The potential for AI in strategic defense
Authors: B. P. McCune
Venue: Proceedings of the 1987 Fall Joint Computer Conference on Exploring technology: today and tomorrow (1987)

Many people question the desirability of using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in strategic defense. They argue that AI software cannot be validated, which is a critical requirement of strategic defense software; that AI software is slow in execution time, whereas strategic defense must be done in real time; and that it is not possible to build standard expert systems for strategic defense because no human experts exist who currently perform the same functions. All of these points are valid and need to be the foci of future research. However, focussing on the potential difficulties with using AI avoids what is really the appropriate initial question: Can a strategic defense succeed without AI? For a far-term system that has the lowest leakage possible and that is maximally gracefully degradable, I believe the answer is no. If one overlays some of the most striking features of the strategic defense problem with some of the areas of greatest potential for knowledge-based AI systems (Figure 1), one notices an excellent match. Knowledge-based systems technology deals with ill-formed or expensive computational problems in an efficient manner through use of heuristics. These systems can reason with uncertainty to boil down massive amounts of data to reduce the information load on commanders and decision-making software that must respond in very short periods of time. AI systems can degrade to autonomous operation when necessary. Additionally, the subfield of automated learning holds the promise of systems whose behavior automatically evolves to better respond to changing threats. There are many areas of strategic defense in which AI may prove useful. These include managing the evolution of the entire system; supporting software and hardware development; discriminating re-entry vehicles from decoys; monitoring and maintaining complex weapons systems; monitoring the situation leading up to an attack; assessing the attack when it occurs; helping commanders select defense strategies; and diagnosing and correcting faults in a globally distributed system. Critical functions which may require artificial intelligence to succeed as fully as possible are these: Simulating all possible threats during peacetime in order to more fully validate the defenses. Assessing the type and characteristics of an enemy attack based upon pre-war intelligence and data aggregated from many individual missile tracks. Selecting a defense strategy based upon the attack assessment, the status of our own forces, and the status of related decisions being made by national commanders. Automatically reconfiguring the defensive system so that it continues to function as well as possible under partial loss of command and control nodes, sensors, weapons, and communications capabilities. Today there are hundreds of knowledge-based systems in use commercially and perhaps a dozen operational knowledge-based systems in the military, in areas directly relevant to strategic defense. However, many of the stressing problems for the use of AI in strategic defense require additional research. Some of the areas for research include merging AI with estimation and optimization algorithms, combining situation assessment and planning software, distributed AI with multiple commanders, real-time inferencing, large-scale knowledge bases, trustworthy knowledge bases, formal evaluation of knowledge-based systems, building AI systems in Ada, intelligent distributed operating systems, replanning, and automated learning.