Military Applications of Autonomy and AI
How Star Wars can provide useful prompts for thinking through the challenges and opportunities
For my regular readers, this is a slight variation on my normal topics. And this wasn’t the article I had intended to write this week. But, while watching the third chapter in the Star War prequel trilogy over the weekend, I could not help myself. Fiction, and science fiction, can help us think about contemporary challenges.
Next year, the third prequel film in the Star Wars saga, Chapter III: Revenge of the Sith, celebrates 20 years since its release. The movie, which provides the closing chapter in the prequel trilogy that explored the life of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader, was a commercial success, taking over $840 million world-wide.
Most rankings of the Star Wars films place Revenge of the Sith somewhere in the bottom half of all Star Wars movies released to date. A 2024 Buzzfeed ranking had it at eighth of 11 movies (Solo takes last place), Entertainment Weekly in 2023 ranked it in 6th place, Space.com put it in 10th (ouch) and the Rotten Tomatoes ‘Tomatometer’ has it in 7th. So, it is fair to say that the film has its lovers and haters, as do the prequel and sequel trilogies more generally.
There have been hundreds of articles written about this subject in the past two decades. To get a sense of this debate, I have included some of these pieces below:
How the Star Wars Prequels Went From Being Hated to Loved - Link
Why I love the ‘Star Wars’ prequels (and you should too) - Link
Explaining Why The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy Hate Disappeared - Link
How I Forgave George Lucas and Learned to Love Star Wars Again - Link
I am sure I could write pages and pages to justify which Star Wars films I love (generally the original trilogy, Rogue One and the prequels) and the ones I don’t love as much (the rest). But that is not the aim of this piece.
Let me go back a step. Last night, I sat down to watch Revenge of the Sith As always, the movie provides outstanding visuals and a good conclusion to the Anakin Skywalker trilogy, even if the dialog is shaky at times (“no, it’s because I love YOU so much”).
Anyway, as I watched the opening sequence with Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi conducting their approach to the Separatist ship on which Count Dooku and General Grievous are holding the abducted Chancellor Palpatine, it occurred to me that the scene contained a plethora of issues with autonomous systems, as well as human-machine and human-AI teaming. Key themes in this opening sequence might be useful for current military leaders and those involved in developing new tactics, strategies and force constructs for the 21st century.
Science fiction and speculative fiction have been used for this purpose for some time. As I explored in a recent piece for Engelsberg Ideas:
Military fiction emerged as societies and their military institutions sought to understand and adapt to the wide-ranging and rapid technological changes that occurred during the Second Industrial Revolution in the latter half of that century. With that great change came new opportunities and fears.
Militaries also recognise the virtue of fiction as a speculative tool for contemplating the future of conflict. Retired senior military officers have sought to leverage their long military experience to explore contemporary security threats through the lens of high-technology military conflict. The standard was first set by Sir John Hackett with his 1980 novel, The Third World War: August 1985 about a possible clash between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
In recent years, the concept of FICINT, an acronym for fictional intelligence, has been applied to futuristic stories that contain lessons for those facing new technologies, as well as societal and strategic challenges in the modern world. Peter Singer and August Cole, authors of the influential novel of a future war, Ghost Fleet, have coined the term Useful Fiction to describe the application of fiction to real world problems. As they note in their paper Thinking the Unthinkable With Useful Fiction:
FICINT remains ideally suited to a world not just of technologies evolving at machine speed and geopolitics undergoing systemic changes, but also in the midst of a historical crisis that tests the limits of our comprehension. It can spread research in a manner that is understandable, and more shareable, as well as foster emotional connections that make readers, in turn, more likely to drive change. FICINT can aid in answering the question of ‘what do we do next’ as timelines move forward at an unpredictable pace which every organisation has to contend with, whether it is planning for war or justifying the next budget.
So, that is the background to why I believe that fiction and science fiction can be very useful in complementing our study of current affairs, new technology and military history. The thoughtful combination of fiction and non-fiction can provide solutions and useful pathways to deal with the rapidly changing technological and geopolitical environment.
Five Key Insights
But the question remains, how is Revenge of the Sith relevant in providing insights for contemporary military leaders and planners? There are five key insights (but there are probably others) from the opening sequence of Revenge of the Sith that I would like to explore in the following section.
First, the application of massed, cheap autonomous systems to protect small numbers of exquisite, highly capable crewed military platforms. As Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker thread their way through the massive space battle between Republic and Separatist ships above the galactic capital of Coruscant. As Obi Wan and Anakin progress, it becomes clear that a multitude of small drones are being used to help defend the large Separatist starships fighting in what is known as The Battle of Coruscant.
While in Ukraine we have seen drones used to help protect armoured vehicles in combat, as well as on casualty evacuation and logistics missions, these are generally operated and piloted by humans. Drones have even been used to lead some Ukrainian attacks against Russian positions. And the Russians have tested rudimentary uncrewed ground systems to accompany crewed ground vehicles to protect them from attack from Ukrainian UAVs.
In the near future, fully autonomous drones might be routinely attached to crewed platforms, be they large ships, bombers or tanks. These could be linked into digital battle command networks and have the ability to autonomously scan for threat, prioritise them and then attack threats without human intervention. This might be a much more advanced version of current capabilities such as the Trophy system mounted on armoured vehicles. However, more survivable and multi-use drones might be a future solution to the protection of expensive, crewed military platforms.
The second insight is about fully autonomous warfare where autonomous systems attack other autonomous systems. In Revenge of the Sith, this occurs several times in the opening sequence, but is most obvious when a Separatist Buzz Droid (also known as a Pistoeka Sabotage Droid) lands on Obi Wan’s Jedi interceptor and destroys the R4 droid that assists in piloting and operating the ship. Droid on droid combat is common in the Star Wars universe and in science fiction more generally. But what about in the real world?
Until the start of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there were few if any examples of autonomous systems targeting each other in combat or in defensive scenarios (I don’t count CIWS or missiles shooting down drones). However, in the past three years there has been a steady development of autonomous or remotely operated systems that can target enemy drones.
In the air, drone on drone combat has become more common with some drone types being specifically adapted for this kind of aerial combat. There have also been instances of uncrewed aerial vehicles attacking uncrewed ground vehicles (UGV). An example of this was Russian army’s use of new grenade-armed robotic mini-tanks in an assault on Ukrainian positions west of Avdiivka in March this year. The Ukrainians destroyed the Russian UGVs using drones. The Ukrainians have also used drones to destroy Russian mine-laying UGVs.
New technologies specifically designed from the ground up to intercept enemy drones are becoming available, and some are being deployed in Ukraine. The Fortem DroneHunter F700 and Andruil drone hunting Roadrunner are two examples of what is certain to be an expanding range of drone-versus-drone combat capabilities in the coming years.
More importantly, what role does drone-on-drone combat in tactical operations? The array of missions will likely encompass defensive tasks, such as defending high value targets against loitering munitions and enemy surveillance and kamikaze drones, through to offensive missions where drones are used to destroy other drones that are defending targets so that attack drones and missiles can penetrate through to their targets. This drone-on-drone combat will increasingly spread into the maritime and ground environments, with military institutions seeking to exploit the advantages of their own autonomous systems while denying them to the enemy.
This is not just a technological challenge, however. It will require revisions of tactical doctrine as well as the evolution of military organisations and, as the Ukrainians have done, potentially the development of entirely new and novel drone institutions.
A third theme from Revenge of the Sith is the issue of autonomous systems being used to attack crewed military platforms. In Revenge of the Sith this manifests as Separatist tri-fighters attacking a squadron of clone-piloted Republic ARC-170 starfighters. Most of the crewed Republic fighters are destroyed in this engagement.
It is a situation that we have also seen from the earliest days of the Ukraine conflict as well as in the war in the Middle East. Drones, and more recently FPV drones, have been used extensively by both sides in the Ukraine war to target tanks, artillery, headquarters and even individual soldiers. This has become a normal operating method for both sides and is increasingly being included in the inventories of other nations as well. They are transforming the conduct of modern war in doing so, while also changing the character of the military institutions that employ them. As Clint Hinote and I wrote in a recent piece for War on the Rocks:
In the coming decade, military institutions may realize a situation where uncrewed systems outnumber humans. At present, the tactics, training, and leadership models of military institutions are designed for military organizations that are primarily human, and those humans exercise close control of the machines. Soon, the ratio of humans to uncrewed systems will flip.
We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in this issue in Ukraine. As the number of drones accelerates, and their missions expand, we will see a transformation of how autonomous systems are used across the air, land and sea domains. It is also likely to drive significant changes in tactics, doctrine and the fundamental organisational constructs of military forces that have dominated for the past century.
Fourth, future autonomous systems might be able to transform their shapes and operating modes to be able to function across different domains. In Revenge of the Sith, Separatist vulture droids (also known as the Variable Geometry Self-Propelled Battle Droid, Mark I) that walk across the exterior of large starships are able to change shape and function as defensive tools against Republic fighters. to missile-launching fighters.
What kind of utility might a multi-domain drone have in modern conflict? They may be useful for applications that require stealthy approaches (by sea or land) to an objective area, but then require rapid speed and manoeuvrability for the final prosecution of a target (be it for reconnaissance or more lethal missions).
Drones capable of operating in more than one domain are already being developed. The air-sea drones such as the Sea Dart and the TJ Flying Fish (both being produced by Chinese companies) and the Diodon amphibious drone. An even more intriguing development, presented at the 2023 International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications, is a tricopter drone capable of flying, driving on the ground and operating as a surface vessel on water. There is a clearly a future for these multi-domain autonomous systems, although there will probably be a cost element which could see these multi-domain drones being more expensive than single domain autonomous systems.
A final theme from Revenge of the Sith that is relevant in modern war is drones and their integral AI providing cognitive augmentation or the ability to offload human tasks in complex environments. During the opening sequence of Revenge of the Sith, Obi Wan on several occasions speaks to his astromech droid, R4-P17. At the same time, Anakin Skywalker communicates with his droid, R2-D2 several times. Obi Wan even states at one point that “flying is for droids”, which provides an insight into the mindset of some humans about the role of non-human sentience. How might our own views on the role and functions of drones and other autonomous systems evolve?
The droids in the opening sequence of Revenge of the Sith, are integral to the functioning of the Jedi interceptors being flown by Obi Wan and Anakin; they provide navigation aid, manage many of the ships systems, and provide an adaptive capacity for in-flight ship repairs when battle damage is sustained. R2-D2 even provides a basic ‘ship defence’ capacity on Anakin’s ship during the sequence when it electrocutes an attacking buzz droid. This provides a useful metaphor for how humans are beginning to use, and partner with, tools that provide cognitive augmentation.
Humans have long used different tools to aid in their ability to undertake cognitive tasks. Whether it was an abacus, a calculator, pen and paper or computers, human cognition has been assisted with tools and machines external to the human body. Newly developed algorithms, high performance computing and artificial intelligence are already demonstrating the ability to assist humans to plan and think through complex tasks. The myriad of applications for AI now extends from calendar management, food menu planning and data management through to complex systems analysis and generation of images, video, and text.
The offloading or delegation of human cognitive tasks to ‘droids and AI’ has already begun. Both Ukraine and Russia use AI in a range of tasks that extend from assisting the targeting of UAVs, catching Russian sanctions busters, cyber warfare and combating disinformation, identifying and tracking war criminals, geolocation and analysis of open-source data to identify enemy units and to provide faster imagery and intelligence analysis. The Ukrainians have even employed AI to understand how targeted military activities have a cognitive effect on the Russians.
For some further reading on the use of AI during the war in Ukraine, I have attached the links to some reports and articles below:
CSIS: Understanding the Military AI Ecosystem of Ukraine - Link
ICDS: Russia’s War in Ukraine: Artificial Intelligence in Defence of Ukraine - Link
CNAS: Roles and Implications of AI in the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict - Link
CEPA: Ukraine’s Secret Weapon – Artificial Intelligence - Link
IISS: AI’s baptism by fire in Ukraine and Gaza offers wider lessons - Link
Despite the growing use of AI during this war, it remains a niche capability and is still poorly understood by many military leaders. This will demand changes in how military personnel and their leaders are trained and educated, new ways of delivering technological literacy to military personnel and units, as well as enhanced collaborative methods with commercial entities which provide the expertise and technologies required by current and future military organisations. There is a compelling, and even existential, requirement to do this quickly. As I have written previously:
Military command and control and strategic decision-makers alike will need artificial intelligence that can process information and recommend options for making decisions faster (or of higher quality) than an adversary can…military organizations will likely contain thousands or even tens of thousands of unmanned and robotic systems, all-encompassing some form of artificial intelligence. In this environment, where all sides may possess artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, the race will go to the intellectually swift.
Revenge of the Sith: More Than Just a Movie
As one short sequence at the start of Revenge of the Sith demonstrates, there is more to movies than their entertainment value alone. They can provide important insights into contemporary military challenges, and sometimes, even offer some solutions. In this instance, the large space battle at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, and the intervention of Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, offers multiple insights into the potential future pathways and capabilities offered by autonomous systems and artificial intelligence in military affairs.
While films (and books) cannot provide every solution to future challenges, they do provide a useful complement to the study of military history, current affairs, and technological developments for the modern military professional.