A summary of recent developments and investments by the Indian Government in artificial intelligence for defence

As part of the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ celebrations commemorating India’s 75^th year of independence, Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister) of India, Shri Rajnath Singh, launched 75 AI related technologies at the AI in Defence (AIDef) symposium and exhibition. Further, at the second Ammo India conference, organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, the Defence Minister said that  ‘smartness’ is as important for bombs as their ‘size and explosive capacity’, and that a ‘smart, precision and autonomous weapon system ‘can automatically take inputs, make course corrections and target the appropriate location at the right time.’

The Hindu, a national newspaper in India, later reported that the Indian Army has ‘developed in-house algorithms to analyse in real-time the inputs coming from various sensors in the field, according to sources in the security establishment. Over 145 such assets, based on these solutions, have been deployed so far.’ Quoting an anonymous source, the article also reports that ‘The Army has deployed several units of AI-powered smart surveillance systems in the northern and western borders. The system is capable of handling heterogeneous inputs from devices such as pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras and handheld thermal imagers. This has considerably reduced the requirement of manual monitoring.’

India does not support the negotiation of new international law to regulate the development and use of autonomous weapon systems, and is reportedly investing in emerging technologies in the field of artificial intelligence for defence.