Computer-controlled munitions. Smart weapons include precision-guided bombs that have great accuracy, smart bullets that can change their trajectory and smart land mines that deactivate at a certain time. Increasingly using AI, smart weapons offer the military more effective ways of killing the enemy, although some of the methods are designed to eliminate or lessen collateral damage. The term may also refer to smart guns that work only for their owner. See
smart gun and
UAV.
Send a Drone; Get the GPS Data
Today's weapons are a far cry from the ones used in previous battles. For example, drones with AI machine vision are given a pattern of a tank, rocket launcher, plane or other target. When they are sent into enemy territory and recognize the object, they transmit its GPS coordinates back to base and a missile is sent to bomb the target with great precision.
Swarms of Drones
Never before have so many unmanned aerial weapons been used in combat. In the Ukraine-Russia war, drones are deployed by Russia in huge swarms that overwhelm Ukraine's defenses. Ukraine has also been effective using drones such as in the GPS example above. However, not only are the AI-enabled weapons more capable, but thousands can be built very quickly compared to previous war machines.
Since most things in life offer good and bad results, there is a plus in the Ukraine-Russia war for American weapons manufacturers. For the past several years, they have been able to test new weapons in real combat. When problems are found, improvements are made, and this live battleground cannot be simulated on a computer with the same effectiveness.
Personalized Weaponry
Hand-sized drones can be fed facial images of targeted people. Carrying an explosive no heavier than three grams, the drone can fly directly to a person's skull and deliver the payload. Such drones can also be given generic facial parameters, and thousands can be released from a plane, each killing one person in the vicinity on the ground, truly a horrific scenario!