Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Warfare: Can the U.S. Military Keep Up?

Back in the last decade of the last century, all of the services were — each in its own way — examining the “service after next” trying to envision how technology would affect the battlespace of the future. Artificial Intelligence and advanced robotics, particularly small aerial drones, were still in their infancy as were military lasers and microwave weapons. We knew all of these emerging systems had a future, but how they would be integrated into the force of the future was still unclear. To some extent, it still is. We knew that the Iranians were exploring the use of swarms of small boats and aircraft to challenge American naval superiority in the Persian Gulf and speculated that the use of armed drones would make such air and sea attacks even more difficult to defend against. A number of futuristic war games were conducted during that period and they developed more issues than answers.