2020 6th International Conference on Big Data and Information Analytics (BigDIA)
Application of Artificial Intelligence in Military:
From Projects View
YuLong Zhang ZiJie Dai
School of Systems Engineering 32252 Unit
National University of Defense Liangjianjie321@163.com
Technology
2020 6th International Conference on Big Data and Information Analytics (BigDIA) | 978-1-6654-2232-1/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/BIGDIA51454.2020.00026
Changsha, China
zhangyldqsuo@163.com
ZhengYi Wang Li Chen
31001 Unit School of Systems Engineering
15210141218@163.com National University of Defense
Technology
Changsha, China
chenli18@nudt.edu.cn
Abstract—The breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI)
have led to a new race in military throughout the world. Even
though technologies in AI, like machine learning or big data, are
still at their juvenile stage, the technology experts in United
States, Europe Union or other countries, have been setting out
to transfer AI technologies into the military power, which is
doomed to influence all spheres of warfare. To figure out which
domain has AI been studied to enhance military capability, the
paper summarized 7 major military applications of AI, based on
the projects investigated by the defense department in US and
Europe governments, finally analyses challenges associated with
military employment of AI techniques and draws a brief
conclusion.
Keywords—artificial Intelligence; military; application;
projects
I. INTRODUCTION
The breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) have led
to a new race in militaries throughout the world. As Russian
President Vladimir Putin pointed out in 2017, the nation that
had a leading edge in the sphere of AI would be able to “rule
the world”. Even though technologies in AI, like machine
learning or Big Data, is still at their juvenile stage, the
technology experts in United States, Europe Union and other
countries, have been setting out to transfer AI technologies
into military power, which is doomed to influence all spheres
of warfare. To figure out which domain has AI exactly been
studied to enhance military capability, the paper summarizes
7 major military applications of AI, based on the projects
investigated by the defense department in the US and Europe
governments, then analyses challenges associated with
military employment of AI techniques and finally draws a
brief conclusion.
II. RECENT NOTEWORTHY MILITARY APPICATION
OF AI
A. Intelligent target identification and monitoring
The intelligent target identification and monitoring
systems use computer vision to identify and track targets for
the autonomous weapon platform, which several military
research institutions and defense firms have already worked
on.
978-1-6654-2232-1/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE 113
DOI 10.1109/BigDIA51454.2020.00026
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LongFei Zhang
School of Systems Engineering
National University of Defense
Technology
Changsha, China
zhanglongfei@nudt.edu.cn
YuZhen Zhou
School of Systems Engineering
National University of Defense
Technology
Changsha, China
zhouyuzhen18@nudt.edu.cn
The most well-known project is Maven of the US Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which could
highly efficiently categorize and identify 38 different kinds of
objects among the huge sums of surveillance footage taken by
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or other surveillance
equipment. Similarly, DARPA’s project Target Recognition
and Adaption in Contested Environments (TRACE) using
computer vision to automatically locate and identify targets
based on the images of Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR).
B. Autonomous Weapon Platforms
Based on the target indication of the intelligent target
identification and monitoring module, autonomous weapon
platforms can react appropriately and always lock the target
even which deploys countermeasures or evasive maneuvers.
And advanced algorithms can locate the problem before it
happens, like ordering a return when vehicles lost GPS signals
or is facing fuel shortage.
According to Israeli defense contractor, Rafael Advanced
Defense Systems, in virtue of intelligent inferred tracking
modules based on computer vision techniques, their GIL-2
handheld rocket system could fire without line of sight to the
target, and take advantage of UAV to lock the target and guide
the missile.
Another valuable project is conducted by the French
defense contractor, Thales, which is partially owned by the
French Department of Defense. Thales presented a weapons
platform for fixed point defense called RAPIDFire, which is
equipped with 6 short-range anti-aircraft missiles and a 40mm
cannon. It could be inferred that RAPIDFire applies computer
vision to automatically acquire hostile targets, and provides it
to human operators who must approve any discharge of
defensive ordnance. Also, Thales claims there is an option of
operates fully autonomously.
DARPA came up with a deeper and more comprehensive
research in aerial and underwater space, which aims to build
the unmanned combat team for the specific mission. AI
modules in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) can not only
recognize the target, but also use multi-objective evolutionary
algorithms to solve allocation problems in the planning phase
of an operation, which optimize the number, payloads, and
path planning of drones. There is also a plan for building
submarine-locating drones, aimed at making the ocean
 Autonomous Control
Game Theory
Machine Learning
Evolutionary Algorithms UAS
Computer Vision TRACE GIL‐2
Maven
Big Data
Intelligent target
Autonomous
identification &
Weapon Platforms
monitoring
Fig. 1. Project distribution of technical routes and application fields.
“transparent”, which is designed to make use of Unmanned
Underwater Vehicle (UUV) to locate the enemy submarine
and carry out anti-submarine operations.
The most remarkable intelligent targeting system in recent
years is Advanced Targeting & Lethality Automated System
(ATLAS) of Combat Capabilities Development Command
(DEVCOM) of US Army, which could automatically
prioritize potential targets, bring the gun to bear and is
physically incapable of pulling the trigger itself. With the help
of ATLAS, real soldiers just need to watch infrared video of
the gunnery range outside, tap the target suggested by the
system on the left edge of the touchscreen, then somewhere a
hundred yards away, a unmanned turret would automatically
slew to aim its cannon at that target. ATLAS has been tested
by DEVCOM in August 2020, which performed better than a
well-trained crew. Instead of replacing humans altogether, US
Army wants to use ATLAS to let human do the work of two,
combining the traditional commander and gunner roles.
C. Battlefield simulation and training
Battlefield simulation and wargame have been widely
used in military exercise, where the research on Computer
Generated Force (CGF) is always critical to construct agents’
Command and Control (C2) system. It has been decades of the
US military institution devoting themselves to achieving the
military tactical intelligent C2 system. From the famous Deep
Green (DG) to Commanders’ Virtual Staff, until the recent
Real-time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision-making
(RAID).
RAID is a DARPA’s project that took further steps after
DG, combining planning method of modeling, game theory,
control theory, and machine learning. RAID operates at
tactical level, assists commanders to estimate the position,
strength and purpose of the enemy. Then RAID analyzes the
enemy’s intention and plans their own strategy.
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CAST
Deep 
BLADE
Armor
RAID ACE BAE
TWES
RAPIDFire
Orbital 
Insights
SDK of  Module 
ALIS of RSS
Palantir
Module  Module 
of RGP of EMRA
Battlefield Data Intelligence Logistics &
Simulation & Processing & Cyber Security Battlefield
Training preiction Healthcare
Apart from fully automatic intelligent C2 system like
RAID, DARPA has proposed Air Combat Evolution (ACE)
program, which invites 8 organizations or institutions in the
Autonomy Research Collaboration Network (ARCNet)
Consortium, like Soar Tech, Lockheed Martin and Heron
Systems etc., to lead the AI virtual dogfight trials. The project
seeks to develop an agent that can earn human trust and fight
as human-machine team member in the future. As the Lt. Col.
Dan Javorsek said, who’s ACE program manager in DARPA’
s Strategic Technology Office, “Each team provides a unique
pedigree and approach to algorithm development that will
make for a very interesting final competition”, and technology
roadmap is still an opening set question.
D. Data intelligence processing and prediction
Big Data analytics techniques and computer vision are
used for military purposes to extract highly valuable target
information from different sources with very large, diverse
data sets that include structured, semi-structured and
unstructured data in different sizes from terabytes to
zettabytes.
Some of the most important intelligent software products
have been applied to guard the US homeland. Palantir, for
example, has been deployed in CIA and FBI almost ten years,
using machine learning to pool message data, state identity
data, charts, spreadsheets, telephone records, documents
within a state database such as filed police reports, network
data, sensor data, and full motion video to find the patterns
related to criminals and aid police officers’ investigation.
Since 2011, US Marine applied Palantir in Afghanistan to
compile lists of possible bomb makers aiding terrorist cells.
There are also remarkable achievements in intelligence
analysis with AI. Orbital Insights, who received $20 million
in funding from the In-Q-Tel venture fund in 2016, specialize
in processing satellite images of large-scale areas with
114
computer vision. A case for Orbital Insights is predicting
China’s above-ground oil reserves by gauging the size of the
crescent-shaped shadow on the roof oil tanks.
Besides, U.S. Army Research Laboratory focuses on
machine learning techniques working on FPGA platforms,
which are cheap, low-power and fast enough to satisfy the
needs of individual combat. As Rajgopal Kannan said, a
researcher for the Computing Architectures Branch, CISD,
Army Research Lab-West (Los Angeles), based on massive
amounts of historical and real-time data, the BAE system, an
intelligent decision support system, “drive many major results
improving inferencing and learning within complex systems
and environments – the domain of the soldier” and operated
approximately 13 times faster when compared to multicore
and GPUs.
E. Cybersecurity
Cyberspace extends from sensors in battlefields to core C2
networks even to critical network infrastructures, which
fascinate military research institutions and defense firms to
form the AI advantages of cybersecurity.
DARPA has signed a $29 million contract with Lockheed
Martin on Behavioral Learning for Adaptive Electronic
Warfare system (BLADE). It could be inferred that AI
techniques like machine learning, play a vital role in detecting
and characterizing new communication threats, learning how
to jam it, and assessing the jamming effectiveness in the battle
field, or even predicting the countermeasures of the enemy
and adapting to achieving the sustainable jamming. Similar
thing has been done by the US Army, who integrated a
machine learning framework into the sensor processing
hardware for the Army's Tactical Electronic Warfare System
(TEWS), to help Electronic Warfare Officers quickly and
accurately detect patterns, identify signals of interest, filter out
unwanted signal noise and paint a picture of the
electromagnetic spectrum.
SparkCognition, an artificial intelligence system of US,
has launched their DeepArmor solution to cybersecurity,
which uses machine learning to identify unknown data, detect
cyber threats, and protect IoT networks. DeepArmor aims at
fixing the vulnerability of the end point in IoT networks, such
as laptops, mobile devices and sensors. Now SparkCognition
claims DeepArmor already can catch and block several global
cybersecurity threats, such as the WannaCry ransomware
attack, Popcorn Time, and Adylkuzz.
F. Logistics & Battlefield healthcare
The transportation of materials, ammunition, personnel
and equipment maintenance are the top priorities in military
logistics work. Integrating AI with military transportation can
greatly improve the efficiency of transportation and detect
anomalies in the fleet. For instance, the U.S. Army
collaborated with IBM recently, to use Watson's to pre-
identify problems with Stryker combat Vehicles.
Conversational interfaces can also be used to request diverse
varieties of information related to the system, and push the key
information accurately, like cost of ammunition, which is
necessary for the commander to make the right decision.
Vehicles autonomous technology also wins a place in the
future logistics, The Israeli Aerospace Industry is constructing
an autonomous bulldozer, and a vehicle that transforms its
dimensions to optimize for certain situations. Lockheed
Martin has launched their Convoy Active Safety Technology
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(CAST) system that can be installed on military trucks to lock-
on to the front vehicle and to drive using machine vision. And
Boeing is testing their autonomous spacecraft to deploy
routine satellites.
Maintenance also needs to be more intelligent. Lockheed
Martin collaborated with NGRAIN, a Canadian company,
using big data technologies to improve the maintenance
efficiency for the F-35 aircrafts of US Air Force. The project
is the SDK based on Autonomic Logistics Information
Systems (ALIS), which is used to generate high precision
visible damage reports. With the historical data onto the
specific fighter pushed by the AI module, it’s no longer
necessary to manually mark the damage location, manually
look up and compare historical films of the damage areas.
Big data technologies have also been used as AI module
in battlefield healthcare system, like Robotic Surgical Systems
(RSS) and Robotic Ground Platforms (RGPs) of the US,
which mine the medical records of the wounded. IBM’s
Watson research team has also been chosen as partner of US
Veterans Administration, to the Electronic Medical Record
Analyzer (EMRA), which use machine learning techniques
patients’ electronic records and automatically identify and
rank their most critical health problems.
G. Military vocational education
“PPT cancer” also spread widely in military vocational
education. To cure this single-track crammed education, the
US Army and the Air Force integrates a curricula plan and
design a software for management of vocational education.
Using machine learning, the software designed by Cerego, a
American educational technology company specializing in
employee training, instructional materials (video, lecture,
texts, etc.), could automatically arrange the teaching contents,
testing time and measure the progress accurately. It should be
noted that apart from techniques like machine learning, there
are also some classical age-old principles like retrieval
practice, which means practicing with the knowledge -- taking
little tests -- strengthens your overall retention like working
out to build a muscle. In 2019, the Air Force tests Cerego’s
adaptive learning program in Basic Military Train (BMT),
which help instructor to access the entire BMT curriculum
online.
III. CONCLUSION
The breakthrough of AI gradually has stepped into the
preliminary application stage in the military, while there are
still at least 3 challenges that must be considered.
The first is the transparency to the model, which is vital to
earn the commanders’ trust. The explainable AI right now still
cannot give a full description of their recommendations and
the strengths and limitations of their own reasoning.
The second is the transferability of the algorithm, which
means the algorithm should be feasible to the class of
problems not a single specific problem. As for this aspect, the
current transfer-learning still has a long way to go.
Last but not least, the training data for machine learning is
insufficient, which is not only tags for supervised learning but
simulation data for reinforcement learning as well.
From the projects above, the initial conclusion would seem
to be: AI application of military still focus on signal
identification, target detection discrimination and tracking,
simple planning of tactical weapon platforms, or relevant data
mining in information systems. And there is a noticeable trend
that AI is having an impact on tactical decision-making, assist
commanders to give existing resource to a full display. So, the
command and control system will be the next important issue
for AI to solve. Once it has been done, the next generation of
military operations will come into being.
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