Former Navy chief promises military robotics cluster in “less than three months”
The former Chief of the Navy Staff, Henrique Gouveia e Melo, says he is already in talks with companies in Portugal, as well as in Spain and Germany, to set up a military robotics cluster.
Henrique Gouveia e Melo, former Chief of the Navy Staff, says the military robotics cluster he is preparing should be up and running in “less than three months”. “The market demands answers for tomorrow”, said the admiral and former presidential candidate, speaking to ECO/eRadar.
On Friday, the Expresso newspaper revealed that Gouveia e Melo is preparing a military robotics cluster in Portugal and Spain, which will subsequently feed into dual-use military and civilian robotics.
On this idea, the former Chief of the Navy Staff outlined the broad outlines of this future cluster. “It is a set of initiatives. On the one hand, dedicated funding for military robotics, then an accelerator for all this technology, bringing together our start-ups and the technology that exists in Portugal, but not only there, also across the Iberian Peninsula. In Germany, for example, we already have contacts”, he explained, on the sidelines of the 7th Talk .IA, dedicated to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the defence industry — an initiative by the brands .IA and eRadar, which took place on Monday at Estúdio ECO in Lisbon, and at which the admiral was a speaker.
There will also be “an integrator handling all the logistics of the process, because when selling new products, you need to maintain a logistics chain, and companies often fail because they don’t maintain that logistics chain to support the customer. And it is this stack of things that we are putting together”, he noted.
“We’re doing everything at the same time, putting these pieces together, and in less than three months we’ll have the process up and running”, Gouveia e Melo also assured, adding that he is already in talks with Portuguese companies, without, however, revealing which ones. “Secrecy is a bit the lifeblood of the business. I’m not going to say here who the partners are or who we’re talking to”, he stated, when asked to detail which companies he is in talks with.
Gouveia e Melo also did not reveal who the backers behind his project are. “I don’t need money from the state. We have private funding. This is a wholly private initiative because we have no time to waste. The market is demanding answers for tomorrow, not in five years’ time. And if this isn’t done on a purely commercial basis, if we’re dependent on the state, we won’t be able to achieve our goals”, he said.
“The only thing I truly want from the State, and I have said this before, is that the State does not get in the way. Whether through excessive regulation or bureaucratic obstacles, because that is what ultimately slows down the development and competitiveness of companies”, he added.
The amount of private capital and the sum already raised for the project is information that the military official also did not disclose. He merely stated that “there is plenty of capital available for good ideas and good projects. And, therefore, this capital is available”. How much? “I won’t specify that, but it is more than enough”.
Before being questioned by eRadar, Gouveia e Melo had already addressed the project in his speech at the 7th Talk .IA: “The good news for Portugal is that small countries have less inertia.” This works in their favour when discussing a project such as the creation of a military robotics cluster.
“In such a small country, it would be almost an unrealistic endeavour. But it isn’t. Because those with less inertia can make 90-degree turns. Those with inertia make turns of 3 or 4 degrees. By the time they reach the new course, a lot of time has passed. And the world is accelerating rapidly. That is why AI in the armed forces is essential. It will happen. Those who don’t want it will be left behind”, he emphasised.
For the former Chief of the Naval Staff, the armed forces’ failure to use artificial intelligence amounts to accepting defeat in advance: “To say that the military will not use this is the same as saying that the military will be defeated by an adversary who is prepared to use it.”
At a time when conflicts are escalating, “there is a set of decisions that will have to be made using robotics, on the one hand, but also AI. Why? Because the decision has to be made very quickly. Therefore, humans do not have the speed to process the information in time. And we in the military are all concerned about this. Because otherwise we cannot combat” the threats.
One of the other issues he highlighted is the need to “control things that move very quickly”. “We need a high-bandwidth communications link to transmit large amounts of data, and communications are the problem. It is the Achilles’ heel of this process. So, what is the way to avoid this? Greater autonomy in the drone or the equipment”, he pointed out.
He gave an example of the role of AI in a conflict situation. “By the time a human says ‘I have a hypersonic missile here’ and asks the commander ‘Sir, we have a hypersonic missile’, the hypersonic missile has already struck.” In practice, “the acceleration of the threat will mean that humans will not have time to decide”, so human involvement will have to be “in the training of the system” or the algorithm.
