The U.S. Army is looking for inexpensive but high-tech solutions, including artificial intelligence, to help protect the massive acreage that makes up its sites where munitions are made and stockpiled.<\/p>\n
In one instance, a local duck hunter got out of his boat, grabbed his shot gun and waded right into the protected area of\u00a0a munition site, Brig. Gen. Ronnie Anderson, Joint Munitions Command commander, said Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army\u2019s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.<\/p>\n
These 13 operating sites under the purview of Joint Munitions Command have also seen 42 drone incursions, Anderson said, without specifying the timeframe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are they doing? We don\u2019t know. Is there anything nefarious or is it just someone curious? We don\u2019t know because we don\u2019t have the ability to interrogate the [unmanned aircraft system] or the person who\u2019s operating.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Fencing, however, can be costly. A recent estimate to construct fencing around Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas was $80 million, according to Anderson.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor 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,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
These security issues are critical to address now, Anderson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the next conflict, when the continental United States is a contested area, we have to be able to sense and we don\u2019t have these resources to put armed guards on patrol every corner of all of our thousands and thousands of acres.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Army is looking for inexpensive but high-tech solutions, including artificial intelligence, to help protect the massive acreage that makes up its sites where munitions are made and stockpiled. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,28],"tags":[87,77],"class_list":["post-1964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-army","category-military-tech","tag-ai","tag-us-army"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/US-ARMY-AI-MUNITIONS.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1988,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964\/revisions\/1988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}