Drone Force

A swarm of cheap drones will be able to take out a 100 million dollar fighter jet and its highly trained pilot in a matter of seconds. I hate to say it, but something I’ve loved since childhood, fighter planes piloted by brave knights of the air will be obsolete when faced by comparatively cheap autonomous drone swarms.

These majestic symbols of military might will take their place in history with the cavalry charge after the invention of the machine gun, the archer after the rifle and all out war itself with the advent of the hydrogen bomb, ICBM and mutually assured destruction.

So be it, the purpose of the military is to defend its people from aggressors and anyone intent on world domination who certainly has visions of drone swarms darkening the skies of their target countries with deadly drones designed to kill anybody in the way of the aggressor country’s plans for domination. The way to fight this is with allocation of funds commensurate with the task at hand, and the best way to do this is to have a branch of the military specifically tasked with dealing with this new challenge.

Naming it Drone Force would send a message to powers intent on using this tech, that defensive systems, counter measures and offensive response drones would be well in place should someone cross the Rubicon of AI warfare.

Then there needs to be an international treaty against using such technology in a first strike understanding that treaties are meaningless unless backed by force, hopefully with these two things in place: deterrence and international consensus, we can successfully stave off an AI apocalypse the way we’ve so far avoided nuclear Armageddon.

To be clear, the proposal is to specifically create and name a new branch of the military “Drone Force” to achieve the desired message of deterrence.