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Meredith Chen

China’s military researchers have proposed a redesigned “AI principles and practice course” for graduate students with “educating for war” at its centre, embedding combat scenarios to better prepare future officers for intelligent warfare.
Researchers from the National University of Defence Technology’s College of Intelligence Science and Technology outlined their proposal in the July issue of the journal Defence Industry Conversion in China.
The initiative comes as China seeks to cultivate more military personnel with the technical skills to use artificial intelligence (AI) in future warfare.
As global militaries explore the use of AI in planning, training and combat, the technology is also changing what the troops need to learn, with China aiming to train forces capable of applying emerging technologies to armed operations.
The researchers said case studies in the existing AI course lacked sufficient “military flavour” and needed to be redesigned to better serve the practical needs of “educating for war”.


The university introduced “Principles and Practice of Artificial Intelligence” as a tailored course for non-AI science and engineering graduate students in its 2022 autumn semester.
It was intended to address differences in students’ AI backgrounds and help them find ways to combine the emerging technology with their areas of study, the researchers said.
They propose building the course around a common uncrewed warfare scenario and using military operations as a thread to connect different AI concepts.
Course topics would be mapped onto different stages of the military decision-making and targeting process: from observing and assessing a situation to making decisions and taking action, as well as finding, locating and tracking targets, engaging them and assessing the results.
For example, a unit about reinforcement learning, in which an AI system learns through trial and error, could be taught through combat decision-making and war gaming, they said.
Meanwhile, uncertainty reasoning, in which an AI system makes decisions with incomplete or unreliable information, could be illustrated through fault diagnosis in uncrewed systems and border intrusion warnings.
The curriculum redesign could “enable students to gain a deeper understanding of the practical applications of course content in military settings and internalise theoretical methods as ‘intelligent thinking’ for solving specific problems in military scenarios”, the team wrote.
One proposed exercise would ask students to train several simulated drones to work together to surround a high-value target. This would allow them to study how AI systems can coordinate their actions, communicate and make decisions when working as a group.




The researchers said practical exercises should combine classroom theory with hands-on work, rather than simply asking students to run existing code.
They proposed giving out clearly defined problems, data sets, algorithms and step-by-step tasks, along with questions that could challenge students to explore more advanced applications.
The team has also developed an online simulation platform where students can design maps and scenarios, configure forces and missions, and train AI agents through mock combat exercises to build their understanding of reinforcement learning.
The platform supports contests in which AI agents trained by different student teams compete against one another.
The National University of Defence Technology is one of China’s leading institutions for military science and technology education. It is directly overseen by the Central Military Commission, the highest command body. The US Commerce Department added the university to its restricted trade list in 2015, alleging the use of American technology in supercomputers linked to nuclear explosive activities.
Authors of the July paper also explicitly outline boundaries, emphasising that every exercise must reinforce a key principle – that AI serves strictly as a decision-support tool, while final command authority remains entirely human.
They proposed debates on the “ethical and legal boundaries of autonomous weapons systems” to foster a “sense of responsibility”, while highlighting the weaknesses of AI – including data bias, environmental sensitivity and vulnerability to adversarial attacks.


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China

Military

Proposal sees mapping out defence scenarios as better preparation for future officers involved in intelligent warfare


Proposal sees mapping out defence scenarios as better preparation for future officers involved in intelligent warfare.


Central Military Commission

Chinese military university urged to revise AI course to ‘educate for war’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Proposal sees mapping out defence scenarios as better preparation for future officers involved in intelligent warfare

Proposal sees mapping out defence scenarios as better preparation for future officers involved in intelligent warfare