Pentagon announces new AI office as it looks to deploy autonomous weapons

The Defense Department on Wednesday announced a new office focused on accelerating and adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the military as it aims to deploy autonomous weapons in the near future.

The Artificial Intelligence Rapid Capabilities Cell (AI RCC) will aim to install AI tech into systems for the military, focusing on emerging technologies like generative AI.

The AI RCC, which will be overseen by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office and partner with the Defense Innovation Unit, will come into force as the Pentagon aims to dramatically increase its capabilities to counter Chinese mass in the event of a conflict with its main adversary.

The U.S. wants to deploy thousands of autonomous drones powered by AI through its Replicator initiative. A second Replicator initiative is focused on using new technologies to counter swarms of autonomous drones.

Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Radha Plumb told reporters Wednesday "this rapid experimentation approach will allow us to test and identify where these cutting edge technologies can make our forces more lethal and our processes more effective."

"At the same time, it's important to recognize that AI adoption by adversaries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea is accelerating and poses significant national security risks," Plumb said. "We are taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to ensuring the U.S. continues to lead the way."

The AI RCC is drawing recommendations from Task Force Lima, which was created in August 2023 with the goal of dismantling within 18 months.

The priorities for the new office include using generative AI for command and control, autonomous drones, intelligence, weapons testing and even for enterprise management like financial systems and human resources.

The Pentagon will pour $100 million into the effort in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 for developing generative AI through sandbox experimentations and models, allowing the AI RCC to experiment and tune the advanced tools it plans to deploy.

One funding effort will center on incorporating AI pilots into real-world experimentations, and $40 million will be directed to small businesses to draft solutions on AI deployment capabilities.

The new AI office will also explore capabilities to rapidly deploy AI pilots, leverage AI for mission command decisions and invest in testing tools to accelerate real-world deployment.

To these ends, the office seeks to work with providers of cloud services to create sandboxes for testing, with two cloud services opening up in January and another two in the summer. Those services will be responsible for power and data security for the new AI exploration efforts.

Plumb said the goal is to acquire new technologies, experiment with them and determine if they can be useful. If they can be used, the office will then work to scale the technology.

"We experiment using these new technologies integrated into the actual operational workflow to test and evaluate whether they're useful," she said, "and whether war fighters actually want to use them, and usually the first time it needs improvement."

Plumb said the "top priority" for the new office is to find the "highest return on investment" to where AI can "rapidly improve either lethality or efficiency, depending on whether it's war fighting or business management."

"This is about identifying those pilots, proving out the case, and then making sure we have the pathway to scale those quickly," she added.

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