Pentagon's 'Replicator' Initiative Aims for AI-Enabled Autonomous Vehicles by 2026

As experts predict the advent of fully autonomous lethal weapons, the U.S. military grapples with integrating the latest AI developments.

The Pentagon is planning to deploy thousands of inexpensive, expendable AI-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 to keep pace with China, under an initiative dubbed 'Replicator'.
Experts predict that the U.S. will have fully autonomous lethal weapons within the next few years, with humans relegated to supervisory roles due to advances in data-processing speed and machine-to-machine communications.
Many countries are working on deploying lethal weapons en masse in drone swarms, and China, Russia, Iran, India, and Pakistan have not signed a U.S.-initiated pledge to use military AI responsibly.
The Department of Defense is currently struggling to adopt the latest AI developments, with more than 800 AI-related unclassified projects in testing, typically leveraging machine learning and neural networks to aid humans.
AI is currently being used by the U.S. military in various capacities, including piloting surveillance drones, tracking soldiers' fitness, predicting aircraft maintenance needs, and keeping tabs on rivals in space.