Fully Exploiting Autonomous Military Systems

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Drones’ prominent role in the Russia-Ukraine War and air strikes across the Middle East have demonstrated that the future of warfare will be automated. Despite being the first to field robotic systems, the United States military has been slow to embrace autonomous capabilities at scale or take operators out of the decision-making loop. The Department of Defense’s hesitance is due, in part, to legitimate concerns about the reliability of automated capabilities. But adversaries like China or Russia may not share these concerns and are likely to deploy fully autonomous systems in future confrontations.

Senior Fellow Bryan Clark will sit down for a fireside chat with AeroVironment Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer Wahid Nawabi about how the US military can realize these opportunities in autonomous systems. Then a panel of experts from the DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) and the defense industry will discuss the way forward for autonomy in US command and control systems, weapons, and vehicles as well as the role of data in achieving these goals.

Agenda

9:00 a.m. | Fireside Chat

• Wahid Nawabi, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, AeroVironment
• Bryan Clark, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Defense Concepts and Technology

9:35 a.m. | Panel 1

• Lindsey Sheppard, Director, Advanced Command and Control Accelerator, Chief Digital and AI Office, Department of Defense
• Scott Gilloon, Sector VP of Air Force Strategic Development, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems
• Matt Macnak, Chief Technology Officer, Primer Technologies

Moderator

• Bryan Clark, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Defense Concepts and Technology

10:25 a.m. | Panel 2

• Kevin Chlan, Senior Director for Air Dominance & Strike, Anduril Industries
• Rob Morrissey, Defense Programs, Palantir Technologies
• Dan Javorsek, President, EpiSci

Moderator

• Bryan Clark, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Defense Concepts and Technology
   

Key Takeaways

An upcoming Hudson study will unpack the future of autonomy in military operations. Bryan Clark, the study’s author, warned in a Hudson event that the United States military has not fully exploited opportunities in automation—which may give less-restrained adversaries like China a head start.

Below are highlights from Clark’s conversation with a panel of defense industry experts on how fully autonomous systems can make US forces more effective.

1. China may be willing to delegate life-or-death decisions to autonomous systems. How should the US respond?

Dan Javorsek, president of EpiSci, notes that the Chinese Communist Party may not have the same legal, moral, and ethical reservations regarding autonomous systems that the West does, and that the People’s Liberation Army may embrace fully autonomous systems more rapidly.

Scott Gilloon, sector vice president of Air Force Strategic Development at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, points out that the CCP is already adept at using data to manage its population. Whether or not the CCP’s approach extends to the PLA, the DoD needs to decide how to balance moral questions about fully autonomous systems with the practical risks of allowing China’s military to overtake US capabilities.

2. US policy needs to allow for innovation in full autonomy.

Autonomous systems need to be integrated and interoperable, require very little human interaction, and react quickly to threats in real time. Wahid Nawabi, the chairman, president, and CEO of AeroVironment, argued that technology is not the issue, and that it is policy that needs to evolve. Fortunately, the Department of Defense has taken significant steps in the past few months toward this goal.

3. The future of command and control will depend on rapidly adaptable software.

According to Lindsey Sheppard of the DoD’s Chief Digital and AI Office, US military planners have made rapid progress in conceptualizing and deploying command and control concepts through data-centric operational decision-making. To do so more effectively, the DoD is prioritizing access to live data and networks with quick iteration cycles relying on software-centric capabilities.