Source: AFP
Israel’s military has deployed some artificial intelligence-enabled military technology into combat for the first time in Gaza, raising fears about the use of autonomous weapons in modern warfare.
The military has hinted at what the new technology is being used for, with spokesman Daniel Hagari saying last month that Israel’s forces were operating “above ground and underground at the same time.”
A senior defense official told AFP the technology destroys enemy drones and maps Hamas’ vast network of tunnels in Gaza.
New defense technologies, including artificial intelligence weapons and robotic drones, are a bright spot in an otherwise bleak period for Israel’s tech industry.
The sector accounted for 18 percent of GDP in 2022, but the war in Gaza has wreaked havoc with eight percent of its workforce called up to fight.
“In general the war in Gaza presents threats, but also opportunities to test emerging technologies in the field,” said Avi Hasson, CEO of Startup Nation Central, an Israeli technology incubator.
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“Both on the battlefield and in hospitals there are technologies that have been used in this war that have not been used before.”
But the rising civilian death toll shows that much greater oversight is needed over the use of new forms of defense technology, Mary Wareham, an arms expert at Human Rights Watch, told AFP.
“We are now facing the worst possible situation of death and suffering that we see today – some of it is caused by new technology,” he said.
More than 150 countries backed a UN resolution in December that identified “serious challenges and concerns” in new military technology, including “artificial intelligence and autonomy in weapons systems”.
‘Angry Birds’
Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, killing about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
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Source: AFP
Hamas also took about 250 hostages and Israel says about 132 remain in Gaza, including at least 29 believed to have been killed.
Israel’s military response has killed nearly 28,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Like many other modern conflicts, the war has been shaped by the proliferation of cheap unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, which have made airstrikes easier and cheaper.
Hamas used them to drop explosives on October 7, while Israel has turned to new technology to take them down.
In the first phase, the military used an AI-enabled optical sight, made by Israeli startup Smart Shooter, which attaches to weapons such as rifles and machine guns.
“It helps our soldiers intercept drones because Hamas uses a lot of drones,” the senior defense official said.
“It makes every regular soldier — even a blind soldier — a sniper.”
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Another system for neutralizing drones involves deploying a friendly drone with a net that can fly around the enemy vessel to neutralize it.
“It’s drone vs. drone — we call it Angry Birds,” the official said.
Hamas tunnels
A pillar of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to “destroy” Hamas is the rapid mapping of the network of underground tunnels where Israel says the group’s fighters are hiding and holding hostages.
Source: AFP
The network is so vast that the military dubbed it the “Gaza Metro,” and a recent study by the US military academy West Point said there were 1,300 tunnels stretching 500 kilometers (310 miles).
To map the tunnels, the military has turned to drones that use AI to learn to detect people and can operate underground, including one built by Israeli startup Robotican that encases a drone inside a robotic case.
It is used in Gaza “to get into tunnels and see as far as communication allows,” the senior Israeli defense official said.
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Before the war, technology did not allow drones to operate underground because of problems sending images to the surface, the official added.
The conflict has raised human rights concerns, but also cemented Israel’s status as the world’s leading manufacturer of cutting-edge defense systems.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the United States — Israel’s main international ally and provider of billions of dollars a year in military aid — was training its own soldiers to shoot down drones using the Smart Shooter’s optical sights.
In late January, three US soldiers were killed in a drone attack on a base in Jordan.
Source: AFP