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US experimenting with AI for predictive tactics

by on04 August 2021


Wargames 

US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) recently conducted a series of tests known as the Global Information Dominance Experiments, or GIDE, which combined global sensor networks, artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and cloud computing resources to "achieve information dominance" and "decision-making superiority".

According to a press release the AI and machine learning tools tested in the experiments could someday offer the Pentagon a robust “ability to see days in advance", meaning it could predict the future with some reliability based on evaluating patterns, anomalies, and trends in massive data sets.

The idea which seems to come from the movie Wargames is already enabled by tools readily available to the Pentagon, so it is already in use. 

General Glen VanHerck, Commander of NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told reporters at the Pentagon this week that this was the third test of GIDE, conducted in conjunction with all 11 combatant commands “collaborating in the same information space using the same exact capabilities”. The experiment centered around contested logistics and information advantage; two cornerstones of the new warfighting paradigm recently proposed by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A full transcript of VanHerck's press briefing is available online.

VanHerck told reporters that this AI-enabled decision making could allow for a type of proactive forecasting that sounds like the stuff of science fiction.

The machine learning and the artificial intelligence can detect changes [and] we can set parameters where it will trip an alert to give you the awareness to go take another sensor such as GEOINT on-satellite capability to take a closer look at what might be ongoing in a specific location.

"What we've seen is the ability to get way further what I call left, left of being reactive to actually being proactive. And I'm talking not minutes and hours, I'm talking days."

The ability to see days in advance creates decision space. Decision space for me as an operational commander to potentially posture forces to create deterrence options to provide that to the secretary or even the president. To use messaging, the information space to create deterrence options and messaging and if required to get further ahead and posture ourselves for defeat.

Gen. VanHerck says this most recent experiment, GIDE 3, was a way of testing “a fundamental change in how we use information and data to increase decision space for leaders from the tactical level to the strategic level -- not only military leaders, but also gives opportunity for our civilian leaders.” The NORTHCOM and NORAD Commander claims that GIDE shifts the Department of Defense’s (DOD) focus “away from pure defeat mechanisms for homeland defense towards earlier, deter-and-deny actions well outside a conflict” and will allow faster, more proactive decision making.

To do this, the experiment used artificial intelligence tools to perform real-time analysis of data gathered by a network of sensors across the globe including “commercially available information” from unnamed partners. That information, VanHerck says, could be shared via cloud-based systems to allies and other partners in real-time, should NORTHCOM decide to. The tests also included support from the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and Project Maven, a DOD project that leverages AI to sift through massive amounts of persistent surveillance imagery and rapidly identify useful information.

The US Air Force and US Army have already been testing similar concepts which are exploring the convergences of real-time data collection and artificial intelligence to enable faster and more informed decision making. VanHerck says the GIDE 3 experiments were different, however, in that NORTHCOM isn't looking to create new tools or concepts, but instead use what is already available to give the highest levels of military leadership a new level of awareness:

"The primary [difference] between what I'm doing and what the services are doing is I'm focused at the operational to strategic level. Taking data and information that is available today. That's key. We're not creating new capabilities to go get data and information. This information exists from today's satellites, today's radar, today's undersea capabilities, today’s cyber, today's intel capabilities. The data exists. What we're doing is making that data available… and shared into a cloud, where machine learning and artificial intelligence look at it and they process it quickly and provide it to decision makers, which I call decision superiority,” VanHerck said.

Last modified on 04 August 2021
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