Artificially-Intelligent Directed Energy Systems for Countering Swarms and Raids: Bringing speed-of-electronics “thinking” to speed-of-light defenses to aid the human operator

Student: Emmanuel Acheampong, 2020-2021

Directed energy systems are state of the art technology used in weaponry that utilize highly focused energy, notable lasers to potentially disarm and destroy enemy targets. Due to the bleeding edge nature of these systems, there are a number of challenges that might need to be overcome in order to unlock critical capabilities and the full potential of the application of these systems. This capstone project seeks to discover ways cutting edge Artificial Intelligence might be implemented to tackle some of these challenges. Essentially, the aim of this project is to find the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Directed Energy Systems to aid human operators including but not limited to finding answers to questions like “What can artificial intelligence do to improve the probability of correctly identifying the specific threat type while still at a distance?” and “What aimpoint(s) on a threat target should be queued for the operator, and how might an aimpoint algorithm adapt in real-time based on what is learned from an engagement?”