The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is using artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in the analysis of thousands of responses into the future Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which is due to report in 2025 amid the potential for cuts to key procurement programmes.
Disclosing the use of AI on 15 October into the MoD’s SDR, Minster for the Armed Forces Luke Pollard said that it was “helping” to “comprehend and analyse over 8,000 responses across the propositions, totalling over 2.2 million words”.
Pollard said that the use of AI was “enhancing” the SDR team’s ability to “focus on complex tasks”, such as applying “robust challenge” to submissions through panel sessions during October and November 2024.
“AI is not a replacement for human judgment, but an enabler of greater efficiency and one part of facilitating a more comprehensive review process. Decisions on drafting are solely made by the reviewers: Lord George Robertson, General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill,” said Pollard.
The UK government confirmed on 15 October 2024, that more than 1,700 individuals and organisations responded to the SDR request for comment, providing more than 8,000 answers across 23 propositions.
Respondents included serving and retired members of the UK military, the defence industry, the public, academics, members of the UK parliament, as well as UK allies and partners, including Nato.
The UK MoD declined to specify to Army Technology which AI program was being used to help analyse initial responses.
The UK has received rare public criticism from the United States in recent months as London appears to be increasingly isolated in the diplomatic sector, with Washington preferring to deal with European Union members such as the Netherlands, France, and Germany.
Criticism from the US has centred on the UK’s ability to uphold its Nato requirement in terms of land capability commitments.
In January 2024 US Secretary of the Navy Carlos del Toro called for the UK to “reassess” its defence spending, amid a wholesale restructure of the British Army and reduction in personnel.
However, the outcome of the SDR could result in cuts to major programmes, with UK government claims of a £22bn black hole in public finances potentially a prelude to another round of cost savings.
Given the ongoing war in Ukraine and the parlous state of the UK’s military, particularly in the land domain, it will be hoped that any cuts that are required would be minimal, compared to other sectors in country’s economy.
GlobalData: AI sector growth “explosive”
Business and news analytics company GlobalData has projected generative AI to grow from $1.8bn in 2022 to $33bn as the rise in use of such technology continues to increase, particularly in areas such as data analytics.
Generative AI sees the creation of video, text, and images by AI models when presented with a dataset or prompt, with the most common example of its kind OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI chat program.
Manish Dixit, practice head of disruptive tech at GlobalData, said that the AI sector was experiencing “explosive growth”, driven by unprecedented levels of investment and the emergence of new players in the industry.
“The successful implementation of [hybrid neural architectures and cognitive systems] will fundamentally reshape decision-making, operational efficiency, and strategy across industries,” Dixit said.
Across the defence sector, AI has cemented its position as one of the most crucial technologies for the coming battlespace, and is already being used in areas such as data analysis and mission operations.
