Roy Mullen: Early map preparation was all by foot.

William A. Radlinski: You had to go and walk the land.

Alfred O. Quinn: Well, I'd never heard of photogrammetry before.

Morris Thompson: What is a stereoplotting instrument?

Roy Mullen: Oh, there were many things—

William A. Radlinski: State-of-the-art cameras.

Roy Mullen: Various multiplex systems.

Alfred O. Quinn: The Fairchild system—

Frederick Doyle: The Kelsh plotter projector photographed from a glass plate. We went from optical systems to mechanical systems.

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: With every generation, the resolution got better and the geometric fidelity of the lenses got better.

William A. Radlinski: We got into space imagery early on.

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: There were the analytical stereoplotters.

Roy Mullen: Computers came along as a tool for design.

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: And then forward image motion compensation. We went to softcopy photogrammetry.

Roy Mullen: And digital orthophotography.

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: And then, of course, the digital cameras.

Jack Dangermond: This database wasn't about money or about people. It was about geographic information systems.

Roy Mullen: Because of the ability to digitize directly, photogrammetry, as we knew it, reached its apex of evolution.

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: 20 years ago, you would've seen monster pieces of metal.

William A. Radlinski: In the world today, it's almost obsolete. Anybody can get a map just by turning on his computer and Googling it.

Roy Mullen: You put it into your GPS systems that use a base map. It's universally used throughout the world now.

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: And the appetite for that sort of digital data is almost insatiable.

[music playing]

[Typewriter keys clacking]

Jim Living: Back in 1923, Talbert Abrams bought an airplane, and he was barnstorming. And he found out that people would pay him more to take pictures of their farms and buildings than they would to go for a ride in the airplane. It was people like him that started this whole industry.

Mo Weinberg: Map makers, topographers from the four different sections of the country would bring about a revolution in mapping.

Morris Thompson: They were in an airplane, open cockpit, no shelter. After you get the aerial photos, what do you do with them?

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: They saw the possibilities of mapping from the air.

William A. Radlinski: Most of the farmers didn't know how many acres they had, so we would determine which acreage was tillable, and that was called "mapping."

Alfred O. Quinn: I tried to get mathematics with Professor Earl Church, but the only course that I could get with him was one known as photogrammetry.

Don Lauer: I had a plan to play for the army all-star basketball team, but Bob had a vision. He convinced me to go to graduate school. Profound experience.

Morris Thompson: I only know of one person around here who would still remember so much detail. And he wasn't there when it began, and I was.

[Airplane engines]

[Music playing]

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: Photogrammetry started with the military.

Morris Thompson: We had a combined TVA-USGS force. When the war started in Europe, we got to wondering about who is next.

Mo Weinberg: Map making was turned over to the Army Map Service, so that we would map for them.

Morris Thompson: And where do you suppose we started? China, Japan. Where? Upstate New York.

Virginia Long: They thought the Germans would invade the United States by way of the Saint Lawrence Waterway.

Morris Thompson: But that's just the beginning.

William A. Radlinski: We landed in Normandy and went all the way across Europe, going with the front line. We provided topographic maps for the infantry and to the artillery.

Alfred O. Quinn: After Pearl Harbor, we computed targets for the naval bombardment prior to an invasion, so that ships could fire at coordinates.

Frederick Doyle: We made target charts and bomb damage assessment charts for the B-29 raids on Japan.

Morris Thompson: I remember there was one place we were mapping, and then came the news that there's nothing left of it. We were mapping Hiroshima.

Alfred O. Quinn: Without maps, we'd have been lost in WWII.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: I ask that the Congress declare a state of war.

Alfred O. Quinn: A lot of our men, of course, were drafted. And so, we went recruiting young ladies.

Gwendolyn Gill: Mr. Quinn asked if I was interested in the job. I accepted it immediately. I was real glad to get a job with TVA.

Virginia Long: I was fresh out of college when I was assigned to maps and surveys.

Margaret Delayney: We did parcels of property land somewhere. It was hush-hush, because we weren't supposed to know what this was.

Louise Edwards: But when you saw a map that you were compiling in the newspapers, you had a pretty good idea.

Morris Thompson: They took to it. They learned quickly. Their drafting was nicer than ours.

Alfred O. Quinn: They had greater patience than most men. They were well-adapted to the photogrammetric equipment.

Sid Izlar: And I said, I'd love to get in the multiplex, because all these girls they were hiring were making more money than I was.

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: In ASPRS, being a woman was not much of a barrier.

If you look around now at the USGS, and the civilian side, it's truly becoming one world and this is part of it.

[Music playing]

Frederick Doyle: Nowadays, sophisticated programs are used to make the maps. It's not the challenge it was when I was working on it. We were making the maps of the moon. I was in charge of the cameras on the Apollo spacecraft. We established 14,000 points. We had used photographs from four different missions. It was an enormous job.

We made a whole series of maps for the ground crews—what they would see at each station, digital maps and perspective views. A very fancy package.

Jack Schmitt: Oh, shoot.

Eugene Cernan: Oh, you won't believe it.

Frederick Doyle: But when they unloaded the roving vehicle, they broke one of the fenders.

Eugene Cernan: Oh, there goes a fender.

Frederick Doyle: They decided to patch the fender.

Houston: OK, we'll need to tape it.

Frederick Doyle: They took our set of maps and duct tape.

Eugene Cernan: How do you want those things taped together?

Houston: Allow about an inch of overlap, and tape both sides of them.

Frederick Doyle: So they didn't use them at all on the terrain. When we got back, they said, well, those were the most valuable maps we had ever made.

[Laughter]

Roy Mullen: There may be one map that saves an untold number of lives. It's intangible what value that is. But think about what was avoided by having had that map to begin with.

Alfred O. Quinn: The use of digital map data in all kinds of investigations, plans, developments—I think the whole thing is going to continue.

Marilyn O’Cuilinn: It's very exciting to watch the progression, because it does touch so many aspects of our lives.

[Music playing]

[Music]

Unnamed narrator: As we all know, today's battlefields are more challenging than ever. We are required to fight in complex urban areas amongst civilian populations and to handle time-critical targets.

The biggest challenge is to close the sensor shooter loops in a very short time, accurately, effectively and efficiently. Today, we at Rafael are proud to present the revolutionary solution to these challenges: Fire Weaver, the world's most mature network detect system. See how in real-time action, the sensors detect and identify the targets. 

Fire Weaver selects the optimal shooters and marks the targets to the shooter's site. As a result, all the attack processes are completed simultaneously in an unprecedentedly short time. As we are seeing, different shooters from different locations simultaneously neutralizing different targets within a few seconds. This can only be achieved today with Fire Weaver. 

Now, let's understand step by step how Fire Weaver actually works. As we see, all the forces are connected through a radio network. 

[Music] 

The attack process begins with a variety of sensors gathering information in the battlefield. The sensor identifies the target, classifies it and disseminates it through the system. 

In the same way, all the other sensors detect and classify the information and disseminate it through the net to all the connected participants. 

[Music] 

Thanks to Rafael's advanced Computer Vision Technologies, each participant receives very accurate augmentation symbols, so they all see the same targets regardless of their position. 

Once the sensors detect and classify the targets, the Fire Weaver core, the brain of the system, goes immediately into action. It calculates all the data and within seconds, it chooses the optimal shooter for each target based on such parameters as location, line of sight, effectiveness and current ammo status. All that in accordance to the Fire policy. The process can be performed automatically or controlled according to the commander's decision. 

As you see, the target is sent from the sensor to the shooter, who sees the target from his point of view on his sight. 

The targets are neutralized simultaneously in a very short time with maximum precision, while minimizing damage and avoiding friendly fire. 

At the same time, the Fire Weaver system enables other shooters to neutralize further targets according to the same operational process. Fire Weaver uses three targeting languages: geocordinate Laser Designation, and Electro Optical Pixel. The system has already been tested in the field, including many to many and live fire scenarios. For the first time, with Fire Weaver, the sensor to shooter loop is closed in seconds instead of minutes. 

[Music] 

Go to Transcript: KEYNOTE: The Kill Cloud: Real World Implications of Network Centric Warfare

Search in video JOHN YANG: Artificial intelligence has been a crucial tool for many nation's militaries for years. Now the war in Ukraine is driving innovation. And as that conflict drags on, AI is rolling it is likely to grow. Ali Rogin looks at how militaries are using AI today, and ahead to how it might be used in the future.

ALI ROGIN: More artificial intelligence on the battlefield carries great potential, but also higher risk. Right now, Congress is pressing the Pentagon through legislation to invest further and move faster on AI to avoid falling behind on this nimble but critical technology. Paul Scharre is the Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security. He's also a former Army Ranger, Pentagon official and the author of "Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence." Paul, thank you so much for joining us. Artificial Intelligence is already used to some extent on the battlefield, but we're not talking about completely autonomous technology, what is available currently, what are warfighters already using? And then where do you see the technology going in the near future?

PAUL SCHARRE, Vice President, Center For A New American Security: That's right, we're already seeing AI being used on the battlefield in Ukraine. Now, humans are still in control of the fighting. But one of the things that AI is doing is helping to process information faster. AI is being used to sift through satellite images and drone video feeds, and that helps militaries then better understand what's happening on the battlefield, make decisions faster, and then target the enemy faster and more accurately.

ALI ROGIN: So what happens when we do consider having humans not be at all in control when these systems are fully automated? What are the pros and cons of that?

PAUL SCHARRE: Well, we're already seeing drones being used in Ukraine that have all of the components needed to build fully autonomous weapons that can go out over the battlefield, find their own targets, and then all on their own attack those targets without any further human intervention. And that raises very challenging legal, and moral and ethical questions about human control over the use of force of war.

ALI ROGIN: Now we're seeing Ukraine sort of lead the conversation in the application of using these fully autonomous devices. Do you think we're going to see more of that? And is there concern about how they might be used by differently by state actors and non-state actors like terrorist organizations?

PAUL SCHARRE: Well, war is an accelerant of innovation. So the longer that this war goes on, the more that we're going to see more innovation on the battlefield. We're already seeing innovative uses of drones and counter drone technologies, things like electronic warfare systems that can target drone operators, and then call it artillery strikes on the drone operator. And that kind of technology pushes militaries towards more autonomy, but it's not just confined to nation states. ISIS actually had a pretty sophisticated drone army a few years ago, and they were carrying out drone attacks against Iraqi troops are pretty effective.

ALI ROGIN: And now we've talked about how AI is used in weapons, but how about systems off the battlefield?

PAUL SCHARRE: Well, most of what militaries do is not actually right at the tip of the spear fighting. It's logistics, personnel, maintenance, it's moving people pulling things from one place to another, on a day to day basis, it looks a lot like what Walmart or Amazon do. It's what happens at the end, it's different. And so AI has advantages and all of those other non-combat functions that are critical how to how militaries operate. And if militaries can make their maintenance and logistics, and personnel and finance functions, just 10 percent better, that's going to have huge impacts for militaries on ultimately, their capability at the military's edge on the battlefield.

ALI ROGIN: Now, some of what we're seeing in Ukraine is employing commercially available technology that can simply be purchased for a couple $1,000. How is the U.S. Department of Defense, dealing with keeping up with that sort of competition that exists? How is that playing out?

PAUL SCHARRE: Well, they're not keeping up. That's the short version, they're woefully behind because the culture is so radically different. And the bottom line is, you can't buy AI the same way that you might buy an aircraft carrier. The military is moving too slow. It's mired in cumbersome bureaucracy. And the leadership of the Pentagon has tried to shake things up. They had a major reorganization last year of the people working AI and data and software inside the Defense Department. But we haven't seen a lot of changes since then. And so the Pentagon is going to have to find ways to cut through the red tape and move faster if they're going to stay on top of this very important technology.

ALI ROGIN: And Paul, lastly, on the global level, as this technology continues to proliferate, some countries are calling for the establishment of some general rules of the road. What does that conversation look like? What are some of the contours of that debate?

PAUL SCHARRE: Well, we've certainly seen debates over the last several years, all the way back to 2014. About lethal autonomous weapons, there's a pretty wide range of views on this. And the United States, as well as other countries like Russia, have said that we have existing rules, we have the laws of war. The laws of war apply to autonomous weapons, just like any other weapon, and we need to focus on adhering to those and making sure that any use of these weapons is consistent with the law of war.

ALI ROGIN: And what about the other side of that, those who say we need additional rules and that the existing rules don't fully apply here?

PAUL SCHARRE: That's right. So there's about 30 countries that have said that they'd like to see a preemptive, legally binding treaty that would ban autonomous weapons before they can be built. But right now, none of the leading military powers of robotics developers are part of that group. And so it hasn't yet had the political heft to get to a treaty. That could change as we see the technology advance. And as we see, of course, more broadly, concerns about AI growth (ph), as we're seeing AI technology advanced and there's more calls for global regulation of AI.

ALI ROGIN: Paul Scharre with the Center for a New American Security. Thank you so much for joining us.

PAUL SCHARRE: Thank you. Thanks for having me. 16:39 NOW PLAYING The future of war

Susan Tehrani: Well, it seems like the future of battlefield is here. We're talking about drones. These are being effectively used in the war in Ukraine. And now the Pentagon has announced a new initiative to use this technology. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the US Department of Defense is considering the development of a vast network of artificial intelligence powered technology, drones, and autonomous systems.

These will be developed within the next two years to counter threats from China. The report added that the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, will sketch out some of the air, land, and sea capabilities that the Pentagon is looking to develop. Last week as well, reports came about Pentagon's new initiative, which they dubbed as Replicators. Pentagon intends to field thousands of drones within the next two years for possible conflicts in the Taiwan Strait.

These low cost and mass deployed unmanned systems could put pressure on Beijing. And according to Hicks, replicator is meant to help us overcome Beijing's biggest advantage mass, which basically means more ships, more missiles, and more people. The Deputy Secretary of Defense further added that with deployment of these drones, it will become difficult for Beijing to attack them. It will be harder to hit and harder to beat. Funding for Replicator would come from existing funds and costs hundreds of millions. The latest Pentagon budget request includes $1.8 billion for artificial intelligence for fiscal year 2024.