Comment by Riaz Haq on November 27, 2023 at 8:16am

Pentagon pushes A.I. research toward lethal autonomous weapons

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/pentagon-pushes-ai-resear...

There is little dispute among scientists, industry experts and Pentagon officials that the U.S. will within the next few years have fully autonomous lethal weapons. And though officials insist humans will always be in control, experts say advances in data-processing speed and machine-to-machine communications will inevitably relegate people to supervisory roles.

That's especially true if, as expected, lethal weapons are deployed en masse in drone swarms. Many countries are working on them — and neither China, Russia, Iran, India or Pakistan have signed a U.S.-initiated pledge to use military AI responsibly.

It's unclear if the Pentagon is currently formally assessing any fully autonomous lethal weapons system for deployment, as required by a 2012 directive. A Pentagon spokeswoman would not say.

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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Artificial intelligence employed by the U.S. military has piloted pint-sized surveillance drones in special operations forces' missions and helped Ukraine in its war against Russia. It tracks soldiers' fitness, predicts when Air Force planes need maintenance and helps keep tabs on rivals in space.

Now, the Pentagon is intent on fielding multiple thousands of relatively inexpensive, expendable AI-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 to keep pace with China. The ambitious initiative — dubbed Replicator — seeks to "galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many," Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in August.



While its funding is uncertain and details vague, Replicator is expected to accelerate hard decisions on what AI tech is mature and trustworthy enough to deploy - including on weaponized systems.

There is little dispute among scientists, industry experts and Pentagon officials that the U.S. will within the next few years have fully autonomous lethal weapons. And though officials insist humans will always be in control, experts say advances in data-processing speed and machine-to-machine communications will inevitably relegate people to supervisory roles.

That's especially true if, as expected, lethal weapons are deployed en masse in drone swarms. Many countries are working on them — and neither China, Russia, Iran, India or Pakistan have signed a U.S.-initiated pledge to use military AI responsibly.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 1, 2024 at 9:56am

Pakistan tests Fatah-2 missile


https://www.defensenews.com/training-sim/2023/12/27/watch-pakistan-...

The Fatah 2 test “marks another step in Pakistan’s efforts to field multiple precision strike artillery systems with variable ranges to hold adversary targets at risk,” said Frank O’Donnell, a nonresident fellow with the Stimson Center think tank’s South Asia Program and a senior research adviser at the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network.

The fact Pakistan developed the weapon, he added, demonstrates the country has learned lessons from recent or ongoing conflicts.

“When viewed in the context of Pakistan’s parallel efforts to field a similarly diverse arsenal of combat drones, its implementation of certain lessons — which the military feels the Azerbaijan-Armenia and Russia-Ukraine wars have reinforced — become clear,” O’Donnell told Defense News. “They include the advantages of assigning adversary precision ground bombardment missions to relatively low-cost artillery and combat drone systems, preserving manned fighter aircraft for higher-end strike missions and interception of their counterparts.”

India’s S-400 air defense system is likely a key target of the Fatah 2, he added, as Pakistan could fire the weapon as a decoy to create “greater room for a combat drone to strike the S-400 itself in the midst of the bombardment.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 2, 2024 at 11:30am

S-400: Ukraine Overwhelms 'World's Best' Defense Systems; Reports Say At-Least 3 Launchers Destroyed

https://www.eurasiantimes.com/s-400-ukraine-overwhelms-worlds-best-...

Ukraine launched a new attack on the Kerch Strait connecting Crimea and the Russian mainland, reportedly damaging a warship while firing eight Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs).

Before that, towards the end of October, reports also claimed Ukraine destroyed four S-400 systems, possibly using the newly acquired Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) from the United States (US).

The early November attacks on the Kerch Strait specifically displayed the Ukrainian air force’s new tactics meant to overwhelm and divert Russian air defense’s attention, Russian experts have said.

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According to the UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) intelligence update on November 2, Russia has “likely lost at least four long-range Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) launchers to Ukrainian strikes” in the preceding week. It quoted Russian media reports on October 26 reporting the loss of three “SA-21 launchers” in the Luhansk region, with Ukrainian sources reporting “additional Russian air defense losses in Crimea.”


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As for the kind of weapon used to hit the S-400, Business Insider quoted a Russian Telegram channel saying they used the ATACMS, particularly the M39 missile, a 150-kilometer range ‘area weapon’ that scatters 950 M74 submunitions over a vast expanse. Forbes said the M39’s first victims were 21 Russian helicopters in an October 17 strike “in Luhansk and outside Berdyansk in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine.”

Videos on X (formerly Twitter) showed smoke rising from Luhansk, claiming this was an S-400 system. Earlier pictures from October 26 also showed a detached engine of the M39 missile fired from the ATACMS launcher in the settlement of Bilorichensk, Lutuginsky District, temporarily occupied Luhansk Oblast. This proved the use of the missile on Russian targets.

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