Semi-autonomous weapons have arrived, and Ukraine is the test bed.
Ukraine is burning through 10,000 drones a month. Russia is spending $100 m per month on drone production. Both are rapidly innovating — from first-person view (FPV - drones flown by remote pilots) to fiber optic drones (unspooled fiber optic cables provide the drone with a secure high-bandwidth connection).
On the battlefield and against civilian targets, ~70% of the casualties in the war are currently from drone attacks. Drones, using zero-day tactics and systems disruption, are also conducting strategic attacks against national infrastructure and strategic military assets.
In contrast, the US just announced its drone strategy. Its focus is on mass-producing drones and buying off-the-shelf systems in bulk (without any Chinese parts). The problem is that the US doesn’t have a domestic drone industry. China does. It outproduces the US a thousand to one, and the DoD desperately throwing a few billion at defense contractors won’t change that.
When facing a deficit like this, the best strategy isn’t to play catch-up; it’s to reinvent the game. Autonomous weapons provide that opportunity. Semi-autonomous weapons are merely a waypoint on the path to autonomous weapons, so catching up there shouldn’t be the objective. It’s time to vault to the endgame.
This first step is building a domestic commercial autonomy industry (see the report “American Autonomy” for more) in air, land, sea, and space. The next step, and likely the hardest, is inventing an autonomous weapon system from scratch. Let’s dig in.
Autonomous Weapons
Autonomous weapons can;