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Source: https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-904435
The AI Revolution in Warfare
(Jerusalem Post) Maj.-Gen. (res.) Saar Tzur - Artificial intelligence is not replacing people or commanders. Instead, AI is fundamentally changing how commanders think, decide, and fight. Modern warfare has become a dynamic system that generates unprecedented volumes of information at a speed and complexity far beyond the processing capacity of the human mind. The challenge is understanding it before it loses its operational value. In modern warfare, the force that sees first, understands first, decides first, and acts first will increasingly hold the decisive advantage. At every moment, headquarters receives an uninterrupted flow of information from hundreds of sources. The challenge is to understand it faster. The primary contribution of AI is not decision-making but cognitive augmentation. By reducing cognitive overload and compressing decision time, AI enables commanders to focus on the uniquely human aspects of command. AI continuously filters information, fuses multiple intelligence sources, detects operational patterns, prioritizes threats, classifies targets, builds a dynamic Common Operational Picture (COP), and generates courses of action for human consideration. The commander's decision is now based upon a richer, more accurate, more current, and more comprehensive understanding of the operational environment. It allows commanders to dedicate their attention to the functions that remain inherently human: understanding operational context, balancing competing priorities, assessing risk, managing uncertainty, exercising mission command, and applying professional military judgement. At the tactical level, AI is already making decisions, increasingly supporting autonomous execution under human command. An unmanned interceptor engaging a swarm of UAVs cannot transmit every decision back to the command center. AI can navigate without GPS, operate under degraded communications, track targets, identify objects, select routes, intercept threats, and cooperate with other unmanned systems. Capabilities of this kind are already emerging in Ukraine, Israel, and several advanced Western militaries. The machine does not replace human judgement. It executes human intent at a speed that human operators alone can no longer achieve. The writer led the IDF Northern Command in the war that began on Oct. 7.