The era of algorithmic war has begun in the world, Will Roper, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Air Force), announced in a Popular Mechanics publication.
“And as scary as it sounds, it’s taking place on a much larger battlefield, armed with commercial technology and startups,” he said.
The Procurement Assistant recalled that the US Air Force is currently using an artificial intelligence (AI) system originally developed for playing chess as a co-pilot on a number of its aircraft, in particular one of the U-2 aerial reconnaissance aircraft.
“The gamification of war for computer applications is nothing new,” says Roper, noting that the implementation of U-2 reconnaissance operations is practically no different from the conditions laid down in the algorithms of a computer game.
In his opinion, “the story could easily end right here: algorithmic warfare is a new battlefield, and AI is a new weapon.” According to Roper, the promising technologies of the future should also include, in particular, astronautics, quantum machines and synthetic biology.
“Winning the market race for all types of technologies, including commercial ones, is becoming a national security imperative,” concludes the assistant minister.
Earlier in January, Roper said that the development of the sixth generation fighter under the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) project for the United States Air Force was using Formula 1-style engineering.
In the same month, a procurement assistant said the US Air Force “must be ready to establish air superiority on the first day of the war,” otherwise “the rest of the services will not have time to join [к конфликту]”.
