Considerations on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Military Engineering Operations

Contemporary society is going through a period of deep transformations generated by the emergence and implementation of advanced technologies. Of all these, Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands out as having the greatest potential to generate profound changes in postmodern society, with strong implications in most areas of social life, especially in military competition. War, a social phenomenon of major relevance to human communities, is no exception to this reality, and artificial intelligence (AI) represents a “potential game changer” in the field of leading and executing military actions, with the possibility of introducing significant adjustments in the principles, rules, methods and procedures of preparing and conducting military actions, at all levels - strategic, operational and tactical. At the same time, the rapid growth of the global population, together with the phenomenon of increased urbanization, makes the urban environment one of the main environments in which the military operations of the future will be carried out. The complexity and high degree of difficulty of such environments (multi-layering, reduced mobility and high vulnerability of forces) bring with them various challenges for engineering support operations. For this reason, adjustments are needed at the level of operations planning, endowment with autonomous systems and equipment, as well as at the level of the selection process, recruitment and training of human resources.