Unmanned Systems Technology 007 | UMEX 2016 report | Navya ARMA | Launch & recovery systems | AIE 225CS | AUVs | Electric motors | Lethal autonomous weapons

76 Insight | Lethal autonomous weapons operating in simplified environments. A Brimstone missile is far less intelligent than a self-driving car, for example, and was intended to operate in a much simpler, less demanding environment from a computational perspective than the public road. To elaborate, the linear battlefield of the Cold War for which Brimstone was designed lent itself to a weapon that could be fired in the general direction of the enemy in all weathers and be relied on to find and kill tanks in circumstances that would certainly be hostile. The dual-mode version that the RAF deploys over Syria and Iraq these days is not used that way, and the rules of engagement that demand positive visual identification of the target and lock-on before launch preclude exploitation of its rudimentary autonomy, and mean it will be used in its laser homing mode under human operator control from target selection to impact. Such relegation of nascent autonomy is a response to a fundamental change in the kinds of wars that western nations have asked their armed forces to fight recently. The conflicts of the early 21st century have involved insurgents adept at concealing themselves among civilian populations and blending their preparations for attacks into the normal patterns of life, and in a media environment in which any mistake by western forces that harmed civilians would be instantly exploited by the enemy for propaganda and recruitment purposes. Rather than programming AI directly into weapons, military efforts are now focused on helping humans make better decisions in very complex environments under pressure of time. However, this establishes a direction of travel and raises the expectation that at some point it will be possible for AI to make the leap from helping humans to make decisions to making those decisions itself. When AI makes better decisions than humans can, and makes them more quickly, the pressure to let the machines take over will be hard to resist. The wrong question In the civilian world, Google’s self- driving cars have been on the road since 2009. As of February 2016, they have been involved in 17 minor April/May 2016 | Unmanned Systems Technology When AI makes better decisions than humans can, and makes them more quickly, the pressure to let the machines take over will be hard to resist A Royal Air Force armourer checks a Dual Mode Brimstone on a Tornado. The missile is capable of selecting its own targets according to predefined criteria (Courtesy of MBDA)