Future AI-drone defenses will need act first, ask later, commander says

HUNTSVILLE, Ala .—Future AI-enabled drone and missile defenses will need to not only rapidly detect large numbers of drones and missiles, but also be accurate and trustworthy enough to take them out without having to involve a human, the head of the Pentagon’s joint missile defense command said Tuesday.

“The ability to accurately discriminate the threat, positively ID the threat, and then have the system auto-select the right interceptor or non-kinetic capability to defeat the threat is where we would definitely like to go,” Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, the head of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, said Tuesday at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium here. “We will push the boundaries on that, because we have to