NEW DELHI: With Artificial Intelligence (AI) expected to be the harbinger of the next big revolution in military technology worldwide, a 17-member high level task force on AI, set up by India’s Defence Ministry in early February, is preparing the country’s future AI roadmap for development of both defensive and offensive warfare capabilities.
The AI task force has already met twice — on February 10 and on April 28 — and has been told by the government to submit its first report within three months.
Dr Ajay Kumar, secretary (panel production), defence ministry said, “The world is moving towards an artificial intelligence-driven ecosystem. India is also taking necessary steps to prepare our defence forces for the war of the future. The task force has been set up to prepare a roadmap for the future.”
The 17-member panel is chaired by C Chandrasekharan, chairman, Tata Sons, and besides the National Cyber Security Coordinator Gulshan Rai as a member, it has representations from the Army, Navy Air Force, BEL, DRDO, ISRO, Atomic Energy Commission, selected IITs, Finance Ministry and a few business groups.
On the inclusion of the non-governmental entities in the panel, the secretary said that at present most of the advanced research and development on AI are taking place in the private sector and the academia.
Moreover, with India having a strong IT industry and a big talent pool of engineers, these are advantages which need to be leveraged, Mr Kumar added.
The focus areas would be development of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (including drones, autonomous machine guns, tanks, fighter, bombers, cruise missiles, ships, submarines); unmanned surveillance (including drone swarms, perimeter defence etc); Intelligence and reconnaissance (including facial recognition, satellite imagery, object and pattern recognition) besides simulated war game and training, cyber security, and aerospace security.
What is lending an air of urgency to the effort is that the panel has to make recommendations for request for information (RFI) proposals that will be floated in the next two years on the needed AI capabilities for India in general and in the military weapons context in particular.
This is to be done after also studying the use of AI in countries like US, China, Israel, Japan, Germany, and Russia that have already taken giant strides in the field of artificial intelligence.
Among other aims, the goals of the AI task force include establishment of tactical deterrence, to visualise the potential transformative weaponry of the future and to keep a check on non-state actors including combating terrorists.
