What will weapons be like in the future

We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people. Just as most chemists and biologists have no interest in building chemical or biological weapons, most AI researchers have no interest in building AI weapons — and do not want others to tarnish their field by doing so, potentially creating a major public backlash against AI that curtails its future societal benefits.

Indeed, chemists and biologists have broadly supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical and biological weapons, just as most physicists supported the treaties banning space-based nuclear weapons and blinding laser weapons.

In summary, we believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control. Lethal Autonomous Weapons. Risks of Nuclear Weapons. Trillion Dollar Nuke App. Declassified Nuclear Targets. I haven't given new weapons to the divisions for four years because I know they are taken care of - I want to give them to the battalions and companies," says Colonel Avivi.

We learn from them and if everything works out, we send it down to the battalions. One development that is already in the final stages of testing is advanced ammunition for grenade launchers, a weapon that is in use with many soldiers in the infantry battalions. Imagine a weapon like the LAU anti-tank missile, only it is fired using a grenade launcher that a lot of combatants in the field currently use.

But all of that is just a promo for what soldiers in standing army battalions will receive in the near future. The Firefly is a loitering munitions system that can locate and attack targets at a range of 1, meters or meters in urban environments.

It carries a gram warhead and dives at a speed of 70 kph before exploding on its target. Avivi reveals that 15 IDF operational battalions are about to receive the Firefly, which will constitute a significant force multiplier in any future conflict.

Company commanders already have observation and intelligence drones, and now they will receive a weapon that will enable them to operate without exposing themselves. A lot of these tools will be available to the IDF very soon. During Guardian of the Walls, Sayeret Tzanchanim employed drone swarms, a tactic that will be increasingly used already in the near future.

However, in the future less drones will be employed as they will be able to travel further and carry larger warheads, requiring less of the tools to achieve the same effect. With all due respect to face-to-face physical skirmishes, combat is becoming more and more about intelligence, and a commander who doesn't make use of intelligence capabilities will find himself at a disadvantage, endangering himself and his soldiers.

Every battalion and company commander today has intelligence drones and because they have become so ubiquitous and cheap, they are no longer fixed if they break as it is more cost-effective just to replace them.

These drones provide short-term intelligence to tactical forces and provide commanders with up-to-date situational intelligence. One of the most advanced tools in IDF use today, and one that is being revealed here for the first time is what the IDF has dubbed "seismic pearls", small circular sensors just a few centimeters wide that carry an antenna. During the next war, thousands of these devices will be dropped from planes and drones, and will be able to detect movement on the ground.

He said following the Second Lebanon War that there is no need for planes to fly back and forth and that we would create advanced appliances that are capable of tracking terrorists. The vision is that in the future the pearls will be the size of a droplet. They will be able to provide intelligence in the field and give an up-to-date situational picture to digital ground army systems. This has changed at unprecedented speed, and it looks like in the future the changes will even be a lot more dramatic.

Elbit is currently developing a centimeter drone with the aim of sending it into hostile territory equipped with sensors so that Israeli forces will be able to identify the enemy without endangering themselves. The seismic pearls work for a few days and can do the work deep in enemy territory without us being there. The jewel in the crown of Elbit's technological developments, one that pulls together all the digital capabilities of the ground army, is the digital ground army system that is a kind of digital navigation system on steroids.

An encrypted system is installed on every armored vehicle, tank, and Namer Armored Personnel Carrier and even on special IDF smartphones; the system provides real-time information about the location of friendly forces, terrorists and targets. This system received a major update a few months ago. One cannot exaggerate the role of this system in changing the battlefield.

It provides an up-to-date real-time picture of events at any given moment using all the means available in the field; from soldiers in Unit and the intelligence branch in Tel Aviv through to planes and UAVs, with tanks providing their angle, navy ships adding their perspective, if necessary, all the way down to the Golani infantry brigade soldier crouched behind a wall, with terrorists only tens of meters away from him.

We can analyze what the soldiers in the field can see and from that construct an ambush on a target and destroy it," say the engineers from Elbit's C4i division.

If in the Second Lebanon War, intelligence from Unit took half an hour to reach a battalion commander and only then made its way down to troops on the ground, now all of that will happen in seconds.

Every platoon commander will know how to create targets, to open a live chat with all the relevant elements, and to request an immediate strike if needed. Our vision is that already during the next campaign we will see a lot of video-based combat - they will be able to see from a plane or UAV in real-time. These processes will help us keep our soldiers safe and on the other hand to conduct strikes that are far more accurate," say the Elbit engineers.

We should note that none of this is science fiction; it is all already in use in the IDF. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. It's in another league. We let Elbit know everything we need and they supply us with the capabilities," explains Colonel Avivi. If we had these capabilities in previous operations such as Defensive Shield. We would have lost far fewer soldiers. It is rumored that five XM guns will be used in Afghanistan this month.

The goal of this laser system is to be compact enough to fit on board of a tactical aircraft without affecting mission performance. The lasers would be powerful enough to shoot down rockets, missiles, and artillery shells.

Stage 4 ground tests are scheduled this year. Scientists in Scotland are working on advancing camouflage by creating a material called Metaflex. This material acts as a Harry Potter-esq invisible cloak.

The wearer appears invisible because the Metaflex material bends light as it hits its surface. The "invisibility cloaks" are being tested this year and could potentially be used as a defense weapon. The Navy is in the process of designing another laser system to shoot down rockets and missiles that may attack its ships. There are endless uses for the laser when it's not shooting down enemy fire such as a tracker, sensor, information exchange, and target designation among others.

A preliminary design was completed in March and a prototype should be ready by March The US military tested a version of a Railgun in the spring of The weapon can accelerate projectiles at speeds of 2.

A perfected version of the gun is expected to be read between and Debut date unknown. The Chinese navy is developing a "kill weapon," which will have the ability to target and destroy moving U. The anti-ship ballistic missile could strike U.