The Future of War essays (no. 7): Use the current generation’s knowledge of war to robotize a lot of what the military does

By Bill
Gawne


Best
Defense future of war entrant

Current trends are moving
us toward increased automation of our battlefield assets and increased size of
our combatant staffs. These two things mean that we've gotten very good at
executing Plan A, even as it becomes harder for us to cut over to Plan B. I'd
have thought that the various J-3 and J-4 officers would have learned by now to
implement changes of plans quickly, but I've seen no evidence that it's happening.

It would be a good idea
for DARPA to look into artificial intelligence solutions to staff officer
duties. We've put a lot of money and effort into developing AI systems that
replace the warfighter at the tip of the spear. Why not develop AI solutions
that implement the broad knowledge and management skills of staff officers too?
Industry has been moving toward the replacement of complicated service
management functions by AIs in recent years.

Before the institutional
knowledge of our best logisticians and operational planners is lost to
attrition via retirement and downsizing, let's capture it in decision-capable
automated processes that don't get tired, don't get hungry, and don't suffer
from bad judgment brought on by accumulated stress. (And don't go out drinking
and looking for ‘entertainment' when on liberty.)

Bill
Gawne is a retired Marine master sergeant (1972-1995) whose last duty
assignment was Marine Corps Studies and Analysis at Quantico, where he worked
as an operations analyst. He is now employed by a contractor for the NASA
Goddard Spaceflight Center, where he works on automating mission operations for
NASA's science missions. This represents his own opinions, which are not
necessarily those of anyone he ever worked for.

Tom
note: Here's a critique of some of the Future of
War
stuff that has run here. There are now a total of 19 essays set to run. I may
cut off the entries when we get to 25 acceptable entrants. What think you?
Meantime, if you have one, here is how to send them .