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J-20 designer arms electronic warfare drones with generative AI

Chinese scientists have developed a large language model that can command military drones to attack enemy radar systems

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Chinese scientists have developed generative AI that can command drones in electronic warfare, according to a recent paper. Photo: Shutterstock
Stephen Chenin Beijing
A generative AI that can boost the performance of electronic warfare drones has been developed by scientists in China’s defence industry.
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This large language model (LLM), similar to ChatGPT, can command a drone equipped with electronic warfare weapons to attack enemy aircraft radar or communication systems.

Its decision-making performance in air combat not only surpasses traditional artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as reinforcement learning, but is also better than experienced human experts, test results suggest.

This is the first publicly disclosed research that directly applies large language models to weapons.

Previously, such AI technology was mainly limited to war rooms, offering intelligence analysis or decision-making help to human commanders.

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The research project was jointly launched by the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute under the Aviation Industry Corporation of China and Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian, Shaanxi province.

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