Lawmakers say Pentagon needs to be more aggressive with AI

The Defense Department doesn’t have the right mindset when it comes to artificial intelligence and unmanned systems, a new report says.

The House Armed Services Committee's Future Defense Task Force, led by Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), was tasked with reviewing DOD technology needs and evaluating barriers to achieving them. Its 81-page report includes 25 findings and recommendations.

"We've done too little in four years to foster the type of attitude in the Pentagon that it's going to take to develop the environment that fosters innovation," Banks said at a Sept. 30 Brookings Institution event. "We need greater innovation in artificial intelligence, AI, in the air at sea, surface, underwater, space."

AI was front and center in task force's report. The first recommendation called for "every Major Defense Acquisition Program to evaluate at least one AI or autonomous alternative prior to funding" and for those programs be AI-ready and interoperable with existing and planned joint all domain command and control networks, according to the report.

The second recommendation stressed the development of international norms that limit AI's potential harmful use, even suggesting the development of a treaty to "establish an international code of ethics and privacy protections that ensure personal freedoms and liberties globally."

At the Brookings event, Moulton said spending a certain percentage of the defense budget on AI or other emerging tech needed to be paired with cutting legacy system investments and preparing for the future force structure, which could mean spending money on personnel, education and training.

"What does our force look like to truly meet these new threats?" Moulton asked. "We probably need to have a lot more cyber warriors engaged in the Department of Defense.... I expect that will mean we will have to raise pay and benefits to make sure we can attract and retain that talented workforce."

For Banks, any substantive changes to surmount the Pentagon's "attitudinal barrier" will have to come from the defense secretary.

"We need leadership at the Pentagon who takes this report seriously and echoes the themes and recommendations we're making to help us get to where we need to be," he said.

To assist with the Pentagon's mindshift, the congressmen stressed investing resources in successfully disruptive organizations, such as the Defense Innovation Unit, AFWERX, the Air Force's Kessel Run software factory and the Army Futures Command.

Moulton previously expressed that sentiment, suggesting that the Defense Innovation Unit's potential success was stunted by its resources.

"With an initial funding of $520 million, which would be $4.5 billion in today's dollars, [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] led to current initiatives like DIU, which while particularly noteworthy, simply doesn't enjoy the same level of support with a mere $41 million budget," Moulton said in a February hearing. "We cannot expect the same success without the same level of commitment."

This article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to Defense Systems.