The AI ​​machine gun of the future is already here

Amid a growing wave of affordable, armed adversary drones threatening American troops overseas, the U.S. military is doing everything in its power to protect its forces from the ever-present threat of death from above. But between steep munitions, futuristic but intricate directed-energy weapons and a growing arsenal of drones, the Pentagon is increasingly considering an elegantly uncomplicated solution to the growing drone problem: reinventing the weapon.

During August’s Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) event, the U.S. Department of Defense tested an autonomous artificial intelligence robotic weapon system developed by the company aspiring defense contractor Allen Control Systems dubbed the “bullfrog”.

Consisting of a 7.62mm M240 machine gun mounted on a custom-designed rotating turret equipped with an electro-optical sensor, proprietary artificial intelligence and computer vision software, the Bullfrog is designed to deliver compact arms fire on drone targets with significantly greater precision than rifles M240 machine guns. the average US service soldier can achieve with a standard weapon such as an M4 carbine or next-generation XM7 rifle. Actually, footage of Bullfrog in action published by ACS shows a truck-mounted system that targets compact drones and knocks them out of the sky with just a few shots.

Bullfrog appears effective enough against drone targets to impress Department of Defense officials: According to for Defense Daily Alex Lovett, deputy assistant secretary of defense for prototypes and experimentation in the Pentagon’s Office of Research and Engineering, told reporters at a demonstration event in August that testing of the “low-cost” Bullfrog solution “went really well.” If the Pentagon adopts such a system, it would be the first publicly known lethal autonomous weapon in the U.S. military’s arsenal. According to to the Congressional Research Service. (The Office of the Secretary of Defense has not yet responded to WIRED’s request for comment.)

Shooting down compact, fast-moving drones with conventional firearms is a significant challenge for even the most skilled marksman, and the U.S. military is seeking various ways to escalate the effectiveness of its compact arms against unmanned aerial threats. These efforts include purchasing small and medium caliber ammunition AND shot-like ammunition that can reproduce the effects shotguns that have Proven effective anti-drone measures in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; Rifle-mounted devices that disrupt GPS and disorient incoming drones, so soldiers don’t have to carry separate, bulky anti-drone weapons like Drone killer Or Night Warrior; and “intelligent” optics from companies such as Smart shooting game and ZeroMark, which supposedly allow the weapon to fire only when it has acquired a target. The army even started including anti-drone exercises in the basic training programpart A broader effort make such training as “routine” as conventional firearms training.

For ACS co-founder and CEO Steve Simoni, a former Navy nuclear engineer, the best way to optimize firearms for drone threats is not through novel accessories or improved training, but through a combination of advanced robotics and sophisticated artificial intelligence that eliminates the guesswork. target acquisition and tracking.