[sneeuwpopsneeuw]

I have some limited experience in naval war ship combat software. There are many systems on a ship that can be fully automatic and that was even true before AI was a thing. The Goalkeeper https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goalkeeper from the 80's is for example a fully automatic gun that can take out incoming attacks but also make strategic attacks. This system has to be turned on manually and a chief has to approve to the maximum capabilities such as the maximum amount of bullets the system is allowed to use. Other software already can give the operations team the advice to enable it without using fancy AI. But the command still has to travel by 3 people before it can be turned on. This is mostly because of safety. So I expect that the same will happen in other fields. A human probably has to get the advice from the machine and decide if an other machine is allowed to do a thing.

[baybal2]

A battlefield superior "AI" can already be easily fielded.

Just like Goalkeeper will beat any human operated gun, a cheap disposable drone swarm pointed at an enemy country with a program to blow up anything resembling an airfield will beat any military general at leading an air campaign, and will probably beat even a nuclear weapon in effectiveness. It's already possible without any real AI. It's just nobody bothered to make one (or probably did, and is keeping quiet about it.)

It's just we did not have a big war in the age of powerful, disposable computers, and thus never weaponized it. There are many weapons today which claim to "beat nuclear weapons" in their respective context, with the main determinant of them being "super" weapons is the lack of humans in the loop.

All of them can be developed, and weaponized, it's just a man with a gun, artillery, and amassed air, or armour already works superbly well at the task, and most importantly does so reasonably economically.

[tim333]

> cheap disposable drone swarm pointed at an enemy country with a program to blow up anything resembling an airfield

I don't think that exists. We have cheap drones that won't do much to an airfield and don't have much range.

We have B52s that can blow up an airfield but those aren't drones. Or cheap.

[ergot_vacation]

Interesting. Now that you mention it, I do seem to vaguely remember an article in the past year or two talking about just how automated some naval ships were getting. This also is a good reminder of the military's relationship to tech in general, which is that it's usually much, much farther along then the civilian world.

[dirtyid]

Probably in reference to Zumwalt where the relationship is not always positive i.e. automation saves cost on smaller crew, but smaller crew gets overworked (USN already grossly overtasked), has less expertise redundancy if shit hits fan, or even crew to ship size ratio for damage control needs.

[greedo]

AEGIS can operate in fully automatic mode as well.