Artificial Intelligence in Full Thrust

Having been a Fire Control Officer on an AEGIS ship I have a pretty good
idea
 of what a computerized combat system can do.
  Computers are very good at number crunching, prioritizing, queing,
tracking
etc.  In the future they might even be able to recognize patterns and
propose
solutions to complicated problems ("Expert Systems"  do things like this
now)
Some programs can even take deriviatives and do other non-linear
arithmetic.
  I think that it is reasonable to see some of these things expand, but
there is a limit as to how far this will go.  The human brain is far
more
efficient than any computer out there, but it has so much to take care
of
regulating the body, directing the eyes, directing senses, sorting
data...
A computer system can only do what it is programed for and monitor what
sensors
it has available.  Humans can monitor senses in a manner that machines
can't.
Humans can combine data in a manner unproducable by machines and may
have
"Sixth Senses" that give them non-emperical data.
  The U.S. Navy had some remote control helicopters designed to drop
torpedoes
on enemy submarines.  We had a lot of trouble with them because the
remote pilot
could not get the "feel" of the crafts operations.  It is true that with
current
technology we could design better drone craft but the "sense/feel" issue
would
still remain.
  The obvious answer is to use both systems where a human makes the
operational/
strategic decisions and lets the computer's expert systems fire the
weapons at
their optimum timing.  However, the human commander better be prepared
to make
adjustments and take over when the system hicups...  I've seen that
situation
many times...