The U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps are pursuing ways to further implement the use of artificial intelligence in operations, National Defense Magazine reported Tuesday. Richard Spencer, secretary of the Navy, said the service branch is planning to focus on AI for its fiscal year 2020 budget proposal.
The Navy requested for a 9.5 percent increase in research and development funds, with projects encompassing AI and autonomous technologies. Jason Stack, autonomy portfolio manager at the Office of Naval Research, said the Navy also uses AI to automate data processing for various operations involving unmanned systems.
The U.S. Marine Corps, meanwhile, is conducting experiments to further apply AI in warfighting. USMC’s warfighting laboratory partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to boost the situational awareness of dismounted troops under the Squad X program.
Brig. Gen. Christian Wortman, who commands the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, said USMC also intends to implement autonomy across multiple mission areas such as information warfare, intelligence, logistics and long-range precision fires.