Defence : How India is using AI on borders to thwart infiltration

Armed Forces in what we term as developed world are preparing to cut short the presence of humans in their organisations. While Britishers and Americans have estimated that by 2030, 25 per cent of their Army will be comprised of robot soldiers, Israel is well ahead of both these countries. They have one the most advanced machines for border security. India, being one of the most cornered countries had to take proactive measures. We will soon be using AI defence to thwart infiltrators.

Robots to patrol Pakistan border

Recently, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh unveiled an AI-based silent sentry and gesture recognition system. It is believed to be the solution to the gaping hole in India’s surveillance system near the hostile borders, both along Pakistan and China. According to the media reports, Indian Army is already using it on India-Pakistan borders. Once charged, these robots can patrol the borders for six hours and just like soldiers know when they need rest and recharge, these robots themselves travel to the charging points and plug themselves. They have inbuilt recognition system through which they identify unknown and possible hostile faces and launch offensives on them.

Emphasizing on the need for pounding on the developments made so far, Defence Minister said, “We’ve started incorporation of AI applications in remotely-piloted unmanned aerial vehicles etc. There is a need to move further in this direction so that we can develop autonomous weapon systems,…”

4 years of background work

Though, the announcement came off as sudden for many, the road-map for such kinds of technologies had been paved way back in 2018. At that time, world was witnessing the way in which the technologies in conflicts were changing. The war in the middle east and other regions were being fuelled by smart bombs. Smart bombs were talk of the town.

One year before the General elections, the Modi government decided to establish a task force under the chairmanship of N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons. Its mandate was to provide a road map on promoting AI in defence. Task Force submitted its report in June 2018. It suggested establishment of the High level Defence AI Council (DAIC) and a Defence AI Project Agency (DAIPA). One of them, DAIC is currently headed by Raksha Mantri. DAIPA with a budget of Rs 100 crore is headed by secretary of defence production.

Armed Forces have been proactive

Both these organisations have coordinated well with all three services. For instance, Navy has 30 AI projects focused towards autonomous systems, maritime domain awareness, perimeter security, decision-making, predictive inventory maintenance and management. It also has modern lab on AI and Big Data Analytics.

On its part, Army has also taken big steps in developing AI based systems. It has AI centre of excellence at the Military College for Telecommunication Engineering in Mhow. It is working towards safeguarding Indian borders which includes securing communications networks through Quantum Key Distribution, quantum computing and quantum communication.

Also Read: Indian Defence Forces now have better winter gear that Indians are making for them

75 AI products securing Indian geography

Additionally, Defence PSUs have also been tasked with developing various products. By the end of March this year, 40 products had already been delivered out of the pipeline. These equipments vary from those which detect stealth human activity, translate Mandarin language in real time, detect suspicious vehicles to programs capable of analysing and automating intercepts of the adversaries through decoding their languages.

In 4 months period from March to July, 35 more products were delivered by the Army. All 75 such products were recently inaugurated at ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Defence’ (AIDef) symposium and exhibition, organised by Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence.

The borders are designed to control human movement. They convey that I do not agree with your way of living, but that does not mean we can’t live together. Borders are big checks and balances on human violence. What if human violence is eliminated altogether? Sounds futuristic and too much optimistic, but it is possible.