Warnings about autonomy and warfare abound. Much of the concern involves the ethics of non-human systems making decisions about the use of lethal force. Other questions address artificial intelligence (AI) understanding the context of its actions, its predictability, ability to transfer lessons from one task to another, durability, and impact on society, as well as the role of international law, cooperation between industry and government, and the slow pace of the defense acquisition process. [1]
Despite these concerns, the Department of the Navy (DoN) must push further and faster to develop autonomous capabilities for the Navy and Marine Corps. The United States is nearing a seventh military revolution characterized by autonomous weapons, robotic swarms, big data, and deep-learning.[2] Autonomy—whether as a machine acting independently or a human-machine team working together—will shape the future of warfare. Near-peer competitors make no secret of their intentions to harness the potential of autonomy.
Chinese leaders expect AI to “reshape the character of war itself,” and are developing unmanned aerial, underwater, and surface systems. Russia aims by 2030 to have 30 percent of its combat power composed of remotely controlled and autonomous systems.[3] Funding, research, implementation, and support from senior leaders must increase more quickly if the United States is to maintain its naval pre-eminence throughout the 21st century. The failure to exploit and implement autonomous capabilities may put the United States at an irrecoverable disadvantage in the coming decades.
Three major arguments justify the Navy’s intensified pace toward autonomy. First, the potential benefits of autonomous systems are vast. Most new technologies will be “dual-use,” having both civilian and military applications, and the Navy, too, must evolve. Second, current uses of AI show promise for revolutionizing naval affairs. The implementation and normalization of autonomy within the Navy can begin now with proven results from industry. Finally, the Navy’s history shows that shying away from experimental research and new technology is the wrong option. The Navy should firmly resist any hesitancies, which compound delays in an already slow government testing, approval, and acquisition process. Just as aviation and nuclear power became a foundation for the Navy in the 20th century, autonomy will become a cornerstone of U.S. defense policy for the next 100 years.
The Potential of Autonomy
Autonomy is generally defined as a machine having the ability to execute tasks with limited to no human intervention.[4] Advances in autonomy are driven by converging technologies such as AI, robotics, dig data, and advanced motion sensors.[5] Autonomous systems can involve a built-in human control mechanism (human-in-the-loop), a human override mechanism (human-on-the-loop), or minimal-to-no human involvement (human-out-of-the-loop).
Autonomous systems can be conceptually divided into two categories: processes and assets. Autonomous processes include those capabilities driven by machine learning, big data, cloud storage, and AI to automate procedures and functions. Major advances in autonomous processes could support mission planning, training and education, decision-making, administrative roles, and financial functions. Autonomous assets include the physical equipment and resources the Navy can use to carry out missions. These assets are divided primarily into three categories: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), and unmanned surface vehicles (USV).
Autonomy can enable expansive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) through the use of full-sized UAVs like the MQ-9 Reaper or large numbers of small, low-cost UAVs. One test in 2016 showcased 103 micro-UAVs conducting surveillance operations.[6] Another example is the low-cost unmanned aerial vehicle swarming, which deploys cheap, fixed-wing platforms capable of airborne coordination.[7] The rising cost of ship construction combined with the need for a larger fleet supports the possible deployment of an all-UAV aircraft carrier. Technological advances like autonomous aircraft software, catapult systems, automated landing systems, and robotic assembly-lines could support such a vessel. [8]
UUVs are the least-developed naval autonomous asset. The Navy is exploring the use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), a sub-sect of UUVs, to conduct sea-sensing and mine countermeasure missions. AUVs could be conducting operations in denied areas by 2025.[9] One possibility for employment is to launch UUVs from submarines for surveillance and strike operations.[10]
USVs receive less attention than their aerial counterparts, but hold enormous potential. USVs support cross-domain integration and increase the capabilities of other unmanned systems with their large payloads, power reserves, and endurance. They also can help overcome anti-access/area-denial environments by projecting information operations, military deception campaigns, electronic warfare capabilities, and cyberwarfare missions.[11] Current projects aim to have swarms of autonomous vessels conducting both surveillance and security operations.[12]
Autonomous assets can act as a major force multiplier. UAVs, USVs, and UUVs can increase the health of the force and material readiness while the Navy’s requirements for deployments, readiness, and forward presence remain high.[13] Autonomous assets decrease the manpower and financial requirements for deployments while decreasing the human and economic risk.[14] The cost to create and maintain a single manned ship means great loss from any negative event, while unmanned vehicles can improve the efficiency and range of naval capabilities at a fraction of the cost.[15]
Additionally, autonomous assets strategically support the Navy’s principles such as distribution and maneuver by leveraging “additional weapons and sensors over large areas” and optimizing the “strategic depth of the force.”[16] Both airborne and surface-borne drones can support intelligence collection and targeting requirements for multi-domain battlespaces and over-the-horizon (OTH) operations.[17] One challenge of OTH amphibious operations is providing adequate fire support for landing forces, and autonomous drones could overcome this challenge by acting as mobile mini-mortars with increased on-station times.[18] Drones and cyber networks can also increase force protection efforts with digital camouflage, decoys, and “deep fakes” to confuse an enemy.[19]
The greatest benefit of implementing autonomy into the Navy is the speed of decision making for command and control. Autonomy and man-machine teaming can allow leaders to make better decisions faster.[20] In previous wars, the United States had a time-cushion in which to absorb costs and regain the initiative. This will not be the case in the future due to advances in technology. As General Dunford points out, military leaders must “be prepared to make decisions at the speed of relevance.”[21] When the speed of relevance is the speed of electrons, the Navy will depend on autonomy to remain a relevant fighting force.
Current Autonomous Employment
The United States already uses autonomous systems for offensive and defensive missions. Various levels of autonomy support mobility, targeting, intelligence, interoperability, and health management. Autonomy empowers homing missiles, navigation, and autopilot capabilities. Basic targeting systems use automated target recognition to identify objects and support non-kinetic targeting for ISR collections.[22] Counter-artillery batteries and Phalanx close-in-weapons-systems can engage automatically upon detecting a threat.[23] Recurring and rules-based tasks such as scheduling replenishments at sea, naval weapon-target assignment plans, dynamic frequency allocations, and planning daily aircraft routing are candidates for integration with AI in the near future. [24]
UAVs are now common on the battlefield, providing critical mission contributions with reduced maintenance costs.[25] Increasingly independent UAVs have proven their worth as an “inexpensive, readily available, versatile, and difficult to detect and defeat” asset in the U.S. arsenal.[26] The Navy started landing drones at sea in 2013, and UAVs such as the Predator and Reaper “possess significant strike, SUW [surface warfare], and ISR capabilities and already are performing missions with lower risk and personnel demands than manned air wings.”[27] The Office of Naval Research successfully demonstrated that autonomous helicopters can support aerial cargo delivery.[28] Lockheed Martin’s Vector Hawk UAV has passed multiple tests for conducting short-range reconnaissance and intelligence collection. Finally, in 2018 the Navy awarded a contract to Boeing for the MQ-25 carrier-based aerial-refueling drone, a platform which also has potential for air-to-ground attack and ISR missions.[29]
In 2017, the Navy created its first underwater drone squadron.[30] Boeing and Lockheed Martin were awarded design contracts to develop prototypes of extra-large unmanned underwater vehicles.[31] Lockheed Martin’s Orca advertises itself as a modular autonomous vehicle capable of operating independently at extended ranges,[32] while Boeing is building a Navy platform based on its 51-foot Echo Voyager. In February, the Navy awarded Boeing $43 million dollars to build four Orca vessels while it also pursues other experimental UUV platforms.[33]
Future uses of USVs are under-explored but hold substantial promise. USVs have significant advantages over UAVs and UUVs with regard to endurance and payload capacity for prolonged operations.[34] Previous exercises highlighted the ability of USVs to relay instructions from shore to underwater assets, in this case by ordering the launch of a UAV which a UUV was carrying.[35] Researchers at RAND studied USV capabilities with regards to their suitability for 62 different naval missions, and then cross-checked those levels of suitability to the available level of technology. Highly suitable and market-ready USV missions include C4ISR, mine warfare, search and rescue, and testing and training. Missions such as electronic warfare, armed escorts, information operations, communications relay and sensor networks, presence patrols, and early warning hold additional promise after further technological development.[36] Despite their potential, major missions such as reconnaissance, maritime security, electronic attack, and offensive surface warfare have received “little to no development [when] applied in the surface and/or maritime environment.”[37]
Most USVs are directed toward missions such as observation and collection, physical environment mapping, mine countermeasures, countering small boats, and testing.[38] The Sea Hunter, a USV the size of a small ship, is currently undergoing tests in conjunction with its associated airborne ISR sensor array, the Towed Airborne Lift on Naval Systems. The Sea Hunter is being developed to cruise for up to 70 days and as far as 10,000 nautical miles from its homeport.[39] The current cost of the vessel is only $23 million (5 percent of a single littoral combat ship), highlighting the financial benefits of autonomous assets for the Navy.[40] The Sea Hunter’s next phase of testing involves automated payloads and autonomous coordination with multiple ships.
Tech Adaptation in History
Advocates of autonomy point to previous periods of technological advancement that helped maintain America’s military supremacy. New weapons and technologies have always faced resistance, and while ethical concerns about autonomous weapons should never be ignored, mistakes need not dissuade investment. The United States has taken risks before for new technology. During the Cold War, defense companies reduced their production of traditional military equipment like tanks to develop new technologies like military electronics. This investment led directly to the advances in missiles and computers which the Navy relies on today.[41]
The adoption of aviation and aircraft carriers demonstrates the Navy’s ability to quickly operationalize worthwhile technology and institutionalize large-scale changes. In the early 20th century, advances in battleships meant that naval aviation was required to support targeting. Civilian aircraft and pilots could not meet the military’s demands prior to World War I due to patent issues, a similar problem to scenarios with new technologies today. The Navy overcame these challenges as the rapid shift in tactics during World War II necessitated the full-scale adoption of naval aviation.[42]
The development of modern submarine warfare serves as another useful example of accepting risk and learning from errors. Both the United States and Soviet Union suffered major catastrophes during the 20th century. The Soviet submarine K-129 sank in 1968 from unknown circumstances, while the K-8, a class-leading nuclear submarine, sank in 1970 from fires and reactor failure.[43] The U.S. similarly suffered in 1963 when the USS Thresher (SSN 593), a new nuclear-powered submarine, sank due to equipment failures. Only six years later, the USS Scorpion (SSN 589) sank from unknown circumstances, ranging from hostile attack to torpedo failures and flooding. These examples serve not as a justification to disregard the dangers of advanced technology, but rather to show that these disasters happened decades after the widespread adoption of submarine technology as the Navy continued to develop newer, better assets. Mistakes will happen; they should not serve as inhibitors to the acceptance and implementation of vital new systems.
The Navy’s Way Forward
The Navy and Marine Corps are uniquely suited to benefit from autonomous systems. Paul Scharre and Michael Horowitz, researchers at the Center for New American Security, highlight six military attributes that welcome autonomy: empowering lower-skilled workers to perform higher-skilled work, replication for large-scale operations, faster-than-human reaction speed, superhuman precision, extended patience, and operations away from reliable communications.[44] Some strides are being made to foster autonomy, but more can be done. Since 2015, the government’s unclassified budget for AI and other advanced technologies has increased by 40 percent. The Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19) budget request designated AI and autonomous and unmanned systems as research and development priorities.[45] The Navy also requested $62.5 million for FY19 to integrate AI throughout the fleet. [46]
Most AI systems require some level of guidance from humans. Sailors and Marines will require instruction and training on these technical systems, just as officers will require education on how to integrate them into operations and planning. Educating front-line leaders on the capabilities of autonomous systems should be a DoN priority. AI systems are designed to provide quick responses at speeds faster than a human. If decisions are still funneled to senior leaders via bureaucratic pathways, the benefits of the systems are lost. As the Harvard Business Review states, “there needs to be a democratization of judgment-based decision-making power.” Preparing its personnel for autonomy is perhaps the most immediate challenge facing the Navy.
Conclusion
The future of amphibious warfare is inextricably linked to autonomy, whether in tangible assets such as UAVs or in computer systems to support administrative requirements. Current private industry practices demonstrate that implementation is possible in the immediate future. The Department of the Navy must resist the pressure to reverse trends or delay investment for research and development. Policy decisions about the ethical uses of autonomy will be refined as new systems are adopted, but should not delay operational employment by the fleet. Twentieth-century naval leaders demonstrated their capability to accept and mitigate risk while pursuing innovative new technologies. That willingness has allowed the United States to project power and sea control around the globe for almost 70 years. The potential of autonomous systems to support the Navy’s missions, requirements, personnel, and decision-makers is too great to pass up. The risk by failing to do so is greater.
Endnotes
[1] Paul Scharre and Michael C. Horowitz, “Artificial Intelligence: What Every Policymaker Needs to Know,” Center for New American Security, June 2018, 11; “Five Artificial Intelligence Insiders in Their Own Words,” The New York Times, 19 October 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/business/five-artificial-intelligence-insiders-in-their-own-words.html; Brian K. Hall, “Autonomous Weapons Systems Safety,” Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 86 (3rd Quarter 2017), 87; Margi Murphy, “Microsoft workers protest bid to build Pentagon’s $10bn AI warfare system,” The Telegraph, 13 October 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/13/microsoft-workers-protest-bid-build-pentagons-10bn-ai-warfare/; and Daniel S. Hoadley and Nathan J. Lucas, “Artificial Intelligence and National Security,” Congressional Research Service, 26 April 2018, 14–15.
[2] F. G. Hoffman, “Will War’s Nature Change in the Seventh Military Revolution?” Parameters, vol. 47, no. 4, Winter 2017–18.
[3] Andrew Feickert, Lawrence Knapp, Jennifer Elsea, and Laurie Harris, “U.S. Ground Forces Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI): Considerations for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, 20 November 2018, 13.
[4] Vincent Boulanin and Maaike Verbruggen, “Mapping the Development of Autonomy in Weapon Systems,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 5.
[5] Auntowhan Andrews, “Concept of Operations for the Tactical Use of Autonomous Unmanned Surface Systems,” Gravely Naval Research Group, U.S. Naval War College, 10, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1057889.pdf
[6] Boulanin and Verbruggen, 30-31
[7] Jules Hurst, “Robotic Swarms in Offensive Maneuver,” Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 87 (4th Quarter 2017), 105.
[8] Thomas Shugart, “Build All-UAV Carriers”, USNI Proceedings, vol. 148 (September 2017), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-09/build-all-uav-carriers.
[9] Olivia Miltner, “Can the U.S. Navy Brave the Waves of Autonomous Warfare?” 1 May 2018, https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/can-the-us-navy-brave-the-waves-of-autonomous-warfare/82418.
[10] Geoff Ziezulewicz, “How underwater drones will change the Navy’s sub game,” The Navy Times, 3 August 2018, https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/08/03/how-underwater-drones-will-change-the-navys-sub-game/.
[11] U.S. Navy Employment Options for Unmanned Surface Vehicles, RAND National Defense Research Institute, 28, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR300/RR384/RAND_RR384.pdf.
[12] Boulanin and Verbruggen, 31.
[13] Andrews, “Concept of Operations,” v.
[14] Brent D. Sadler, “Fast Followers, Learning Machines, and the Third Offset Strategy,” Joint Forces Quarterly, vol. 83 (4th Quarter 2016), 15.
[15] Miltner, “Can the U.S. Navy.”
[16] Andrews, “Concept of Operations,” 7.
[17] Ibid., 5.
[18] Hurst, 106.
[19] Michael C. Horowitz, Gregory Allen, Edoardo Saravalle, Anthony Cho, Kara Frederick, and Paul Scharre, “Artificial Intelligence and International Security,” Center for New American Security, July 2018, 10.
[20] Sadler, 15.
[21] Joseph Dunford, “The Character of War and Strategic Landscape Have Changes,” Joint Forces Quarterly, vol. 89 (2nd Quarter 2018), 2–3.
[22] Boulanin and Verbruggen, 20, 21, 24–27.
[23] Hall, 89.
[24] Connor S. Mclemore and Hans Lauzen, “The Dawn Of Artificial Intelligence In Naval Warfare,” War On The Rocks, 12 June 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/the-dawn-of-artificial-intelligence-in-naval-warfare/.
[25] Andrews, “Concept of Operations,” v-vi.
[26] Brian Abbe And Troy Abbott, “Taking An Enterprise Integration Approach To Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems,” Special Report by Booz Allen Hamilton, 1.
[27] Shugart, “Build All-UAV Carriers.”
[28] Miltner, “Can the U.S. Navy.”
[29] David Axe, “The Navy’s New Aircraft Carrier Drone Borrows 1970s Stealth,” The National Interest, 11 September 2018, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/navy%E2%80%99s-new-aircraft-carrier-drone-borrows-1970s-stealth-31007.
[30] Ziezulewicz, “How underwater drones.”
[31] Miltner, “Can the U.S. Navy.”
[32] Lockheed Martin, “Orca XLUUV,” https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/orca-extra-large-unmanned-underwater-vehicle-xluuv.html.
[33] Werner, Ben “Navy Awards Boeing $43 Million to Build Four Orca XLUUVs”, USNI News, 31 February 2019, Accessed at https://news.usni.org/2019/02/13/41119
[34] U.S. Navy Employment Options, 24–25.
[35] Eric Tegler, “A surface vessel just commanded a submarine to launch an aircraft—all unmanned,” 20 October 2016, arsTechnica, https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/a-surface-vessel-just-commanded-a-submarine-to-launch-an-aircraft-all-unmanned.
[36] U.S. Navy Employment Options, 25–27
[37] Andrews, “Concept of Operations,” 1.
[38] U.S. Navy Employment Options, 17.
[39] Miltner, “Can the U.S. Navy.”
[40] Andrews, “Concept of Operations,” 11–12.
[41] Hall, 88.
[42] Ibid., 77–78.
[43] Robert Farley, “How Russia Lost a Lethal Nuclear Submarine (And Never Recovered the Nuclear Weapons Onboard),” National Interest, 12 November 2016, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/how-russia-lost-lethal-nuclear-submarine-never-recovered-the-18375.
[44] Scharre and Horowitz, “Artificial Intelligence,”10.
[45] Summary of the 2018 White House Summit on Artificial Intelligence For American Industry, The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, 10 May 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Summary-Report-of-White-House-AI-Summit.pdf.
[46] Mclemore And Lauzen, “The Dawn.”
