The U.S. and China are accelerating research on how to integrate artificial intelligence into their militaries as part of a global race to take advantage of the fast-developing technology.
Among the priorities for both sides: weapons that can find their way to a target without human help and AI tools to identify targets from satellite images. In one recent trial by China’s National University of Defense Technology, a swarm of dozens of drones overcame test jamming signals by aiding each other, according to state media accounts. Then, without help from a human operator, they found and destroyed a target with loitering munitions, state media said. The U.S. held a joint exercise with the U.K. and Australia in April to use AI-enabled drones in a swarm to track and simulate attacks on ground vehicles such as tanks, self-propelled guns and armored vehicles. In the exercise, organizers said they retrained the drones while in flight by transmitting updates to AI targeting programs. And earlier this year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which coordinates research on emerging technologies for the U.S. military, offered a contract opportunity for a “swarm-of-swarms” project, which could potentially combine swarms of air, land and sea-based AI-guided drones. A recent study of hundreds of AI-related military procurement records conducted by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., found that around a third of all known contracts in the U.S. and China from an eight-month period in 2020 were for intelligent and autonomous vehicles, the largest share in both countries.

Full story : China, U.S. Test Intelligent-Drone Swarms in Race for Military AI Dominance.