The Role of Explainable AI in Cybersecurity: Addressing Transparency Challenges in Autonomous Defense Systems

Two major and rapidly evolving domains that are becoming more integrated into military and defense activity, are cyber security and Artificial Intelligence. Cyber threatening has become sophisticated thus making the application of AI crucial in identifying as well as preventing assaults. In this paper, a review of advances in the area of cyber security and AI and their application relating to war and defense is provided. The work begins by providing an outline of the kinds of AI models deployed in cybersecurity, such as machine learning, natural language processing, and anomaly detection. This work then goes further to explore how AI helps in the improvements of military and defence system security, especially in regard to the recognition of threats in the cyber space as well as protective the critical infrastructure. Some of the challenges associated with AI in cybersecurity, which we then discuss are; A lot of challenging attempts such as adversarial attacks, the problem of the difficulty of interpreting results produced by AI. Furthermore, general and specific ethical issues using AI within military and defense domains are reviewed, including issues relating to responsibility, bias, and audacity. Finally, the necessities for further investigation of this area of study and also proposing some research questions for future research to give specific attention to the followings are mentioned: the algorithm development for learning adaptive AI, and the consequences of AI in short and long-term operation of military/defense application. In conclusion, this paper gives a fairly good picture of where artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber security stands in military/defense today and what some of the big challenges and future directions for additional research are likely to be.