The official didn’t know whether the changes had been made, but said they’d likely be made before the program’s March 12 industry day.Ī Defense Department official said the language change might be followed by other unspecified ones. The robot’s ability to identify, target, and engage doesn’t mean “we’re putting the machine in a position to kill anybody,” one Army official told Defense One.Ī second Army official said the changes had been “suggested” by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the AI task force of the Army’s Futures Command. They are also drafting talking points to further the new emphasis. The response seems to have spooked the Army, which is now changing its request for information to better emphasize that the program will follow Defense Department policy on human control of lethal robots.

“We understand the types of changes that we need to make, and we can incorporate that into the baseline for NGAD.It was a frightening and dramatic headline: “The US Army Wants to Turn Tanks Into AI-Powered Killing Machines.” The story, published this week in Quartz, details the new Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System, or ATLAS, which seeks to give ground combat vehicles the ability to “acquire, identify, and engage targets at least 3X faster than the current manual process.” “Because of the data that we’ve received off of that, we actually understand how the adaptive engine technology works,” Sneden explained. But they’re all designing and moving around the propulsion constraints that we’ve studied and evaluated and provided to each.”ĪETP testing that already occurred has been tremendously useful for NGAP, Sneden said. “Later on, as we downselect and figure out who the final vendor is, there could be some optimization of that system and that particular design. “We are making one design that will … fit into any of the designs” for NGAD, Sneden said. The Air Force issued a solicitation for NGAD in May, and it plans to make an award in 2024. The Air Force last year also awarded contracts worth nearly $1 billion each to aircraft manufacturers Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to work on prototyping NGAD engines, although Northrop in July confirmed it would not bid as a prime contractor on NGAD.

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