HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army is looking for inexpensive but high-tech solutions, including artificial intelligence, to help protect the massive acreage that make up its sites where munitions are made and stockpiled.
In one instance, a local duck hunter got out of his boat, grabbed his shot gun and waded right into the protected area of a munition site, Brig. Gen. Ronnie Anderson, Joint Munitions Command commander, said Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
These 13 operating sites under the purview of Joint Munitions Command have also seen 42 drone incursions, Anderson said, without specifying the timeframe.
“What are they doing? We don’t know. Is there anything nefarious or is it just someone who’s curious? We don’t know because we don’t have the ability to interrogate the [unmanned aircraft system] or the person who’s operating.”
The worst-case scenario, Anderson said, is a hobbyist could crash a drone into an operating site where there are explosives being moved between Point A and Point B.
Although installations have inner perimeters providing security, McAlister Army Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma, for example, which is larger than the District of Columbia, has an outer perimeter of three-strand barbed wire cattle fencing.
Fencing, however, can be costly. A recent estimate to construct fencing around Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas was $80 million, according to Anderson.
“For less than $5 million, we can have an AI-enabled mobile trailer with sensors, cameras, radar and communicate back through an IT network, back to the control center, that senses, it alerts the [emergency operations center] of something that either is a threat or is not a threat,” Anderson said.
Solutions would also be able to properly address unmanned aircraft systems incursions. The AI capability would be able to learn, allowing it to identify an unmanned aircraft system, communicate the type of system back to the Army and then start to interrogate the system, Anderson said.
The Army has engaged three industry partners who are experimenting now at Bluegrass Army Depot in Kentucky with applying artificial intelligence-enabled wide-area security, he said, adding that the service is also initiating another experiment at Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri.
These security issues are critical to address now, Anderson said.
“In the next conflict, when the continental United States is a contested area, we have to be able to sense and we don’t have these resources to put armed guards on patrol every corner of all of our thousands and thousands of acres.”
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
