The triservices AI policy, drawn up by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, has identified several military use cases for AI and has pitched for deep industry and academia collaboration, to maintain an edge for the armed forces, while retaining “meaningful human oversight”.
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Dated March 9, the policy declares that the armed forces will establish a dedicated defence cloud in the near future and mandates public-private partnerships, joint research centres with academia and an intellectual property framework balancing security with commercialisation.
In use cases for AI, robots are mentioned specifically to replace human soldiers in high-risk environments, including on borders.
It adds that drone swarms and LAWS variants can strengthen area denial capabilities and current technological trends suggest that there will be a transition to unmanned combat operations in the near term. “Potential strategic applications include unmanned aerial bombing, close-combat support across domains and autonomous border or harbour patrols,” it reads, adding that as a general principle, meaningful human oversight would be maintained when such systems are used.
The policy places emphasis on developing indigenous AI models tailored for military operations, mandating the creation of specialised datasets from satellite imagery, SIGINT, OSINT and UAV feeds. The armed forces will train, test and validate these models using data governance frameworks that ensure access to real-time operational data while maintaining confidentiality.Also Read: Rising geopolitics and indigenisation push place India’s defence sector in a structural growth cycle
AI cyberwarfare also gets a mention in the policy, with defensive applications being planned that will include AI-powered malware detection across avionics and maritime systems, addressing concerns that adversaries will weaponise AI against Indian networks.
The armed forces also see a transformation in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, with AI fusing electro-optical/infra-red imagery, radar, sonar, acoustic and space-based feeds into coherent battlespace pictures. This “will help commanders gain predictive enemy action analytics and decision support systems, compressing decision cycles”.
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- Source of information and images “economictimes.indiatimes”“
