James Austin, USAF, the deputy J6 at U.S. European Command, warned that implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into military operations must be done with care—such as with targeting operations.
It puts pressure on U.S. military and NATO intelligence to be correct. And while it is great that AI can handle weeks’ worth of work in minutes, a human still has to look at the data and make sense of it, to verify that it is accurate, Austin emphasized.
“I think in the next couple of years, that is where artificial intelligence and machine learning is going, in the NATO fleet and the technology from both U.S. European Command and Africa Command,” he noted. “But the human always has to be sitting there thinking, is that data right? [This is] especially true if I am going to make a target, if I am going to strike somebody. And let’s be honest, we are talking about 21-year-old kids that are probably on the frontline. They have got to understand their left or right limits.”
Austin also shared that the U.S. European Command has held several successful hackathons, and that kind of forum should be leveraged to view different vendor solutions.
“With a hackathon, I am assuming a certain amount of risk as the authorizing official,” he said. “It is a controlled test environment with some test data. And if it is successful there, I’ll bring it in. From my perspective, a hackathon would be the easiest way . . . to try and bring it on to our side, test it and go.
And even though the NATO body is a complex organization, officials are making progress in digital standards, Austin noted.
“NATO is like 32 family members going to dinner, and it is, ‘what do you want to eat?’” he said. “That is where we are. We are getting standardization, kind of going back to the future, where we were with our standards in the 80s and the 90s, with ‘Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.’”
Notably, U.S. Marine Corps Force in Europe and Africa (MARFOREUR/AF) has the smallest footprint in NATO, with no assigned forces, meaning Marines must come in from the continental United States when needed, explained Lt. Col. Zachary Cesarz, USMC, assistant chief of staff, G-6, MARFOREUR/AF.
“We do not have allocated forces in theater, and so we are caught between a rock and a hard place by supporting the folks to my left and folks to my right,” Cesarz said, speaking of the Marine Corps’ support of the joint forces. “For us at least, that creates a certain challenge in trying to keep up [with digital transformation].”
From the outset, though, MARFOREUR/AF has to be an integrating force, with capabilities and information technologies that provide an immediate ability to communicate C2 and share data across services and partner nations.
“Because we are limited in capacity, we have to focus on making sure we can talk to the folks left and right of us,” he noted.
Moreover, as the Marines are “very focused” on the warfighting aspect, they need proper military IT and communications technologies, Cesarz told industry.
“MARFOREUR/AF sits at that C2 operational level . . . and we are always focused down to the lowest tactical level,” he said. “There is an opportunity for industry here. Instead of focusing on the business side of things, the business process, the business applications, we are looking for you to focus on C2 systems and the interoperability of those. We are able to integrate, but I need your help to enable that C2-system traffic to flow across partners and mission sets.”
In addition, any offered technological solution from industry must improve operations, and not just be a shiny, new technology, Cesarz emphasized.
“We absolutely need to incorporate digital transformation as much as possible,” he stated. “But if it is taking away from the basic blocking and tackling that we are all charged with doing, actually putting warheads on foreheads, we have got to do that basic blocking and tackling. If we are chasing the next ‘whiz-bang thing’ that only solves one micro problem set, it does not really help the greater good, the greater problem sets.”
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