“The use of autonomy and artificial intelligence will play an increasingly vital role in military operations in such places as the Middle East, where U.S. forces no longer have a sizeable military presence,” an Army general said.
On Feb. 17, 2022, the Senate unanimously confirmed Lt. Gen. Michael E. Kurilla’s nomination to lead U.S. Central Command and his promotion to four-star General. Lt. Gen. Kurilla testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee nomination hearing in early February.
“The XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has been a leader in the adoption of AI,” Lt. Gen Kurilla said. “The Command has taken an approach to its adoption – that includes building a cultural mindset, data literacy, data governance, and infrastructure that includes cloud computing. Also, the Corps uses AI in quarterly exercises for target detection. Those exercises include personnel from all six of the military services.”
“The most recent exercise culminated in a Marine Corps F-35 jet dropping a live, 1,000-pound bomb on an artificial intelligence-derived grid that was 1 meter off from the surveyed grid,” he said. “We do these exercises quarterly to improve the capability of the targeting ability of the Corps. I would look to take that if confirmed down to Centcom and expound upon that.”
Kurilla explained how targeting can be improved with the aid of AI.