Germany’s army chief on AI, drones and the future of the tank | The Economist

How do you think about the right balance. between legacy systems and emerging. technology? Because this seems to me a. very unsettled debate in NATO armies. We. just in the UK for example had a defense. minister resign and a junior minister. resign saying our future plans are not. innovative enough. There's not enough on. drones. There's not enough on autonomy. >> [snorts]. >> How do you think about that balance? Because everyone tells me every general. I interview says we need to get the. balance. It's a high-low mix. We need. the balance. Nobody's willing to tell me. what the balance is exactly. And are you. getting a clarity around that?

>> So we need to get the balance I would. say. in the first place. And of course that's. something we have to to find out and. experiment with. I think. what I would say for the German land. forces for the German armies there are. five areas where we have to be improved. very rapidly and these five areas are. indirect fires, counter UAS. >> Indirect fires includes things like. artillery just for the benefit of the. people listening to this. >> Artillery, loitering munitions and. something like that. Up to deep.

deep strike capability. Secondly. >> like a thousand kilometers. >> like a thousand. kilometers but which could also be the. tactical deep so something between 100. and 300 kilometers. A second thing we. really have to improve our capabilities. is counter UAS, air defense. A third. thing I'm thinking about is. electromagnetic warfare. A fourthly I. would say the manned-unmanned teaming, integration of unmanned systems into our.

force is. must be a focus and lastly we need. AI-enabled. um C2 commander control capabilities and. these are the areas which I'm focusing. most in the German armed forces. And. focusing on these items, focusing on. these issues will help us to find the. right balance between. what you call legacy systems. I wouldn't. agree on the term legacy systems, but.

these are the systems you need to take. and to hold ground because taking and. holding ground, that's that's the main. task of land forces. And at the end of. the day, it's always a physical. experience. >> So, you I mean, let's talk a little bit. more about that because you're an armor. officer by background, right? >> Recky. >> A recky officer, but you're very. familiar with therefore with armored. vehicles and that aspect of ground. warfare. I want to just get you to reflect on the. old and eternal debate about the future.

of the tank. Clearly on a very transparent. battlefield, troops need protection and. they need mobility and therefore tanks, you know, have a value. But I talk do. talk to some Ukrainian officers who say. at the end of the day, we're using UGVs, uncrewed ground. vehicles, ground robots for resupply, fire support, logistics, and they can. perform some of the same tasks we would. once have done with. something like that. How do you look at this debate and and. kind of what does the tank need to. become to survive and modernize?

>> Well, the tank must become a kind of. command and control center, a kind of. mothership, but it. must also be. >> A mothership for ground robots. >> ground robots, for um. commanding and controlling unmanned. systems. >> Yeah. >> Um but on the other hand, you need. something like a tank for situation. one-to-one. situations. You need.

you need to have both the capability to. fight over long distance or medium. distance and you need the capability to. for direct fire, for dual situations. And I'm completely convinced that on the. modern. battlefield, we will see AI-supported. drones and we need the soldier with with. its rifle and binary. >> But in the spirit of challenge, if we. had a. more radical-minded military scientist. here, they might say, "Why does that.

need to have a crew inside it?". >> Uh because at the end of the day there's. a human decision-maker. as a man in the loop as as a man um. who is able to um. judge what he is doing and where where. he is exploring his firepower. And I. think there is no way that we need that. we will see a completely unmanned. battlefield in the future. >> Yeah. Well, okay, that's that's that's.

really really interesting. One of the other elements that runs like. a thread through the different things. you mentioned is data. You mentioned. AI-enabled command and control. Now, data is kind of critical to that. And I. think the phrase that you used is you. said you compared it to ammunition. Data. is like ammunition, you said. Now, if. that is true, tell me a little bit more about what. you're doing about that. You know, what. to to take if I can stretch the metaphor. perhaps to breaking point, how are you. stockpiling this stuff? >> How do we stockpile it? >> Uh how are you collecting data? How are.

you storing it, labeling it, using it to. train your models? Can you tell me what. are you doing about this problem? If if. it's as central as you say. >> It is absolutely central and I think. there we have to be very very fast to do. it to develop platforms. I think. especially it's we are talking about. data integration. Uh we will we will. have in the on the future battlefield, especially in the land land domain, sensors everywhere and anywhere. Uh in the air, on the ground, in space, and we will um.

uh see. in in the past we always lacked. information. And I tell this especially. as in my former role as a recce officer. It was also always like. >> is all about getting information from. the battlefield. >> and now it's not about the getting. information, so then handling the mass. of information. And I don't think that. this can be a human task anymore. Uh you. are far too slow for that. Uh you need. uh. data backbone, a digital backbone to.

assemble all this information, to. assemble. uh all this data, and then exploit it by. using uh artificial intelligence. >> Mhm. >> Uh there are some systems out there, and. we have to decide very, very quickly how. we can develop this data backbone, how. we can integrate this into our systems, >> Mhm. >> and uh how we can um. uh improve our decision-making, making. our decision uh. um more accelerate our decision-making.

in a way we were not thinking about a. couple of years ago.