US and Chinese military planners prepare for a new kind of war

As their rivalry intensifies, U.S. and Chinese military planners are preparing for a new type of war in which squadrons of air and sea drones equipped with artificial intelligence work together like a swarm of bees to overwhelm an enemy.

Planners envision a scenario in which hundreds or even thousands of machines engage in a coordinated battle. A single controller can supervise dozens of drones. Some illuminated, others attacked. Some would be able to pivot to new objectives in the middle of a mission based on prior programming rather than a direct order.

The world's only AI superpowers are engaged in a drone arms race that is reminiscent of the Cold War, except that drone technology will be much harder to contain than nuclear weapons. Since the software drives the drones' swarming capabilities, it could be relatively easy and inexpensive for rogue countries and militants to acquire their own fleets of killer robots.

The Pentagon is encouraging the urgent development of cheap, expendable drones to deter China from pursuing its territorial claims over Taiwan. Washington says it has no choice but to keep pace with Beijing. Chinese officials say AI-based weapons are inevitable, so they must have them too.

The uncontrolled spread of swarm technology could lead to more instability and conflict around the world, said Margarita Konaev, an analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technologies.

As undisputed leaders in this area, Washington and Beijing are best placed to set an example by limiting the military use of drone swarms. But their intense competition, Chinese military aggression in the South China Sea and lingering tensions over Taiwan are dimming prospects for cooperation.

The idea is not new. The United Nations has been trying for more than a decade to advance drone nonproliferation efforts that could include limits such as banning targeting civilians or prohibiting the use of swarms for ethnic cleansing.

MILITARY CONTRACTS OFFER CLUES

Drones have been a priority for both powers for years, and each side has kept its advances secret, making it unclear which country might have the advantage.

A 2023 Georgetown study of AI-related military spending found that more than a third of known contracts issued by the U.S. and Chinese military services over eight months in 2020 were for unmanned intelligent systems.

The Pentagon issued a request for proposals in January for small unmanned maritime interceptors. The specifications reflect military ambition: drones must be capable of traversing hundreds of miles of contested water space, working in groups in GPS-free waters, carrying 1,000-pound payloads, attacking craft hostiles at 40 mph and execute complex autonomous behaviors to adapt to a target's evasion tactics.

It's unclear exactly how many drones a single person would control. A spokesperson for the Secretary of Defense declined to say, but a recently released Pentagon-backed study offers a clue: A single operator oversaw a swarm of more than 100 inexpensive aerial and ground drones in late 2021 during of an urban warfare exercise at an army training site. at Fort Campbell, Tennessee.

The CEO of a company developing software that allows multiple drones to collaborate said in an interview that the technology is booming.

We're enabling a single operator to run half a dozen now, said Lorenz Meier of Auterion, who works on the technology for the U.S. military and its allies. He added that this number is expected to reach dozens and within a year hundreds.

Not to be outdone, the Chinese military claimed last year that dozens of aerial drones had self-repaired after jamming, cutting off their communications. An official documentary says they regrouped, switched to homing, and completed an unassisted search-and-destroy mission, detonating explosive-laden drones at a target.

To justify the surge in drone swarms, China hawks in Washington are offering this scenario: Beijing invades Taiwan then thwarts U.S. intervention efforts with waves of air and sea drones that prevent U.S. and allied planes, ships and troops to gain a foothold.

A year ago, CIA Director William Burns said that Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping had asked his military to be ready to invade the country by 2027. But that doesn't mean not that an invasion is likely, nor that the arms race between the United States and China around AI will not worsen global instability.

KISSINGER URGES ACTION

Just before his death last year, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urged Beijing and Washington to work together to deter the proliferation of AI weapons. They have a narrow window of opportunity, he said.

Restrictions on AI must be imposed before AI is integrated into every society's security structure, Kissinger wrote with Harvard's Graham Allison.

Xi and President Joe Biden reached a verbal agreement in November to create AI security working groups, but that effort has so far taken a back seat to the arms race for autonomous drones .

Competition is not good at building trust or reducing the risk of conflict, said William Hartung, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

If the United States moves full speed ahead, China is likely to speed up no matter what it does, Hartung said.

Analysts say there is a risk that China could offer swarm technology to U.S. enemies or repressive countries. Or it could be stolen. Other countries developing this technology, such as Russia, Israel, Iran and Turkey, could also disseminate their know-how.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in January that U.S.-China negotiations, expected to begin this spring, will focus on AI security. Neither the Defense Secretary's Office nor the National Security Council would comment on whether military use of drone swarms might be on the agenda.

China's Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

A FIVE YEAR WAIT

Military analysts, drone makers and AI researchers don't expect fully capable, combat-ready swarms to be deployed for about five years, although big breakthroughs could come sooner.

The Chinese currently have a material advantage. I think we have an advantage in software, said Adam Bry, CEO of U.S. drone maker Skydio, which supplies the military, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the State Department, among others.

Chinese military analyst Song Zhongping said the United States has stronger basic scientific and technological capabilities, but added that the American advantage is not impossible to surpass. He added that Washington also tends to overestimate the effect of its computer chip export restrictions on the spread of drone swarms in China.

Paul Scharre, an AI expert at the Center for a New American Security think tank, believes the rivals are about even.

The big question for every country is how to effectively use a swarm of drones? he said.

This is one reason why all eyes are on the war in Ukraine, where drones operate like eyes in the sky to make undetected maneuvers on the front line virtually impossible. They also deliver explosives and are used to kill ships at sea.

In Ukraine, drones are often lost due to jamming. Electronic interference is just one of many challenges to developing drone swarms. Researchers are also focusing on the difficulty of marshalling hundreds of aerial and maritime drones into semi-autonomous swarms over vast swaths of the Western Pacific in preparation for a possible war against Taiwan.

A secret and now-dormant $78 million program announced early last year by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, seemed tailor-made for the Taiwan invasion scenario.

Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms isn't much to say, but the mission is clear: develop means for thousands of autonomous land, sea, and air drones to degrade or defeat an enemy by seizing a contested territory.

DRONES IMPROVISE BUT MUST RESPECT ORDERS

A separate DARPA program, called OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics, aimed to bring together more than 250 ground-based drones to help Army troops in urban warfare.

Project coordinator Julie Adams, an Oregon State robotics professor, said swarm commanders participating in the exercise managed to choreograph up to 133 ground and air vehicles at once. The drones were programmed with a set of tactics that they could perform semi-autonomously, including domestic reconnaissance and simulating enemy destruction.

Under the leadership of a swarm commander, the fleet behaved like an infantry squad whose soldiers were allowed to improvise as long as they followed orders.

That's what I would call a supervisory interaction, in the sense that the human could stop the command or stop the tactic, Adams said. But once an action such as an attack was initiated, the drone was left to its own devices.

Adams said she was particularly impressed by a swarm commander at a different exercise last year at Fort Moore, Ga., who single-handedly managed a swarm of 45 drones for 2.5 hours with only 20 minutes of training.

It was a pleasant surprise, she said.

A reporter had to wonder: was he a video game player?

Yes, she said. And he had a VR headset at home.

___

Associated Press writer Zen Soo in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

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