Indian Army working on AI, autonomous combat vehicles, robotic surveillance platforms, more: Report

The Indian Army top officials are currently exploring ways they can utilise artificial intelligence to improve the ‘mobility and protection’, revealed Army Chief General Manoj Pande said at a recent NDTV's maiden Defence Summit. He stated that natural language processing, facial recognition, vehicle tracking, satellite imagery analysis and other autonomous systems are among the AI projects that they are working on currently.

He added that with the help of subject experts, Indian Army is building an AI roadmap that will serve good for the next 20 to 25 years. They are also working on projects like robotic surveillance platforms, autonomous combat vehicles and manned-unmanned cleaning solutions. He said, “A tri-services project is being undertaken to develop a high-powered computing AI cloud.” Indian Army is also exploring 5G communications and its use in training and operations.

Tech on battlefield

He said, “Battlefield situational awareness is being increased or enhanced through border surveillance systems and having a range of surveillance drones for target acquisition and precision fires. We have swarm drones and new artillery platforms. Our night fighting capabilities have been enhanced through night sights for small arms and handheld thermal images. The effectiveness of our communication right down to the soldier level is being upgraded through the induction of software-defined videos. We are also deploying terrain-specific electronic warfare systems, drone and anti-drone systems. Logistic capacities and efficiencies are being augmented by employing or introducing of logistic drones”.

New to gradually replace old

While the Army Chief seemed optimistic about the modern technology, he did explain that the modernisation and replacement of all vintage platforms in one go is “neither feasible nor desirable”. Hence, they will be scaling up the ratio of vintage to current state-of-the-art equipment substantially by 2030 with a focused “atmanirbhar” capability development roadmap.

Not just India, the United States Army Laboratory is also experimenting with AI. They are assessing the potential of OpenAI’s generative AI solution in battle planning albeit within the context of a military video game.

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