



China trains AI-controlled weapons with learning from Hawks, Coyotes
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Engineers studying drone combat at one of China’s top military-linked universities needed a way to simulate clashes between drone swarms in real time. They turned to nature for inspiration.
Observing how hawks select prey, they trained defensive drones to single out and destroy the most vulnerable enemy aircraft. On the other side, the attacking drones were taught how to dodge the hawk-trained defenders based on the behavior of doves. In a five-on-five test, the hawks destroyed all the doves in 5.3 seconds.
That research earned the engineers a patent in April 2024—one of hundreds granted in recent years to Chinese defense companies and universities affiliated with the military for advances in swarm intelligence. In the artificial intelligence Cold War emerging between the U.S. and China, military use of the technology has quickly become one of the hottest areas of competition.
It’s also one of the most hazardous, with the desire to gain an edge putting pressure on commanders to turn over more and more warfighting power to machines. Patent filings, government procurement tenders and research papers reviewed by The Wall Street Journal reveal that China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, is intensely focused on harnessing AI to deploy swarms of drones, robot dogs and other autonomous systems. The idea is that they could overwhelm enemies or erect impenetrable defenses against threats with minimal human input.
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