C4ISTAR: Command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, reconnaissance. We’ll call it C4ISTAR. AI is potentially great at turning noisy data into useful intel.
AI, especially neural network-type AI, can be used to recognize patterns in the noise. Imagine a rifle scope that searches for and highlights human-like shapes. Or an air defense network which fuses data from hundreds of sensors (radio, radar, IR, visible light, UV, sound, seismic etc), determines where the enemy is most likely to be (“Is that blip just noise, a cheap decoy, a stealth fighter?”) and cues other sensors to take a closer look.
Computers excel at taking many quantifiable factors and complex interactions into account to pick out information faster, more precisely, more reliably than humans. For example, a human in a tank would likely not be attentive or fast enough to recognize a rocket launch, predict its trajectory and take countermeasures in time but a computer can.
I’m less sure its utility when it comes to predicting behavior or suggesting an optimal strategy at the high levels.