Warbot 1.0- AI Goes to War Read online

  “Roger, sir, just one. How confident are you in the new algorithms and the command interface? I mean, what do we need to watch out for at a command level? We didn’t even have time to fully test it before we shipped out.”

  As soon as he asked the question, Buck knew it was a mistake. Colonel McClellan was, by the looks of him, an anxious, introverted man whose unibrow gave him an odd, almost alien look. As he prepared to answer the question, his face became slightly indignant, and Gammon began to wonder if someone offscreen was inserting a broomstick up McClellan’s rectum.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Gammon,” he said in a stiff, formal tone, “it is simply an update to the program. It merely tweaks the algorithm to ensure better accuracy in real-time decisions and to increase the ability of higher headquarters to intervene before things get out of control. Regarding variable autonomy capabilities, that will be up to you and your fellow commanders to set the policy. In a technical sense, it will be easy.”

  “Roger, sir, thank you. Nothing further,” Gammon replied, internally rolling his eyes.

  Never answered the technical question in useful terms, Buck thought. Never been a commander, so he might not really even understand the question. Not his fault, might not even be a knowable answer …

  Thanks to ubiquitous information sharing in real time, stories abounded of soldiers, small-unit leaders, and commanders getting extra “help” from higher commanders and staffs at inopportune times. During a rotation to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, Buck had been company commander and tormented by his battalion commander, PSYCHO 6, and his accomplice/operation officer, Ming the Merciless, as they peered over his shoulder in real time, offering a constant stream of directives without understanding the actual situation on the ground as he fought back the hordes of Krasnovians.

  Unfortunately, the battalion was crushed because Psycho and Ming were so busy doing his job that they failed to do theirs and orchestrate the larger battle. Gammon noted wryly that at the other end of the spectrum was the currently prevailing view that, with the availability of real-time situational awareness, junior leaders no longer needed traditional command and control oversight during combat operations. A well-practiced ability to execute discretionary judgment was assumed, when in the past, it was expected to be a skill requiring practice and development.

  Gammon was glad to see his friend, but both had more things to do than time available, and they quickly ended the conversation. As the image faded, Gammon muttered to himself, “There were probably discussions like this just prior to the court-martial of Captain Jenkins.”

  The recklessness of Captain Leeroy Jenkins was legendary, and Gammon bitterly remembered testifying at his well-deserved court-martial. Justice was done, but forty-three soldiers served as payment for an expensive lesson in the cost of overly hands-off battalion and brigade commanders.

  Lieutenant Colonel Gammon turned his attention back to the present, put his AR helmet back on, and considered the current situation. The Satellite and Air tabs in his display were red.

  “That sucks,” he muttered to himself. “But only half-blind …”

  “Say again, sir?” responded Bennett, the S3.

  She had been about to adjust the AR display to a new “unknown” icon and had stopped. It was bad form to manipulate the COP’s display while your boss was looking at it.

  “Nothing, please continue,” responded Gammon.

  Bennett’s glove had level-two authorities, and she used it to quickly zoom in to the area that was flashing red as the unknown. Computers were excellent for determining firing solutions, figuring out logistical requirements, and in this case, detecting anomalies, but the designers couldn’t program intuition. Despite all the advances in AI, computers sometimes remained idiot savants in that they had difficulty understanding and adapting to complex and novel event—like this one—which was why they still had to be trained.

  “What is it?” asked Gammon.

  “Not sure yet, sir. I’ll move the Griffon in closer.”

  With a few deft moves of Bennett’s hologlove, the Griffon started to alter its course and arc toward the flashing “unknown” icon. Even on full magnification, those assembled in the cramped area couldn’t figure out what they were looking at.

  By habit, everyone was expecting Captain Luke M. Olive, the S2 / Intelligence officer (the “2” for short), to produce an epiphany at any moment. Olive was a bookish twenty-six-year-old from Baltimore who constantly pored over the AI screens that fed the AR COP’s presentation of the tactical situation. One of the youngest and newest members of the team, he was fresh out of the Captain’s Career Course and wasn’t exactly a charismatic leader of soldiers. There was no strong chin, no commanding voice, and no broad shoulders; but what he did have was an uncanny knack for interfacing with the Simplified Air Ground Intelligence Architecture, or SAGIA, the successor of the oddly named Distributed Common Ground System–Army, or DCGS-A. Since the early days of Siri, Alexa, and Watson, young troops had a knack for personifying Army AI programs with “cool” names. In this case, SAGIA quickly became Saga, the Norse goddess of wisdom.

  Luke was adept at training Saga and improving her ability to cue his fellow humans to anomalies, ferret out the important details from a sea of the mundane, and connect the dots in near real time.

  “Hey Saga,” Luke spoke softly into his helmet’s tiny microphone, “how much uncertainty is in the Apache Company sector and why?”

  Saga responded into his earpiece and visually on his screen with information, cues and depictions. He had even trained Saga to tailor her feedback to his learning and data-intake style. He was still mentally processing the information when the boss interrupted.

  “Hey 2,” Lieutenant Colonel Gammon asked, “anything solid on the enemy?”

  Luke cleared his throat and replied quickly. “Negative, sir, but something isn’t right. Saga is showing medium uncertainty in the Apache Company’s sector. They had a few small EMP detonations go off about a minute ago. The social media feed only has two clips uploaded by some Filipino teenagers about ten minutes ago. They were of a couple small quadcopters flying by that looked like the usual disposable recon drones. I’m also seeing more text evidence that civilians have been rapidly moving out of the sector due to periods of the ‘brown sound.’ Might be why we don’t see more info from the civil information feed. We’re also getting indicators that there might be some sort of electronic camouflage in place. We still don’t have overhead satellite help, so it’s a little tougher to figure out what’s going on.”

  The “brown sound” was a reference to a specific frequency and intensity of sound that caused humans to become quite uncomfortable. Sounds generators were commonly used in several militaries as a convenient, nonlethal way to influence civilians to depart from an area, and occasionally to make enemy forces consider the same course of action. When applied for a sufficient amount of time and at the correct frequency, it eventually made humans defecate uncontrollably. While it had a real name and nomenclature, the device was affectionately known by the troops as the SSG, or Shit Storm Generator. There was even a recorded instance of a lieutenant who was court-martialed after he got drunk and pointed one at his unit’s headquarters. The court-martial was reportedly as amusing as it was legendary.

  Gammon smiled at the reference to the brown sound and continued his line of questioning. “What’s your guess? And how much longer before you’ll have better resolution?”

  “The data’s pretty thin, sir. My guess is that it’s deliberate. Saga is running the permutations and once we get a Rosetta Stone piece of data, things will clarify very quickly. In theory, of course.”

  “Roger, thanks,” Gammon responded.

  Buck was about to offer Olive a word of encouragement regarding his task and the importance of it, but by the time he said, “thanks,” Olive was back in his own head and continuing his argument with Saga.

  Marveling briefly at the scene before him—humans interacting with other humans and AI systems—Buck thought, Guess this is what Centaur teaming is at its best. All this stuff is great, but I hope the brass and the policy wonks don’t get so enamored with the tech and the idea of an antiseptic war that they forget that it always comes down to the people who have to fight. It always comes down to the people …

  Buck moved the few meters from Olive’s station back to his command chair and slumped into it. His back was bothering him again, and he shifted uncomfortably in the seat as he surveyed his staff hard at work. Good kids, all of ’em. Proud to be on the same team with them.

  Buck hated waiting for anything, but he knew he would have to be patient and give them some time to develop the situation. He twirled the black metal band on his left wrist for a moment. Not much I can do right now, sooooo …

  Buck pulled up his M10 Personal Communicator and turned it on. A militarized version of an iPhone 17, M10s could not transmit directly out of the Army WAN and cell networks, but they enabled soldiers to accept personal notes from specific people, like spouses, significant others, kids and parents. Periodically, and for very discrete time periods, brief calls were permitted, and queued-up messages would be sent out when bandwidth allowed. All this fell under the justification of troop morale, and in the current information environment, it also had the added benefit of calming concerned loved ones who were seeing combat footage in near real time.

  He was pleased when he saw a note from his wife. Even the title promised a welcome diversion: Criminal Activity, Volume 3.

  “Hello Loverboy,” it began, and his mind started to drift toward home until Major Bennett interrupted with a routine report that required his thumbprint for approval.

  “Note from home?” she asked as he placed his thumb on the pad.


  “Roger, how could you tell?

  “The big grin, sir. More criminal activity?”

  “Always.”

  As Bennett turned and moved back to her station, Buck quickly surveyed the situation. Nothing needed his immediate attention, so he returned to the welcome note.

  “So let me tell you what our criminals did with the dog, who has been renamed.”

  Uh-oh, he thought.

  The kids had been begging for a dog for years, but Julia had put up a strong resistance. After a long psychological operations campaign that Buck had secretly orchestrated with the kids, they finally bent her formidable will and got the okay just before the deployment, which had been used shamelessly to tip the scales in their favor. With a quick trip to the pound, they had a dog that appeared to be a cross between a Labrador retriever and a husky. The dog was sweet but skittish, and his personality had yet to fully emerge, making it difficult to give him a proper name. Various names including Ranger, Booger, Ruff, Rufus, and others had been considered, argued about, and rejected. With still no consensus, he was currently referred to as “Doggie.”

  “I was at the commissary,” Julia continued, “and Nate was in charge. That was my first mistake. Teenage boys should never be expected to supervise ANYTHING involving health and safety issues. It appears that Jenna found your clippers and had previously noted the basics of how they worked when I gave you your haircuts. Lucy, of course, will do anything Jenna tells her to do and was along for the ride as a co-conspirator. I came back to the house with a car full of groceries only to discover that Doggie now had a fashionable new look. Jenna had given him a bath, with lots of shampoo, in our tub, and then given him a stylish haircut. She even used an entire can of hairspray. And this is why, by universal acclimation, his name is now Mohawk.”

  Awesome! Buck thought. But better send her a quick and comforting note to cover my tracks … and then congratulate the kids on the new name.

  1.4

  161000HSEP2033 (10:00 a.m. local time, September 16, 2033)

  Chinese National Assistance Task Force Headquarters, Manila

  Major General Yu was pleased and began to fidget with the nervous energy of someone who had consumed one too many stimulant drinks. He scratched at his right thumb as he looked at the displays and prepared to begin his attack.

  “Let’s now see how our national investments in high energy lasers pay off,” he said in a flat tone, attempting to restrain his nervous energy. “Fire!” he added with obvious enthusiasm.

  The forward laser defense battery targeted a lone American drone moving toward them in a slow arc. The laser burned a hole smaller than a pea through the fuselage, and the smoking drone spiraled down like a wounded bird. Yu hoped it had not seen his T100s as their diesel-electric drives roared and the vehicles surged forward, guns at the ready. Only the slightly premature EMP mine detonations could have given the enemy any warning.

  Led by three recon vehicles, twenty-seven T100s raced forward at full speed down the road-and-trail network that would lead them to the Tarlac River and the highway that ran alongside it. They travelled quickly past rice fields, tall sugarcane stalks, and stubby trees that were far too short to provide them with meaningful concealment. Their support platoon of vehicles akin to misfit toys tagged along behind the force like a little brother trying to keep up with the big kids. The targeting drones, hidden in tree canopies, assisted the scouts in finding one of the American machines temporarily stunned by an EMP mine. They passed the information to the lead T100, which fired on the move and scored a direct hit, the single sabot round punching cleanly through both sides of the enemy’s hull while leaving a trail of wreckage inside the vehicle. The T100 fired again with an explosive HEAT round to make certain the vehicle was destroyed.

  With no other sightings, they were within ten kilometers of the main road and what they expected would be the flank of the Allied advance.

  All is proceeding according to plan, Yu thought with a degree of satisfaction.

  1.5

  161015HSEP2033 (10:15 a.m. local time, September 16, 2033)

  Apache Company TOC, vicinity the Tarlac River, The Philippines

  Stacy felt multiple beads run down her back as she shifted in her command console. Then she saw it. One scout vehicle, Ranger 1, was not responding and assumed lost. A second one, Ranger 2, had just come back online and was providing a rapid feed to her and the rest of the team in her tiny command post as lots of unidentified red icons appeared in their helmets.

  Ranger 2 quickly lofted his Sentinel quadcopter and focused his mast-mounted sensors on the lead vehicles of the enemy column. Stacy took the real-time feed from Ranger 2’s Sentinel and quickly picked out the distinct eight-wheeled silhouette of a T100. The turret of the lead one, with its 125mm cannon, looked like it was pointing right at her, and in a sense it was while she shared Ranger 2’s point of view. She also noticed that Major Bennett was briefly sharing the same view and then quickly clicked out.

  Stacy was starting to breathe more heavily and had to remind herself, take a deep breath, then call the boss. Don’t rush it. He can see this in his helmet too.

  “Viper 6, this is Apache 6. I think this is the front end of a sizable Chinese force. Maneuvering the company left to make contact and engage. Over.”

  This was turning into a meeting engagement, one of the most dangerous maneuvers in ground warfare, and her first real engagement since taking company command. If Stacy had had a moment to reflect, she would have been terrified by the possibility of screwing up. If she failed to hear something, see something, understand something, or respond quickly enough, part of her team might suffer. Maybe die. But she didn’t have a moment to reflect, which was good.

  “Roger, Apache 6, gain and maintain contact, but don’t become decisively engaged, at least until we get the rest of the battalion in a better position to support you,” Gammon replied.

  Stacy’s hands moved rapidly over the holomap as she gave maneuver instructions and new firing parameters to the platoon leaders. With only three platoons of four vehicles left, she knew she had to be careful to conserve her forces. She instructed the two mechanized platoons to set up a screen line, while Homer’s platoon of “heavies” would move to block any penetrations.

  So what are you up to, General Yu? she wondered.

  Stacy didn’t try to be clever—there was no time for it. She simply tried to get forces to logical locations, close enough to support each other, and get them there as fast as possible.

  As she worked, Stacy caught herself silently repeating, Understand, then act. And do it faster than the enemy. It was almost a mantra.

  Homer and his platoon were equipped with the latest high-velocity electromagnetic railgun, an old-fashioned 6.5mm minigun firing polymer-cased telescoped ammunition for antipersonnel use, and the usual suite of defensive measures, the latest of which was the Mark IV Point Defense System (PDS). PDSs and the larger Area Defense Systems contained kinetic, electronic, and directed energy components that could generally stop relatively slow-moving artillery, rocket, antitank missile and mortar rounds and render them nearly ineffectual against modern armies. In an ironic historical twist, ground battles between near-peer competitors were increasingly fought line of sight with high-power kinetic rounds. Homer’s odd, boxy-looking railgun could fire depleted uranium sabot rounds at Mach 7, but the downside was that the gun was also rather heavy. This weight, along with the power storage and generation requirements, necessitated a tracked vehicle to traverse anything but paved surfaces. Unfortunately for all of them, tracks are slower than wheels, and this fact now limited his platoon’s speed and agility.

  Homer and his heavies lumbered into position and waited. They pointed their railguns at the expected location of attack and remained silent apart from the constant whirring of their PDSs as they incessantly searched for incoming missiles and drones. The mech platoons with their Razorbacks, heavily modified and renamed eight-wheeled XM1296 Stryker Dragoons, were moving into slightly better positions as they were smaller, faster, and far better able to maneuver into tighter spots.