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Russian Electronic Warfare will force Ukraine towards autonomy

I just returned from a great conference that my esteemed party-partner Lena organized at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport Rhode Island. It was heavily populated with lawyers so we didn’t accomplish much (haha! I kid) but it was a really interesting series of discussions on the operational and legal implications of AI mistakes and failures on the battlefield. More to follow from that event as all the info is processed.

Oftentimes when you have these discussions it’s very theoretical because we haven’t seen real autonomy on the battlefield yet, and certainly not lethal autonomy. At least as far as we can tell, which is a whole other discussion. However, the point of this post today is that I recently saw an article in the Economist which suggests that what most of us accept as inevitable, the introduction of autonomous systems to the war in Ukraine, is getting closer and closer.

Apologies if you can’t get past the Economist pay wall. Here are some of the key points from the article.

            1. Russia’s electronic warfare capability has always been good but now it is experienced and robust.

This is well known. U.S. military development has long been concerned with Russian GPS jamming as part of a larger technological effort to degrade U.S. networks to slow down and disrupt U.S. capability. No surprise that the Russians are focusing that capability on Ukraine. The risk the Russians are taking is exposing that capability to U.S. collection. I’m literally salivating at all the data that the U.S. and NATO must be hoovering up on Russian EW systems. Thanks Vladimir.

            2. Russia’s EW efforts are disrupting Ukraine’s ability to strike targets with U.S. precision guided munitions.

Again, not surprising but it is disheartening to see that Russian stuff actually works. The Economist reports that GMLRS, Excalibur, and JDAMs are missing their targets due to Russian jamming. It’s unclear how much of a problem this is but the Economist says in some areas the “majority” of ordnance is going astray. This is probably true. And the Ukrainians do not have a robust counter EW force that I’m aware of. I suspect that the U.S. and NATO are not keen to loan or sell highly classified counter-EW equipment to Ukraine and are even less interested in openly burning Russian EW systems themselves. So Russian dominance in this space will likely continue.

            3. Russian EW is defeating 2000 drones per week.

“Defeating” appears to mostly mean severing the link with the base station which causes the drone to hover aimlessly until it runs out of batteries but may include scrambling guidance systems on more sophisticated platforms. It’s not clear if the drones are being recovered and reused. I doubt too many Ukrainian soldiers are excited about recovering drones unless there is very little risk. Can the Russians use captured drones? Yes. Not hard. Most likely most of them are lost to both sides. Hard to tell though.

The real question is, can the Ukrainians continue to fight effectively while losing drones at that rate? If they can’t what are they willing and capable of doing about it? The obvious answer is to upgrade to autonomous systems that can operate without contact with their home base or continuous GPS signals. This is one of the main arguments for adopting autonomous systems.

Here are some of the considerations for upgrading to autonomous systems the Ukrainians are probably working through:

1. Is technology good enough and cheap enough to insert autonomy into their ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) and combat workflows? The answer is probably yes for ISR but not for strikes. ISR autonomy can be as simple as the aircraft flying a programmed route and recording FMV (full motion video). It can also be as complicated as hunting for objects in an assigned area and identifying those objects in near real time, then sending back the information once communications are reestablished. That type of ISR requires larger, more sophisticated, and more expensive platforms than what Ukraine is buying off the shelf.

Shifting from ISR to strike requires much higher levels of confidence in the model that is working autonomously. If an ISR platform sends you an image and says it found a Russian T-72 but analysts see that it is a Ukrainian T-72, that is irritating but not necessarily catastrophic. If that same system strikes that Ukrainian T-72 thinking it is a Russian T-72…well you get the idea. It is unlikely that there is a model available to Ukraine that can operate in an environment that complex. However, there is a tactical solution. Ukraine could employ a lethal system somewhere where complexity is lower. Perhaps against other aerial targets or sea targets. This doesn’t solve the ground problem directly though.

            2. If Ukraine introduces autonomy to the battlefield, will Russia do the same? One could argue that Russia already has to some extent with its Shahed/Geran-2 strikes but this is not really autonomy so much as it is precision strike with a guided munition. Also, I don’t think Ukraine’s use of autonomy influences Russia. If Russia could field autonomous ISR effectively they probably would. Would they field lethal autonomy? If they could get it to work…probably. A bigger factor than Ukraine’s use of autonomy may be that Ukraine cannot degrade the EW space the way Russia can, so Russian autonomy is less of an imperative.

            3. Would the U.S. and NATO become grumpy if Ukraine started using autonomous ISR? I doubt it but maybe. The risks are pretty low. Even if conventional strikes are being used based on locations collected from autonomous ISR systems, the same target vetting process that occurs now will still be in place. This means that the probability of an incident caused by autonomous systems locating targets is low. That risk will change with lethal autonomy because the systems available to Ukraine are not good enough. If the worst were to happen, a lethal autonomous system striking something it shouldn’t, the U.S. and NATO could pull the plug on support that is already precarious. I suspect the Ukrainians will avoid lethal autonomy until the threat from Russia becomes more immediately existential.

Thanks for reading. For upcoming pieces I’m working on intelligence and consciousness in autonomous systems. So get out your philosopher hats, and possibly your pajamas, for next time when I go deep on sentient lethal autonomy.