Trust Autonomous Machines

Reversing the U.S. Navy’s trend toward becoming a brittle fleet of a small number of expensive high-end platforms will require innovation and ingenuity.¹ Human-machine teaming can move the Navy in that direction by allowing limited artificial intelligence (AI)-controlled unmanned systems to act as “loyal wingmen” to manned platforms and eventually to take over more of the dull, dangerous, and dirty work. But that will require innovative command, control, and communications (C3) architectures to enable computers (the fourth C in C4) to receive proper guidance from human commanders, who must learn to trust their autonomous machines. Determined leadership is required to overcome the technical challenges and bureaucratic resistance that stand in the way of transforming a brittle fleet in to a formidable 21st-century fighting force.