Retired U.S. Army Gen. David Howell Petraeus said AI agents could help military commanders combine air-defense sensor information, describing a possible future role for software in decisions about incoming threats.
At the NDTV World Summit in New Delhi on Friday, Oct. 23, Petraeus described agents as software aides that could remain available to commanders as they process battlefield information. He said several could assist at once. “At some point we can have multiple agents working for us,” he said in the event recording. The summit agenda listed his session as “War in the time of AI: How Technology Is Rewriting the Battlefield.”
In the recording, Petraeus also discussed using AI to combine radar readings with acoustic-sensor inputs in one air-defense picture. The system could bring information from different sensor types together for commanders.
NDTV’s written report described a hypothetical in which an agent selects a drone interceptor to respond to an incoming drone. NDTV also reported that Petraeus characterized current experiments with autonomous systems as being at an early stage.
NDTV reported that Petraeus described human involvement shifting toward supervision as systems become more autonomous. He summed up that possible change by saying, “The human is not in the loop anymore. The human is on the loop.” The outlet also said he raised ethical concerns about greater autonomy.
The interceptor example was a future scenario, not an announcement of a system entering service. Petraeus did not announce a deployment plan or timetable at the summit.
Petraeus had discussed autonomous unmanned systems and future AI reasoning at the Aspen Security Forum in July 2025, according to the forum transcript. The Central Intelligence Agency’s director gallery lists his tenure as director from Sept. 6, 2011, to Nov. 9, 2012.
