now a very deadly zone through which neither side can break through to win.
This tactical crisis appears likely to deepen as present semi-autonomous air, land and sea systems are progressively updated by Ukraine and Russia with AI. This will make these robots much less vulnerable to electronic warfare jamming and allow them to autonomously recognize a hostile target and attack. Sensing the significant battlefield advantages, the US has launched the large-scale Replicator program aiming to field ‘autonomous systems at scale of multiple thousands, in multiple domains, within the next 18 to 24 months’.
Given AI’s use in Gaza and Ukraine, it appears likely that in a potential war with China the principal utility of AI similarly will be find-and-fool. Consider clashes over the first island chain, which runs from Indonesia to Taiwan and through Okinawa to mainland Japan. With China to the west and the United States to the east, military forces would use AI’s ability to quickly find items within a background full of clutter while attempting to fool the enemy’s AI systems.
Helped by AI, US-led coalition kill webs and Chinese kill webs will readily find and target hostile air and naval forces on their respective sides of the island chain. The first island chain might then become a stabilized but very dangerous land, sea and air battlespace, with US and allied forces dominating on the eastern side and Chinese forces dominating on the western side. The island chain would become a no man’s land that neither side could pass through without suffering prohibitive losses.
How to win in a war so driven and influenced by AI may be the major question facing defence forces today. The Ukraine war suggests some strategies: wearing the other side down in a protracted attrition battle; using mass frontal attacks to overwhelm the adversary in a weakly defended area; infiltrating using small assault groups with heavy firepower support; or quickly exploiting some fleeting technological advantage to break through. Such options may become practicable as more and more AI-enabled weapon systems enter service.
The operational balance seems to have swung to favor defense over offence, to the advantage of status quo powers, such as India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia. But this may prompt a revisionist power like China to seize territory before others can respond, making it difficult to push back. As Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned, ‘Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow.’
Peter Layton is a visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, author of Grand Strategy and co-author of Warfare in the Robotics Age. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
