Future drone and missile defenses must be fast, accurate, and autonomous, relying on AI to detect and neutralize threats without human input, reports Patrick Tucker of DefenseOne. Speaking at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium, Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, head of the Pentagon’s missile defense command, warned that swarms of drones from adversaries like Iran and Russia could soon overwhelm current systems. “Drone defenses will need to act first, ask later,” he emphasized, as AI becomes critical for identifying and defeating threats in real time. Tucker writes:
Future AI-enabled drone and missile defenses will need to not only rapidly detect large numbers of drones and missiles, but also be accurate and trustworthy enough to take them out without having to involve a human, the head of the Pentagon’s joint missile defense command said Tuesday.
“The ability to accurately discriminate the threat, positively ID the threat, and then have the system auto-select the right interceptor or non-kinetic capability to defeat the threat is where we would definitely like to go,” Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, the head of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, said Tuesday at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium here. “We will push the boundaries on that, because we have to.”
Recent interactions in the Middle East, plus Russia’s relentless assault on Ukraine, have shown that even smaller adversaries like Iran are able to quickly produce ever-larger swarms of drones, in addition to other missiles. […]
The current pace of drone warfare, he said, “is driving us to look at ways how we can employ more autonomy. A lot of that’s going to happen through AI algorithms.” Increasing use of AI is “going to allow the system to better define the threat, discriminate against the threat, and process the threat,” he said.
But more important than that, he said, is employing a wider number of assets—more sensors, more intelligence, and more people—to the mission of drone and missile defense, rather than relying solely on killer robots.
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