Several scientists from the Armament Cluster of the DRDO, representatives of the industry and students are attending the conference in Armament Technology in Pashan, Pune.
“Tomorrow’s wars can’t be fought with yesterday’s technology,” said Lieutenant General P K Srivastava, Director General of the Artillery of the Indian Army, and urged the Armament scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to delve more into Artificial Intelligence for future warfare.
Lt Gen Srivastava, who is also the Colonel Commandant of Regiment of Artillery of the Indian Army, was speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the two-day National Conference on Advances in Armament Technology (NCAAT 2018), which has been organised at Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE), a DRDO laboratory located at Pashan in Pune.
Several scientists from the Armament Cluster of the DRDO, representatives of the industry and students are attending the conference.
“There is a need for us come out of the concepts on which we are fixated… the world is changing. We live in one of the worst neighbourhoods. If we have to become a power of reckoning, we will have to possess a weapons systems of the future. We can’t be fighting tomorrow’s war with weapons from yesterday. Right now, we are building weapons of yesterday, with more and more efficiency. To build weapons of tomorrow, we need scientists, who know warfare, and we need soldiers who understand technology.”
He added, “Whatever weapon systems we are developing, we should embed artificial intelligence. If that happens, we could look at missiles that are completely automated. We need weapon systems which are intelligent and less and less manpower intensive. I also expect the Armament Cluster of the DRDO to not just develop weapon systems but also come up with ideas for the next generation of warfare. India’s strengths have been software, computers, artificial intelligence and robotics, and we need to further incorporate these into our weapons systems. Our engineers and scientists are working all over the world. We need to utilise our human resources to change the paradigm of the warfare in the subcontinent.”
Responding to Gen Srivastava’s speech, senior DRDO scientist P K Mehta, who heads the Armament Cluster of the DRDO, said after the inaugural ceremony, “There are already some ongoing projects in Artificial Intelligence and unmanned systems. Some laboratories have started incorporating them in the existing products. But it needs to be pointed out that the user, which is the armed forces, does not have a line directorate for the induction of the Artificial Intelligence and unmanned systems. We should have a long term roadmap in the area, which is not there right now. The country, as a whole, needs to have a roadmap for that. The DRDO can certainly help in forming that.”
K M Rajan, director of ARDE, said, “The process of incorporating AI systems into Armament has started at the basic level. We hope to do it more in the future.”