to stop. hey, good hit. reporter: nbc news got an exclusive look at one system the u.s. military is already using to protect troops in war zones and it can operate with very little human involvement. this is lattice powered by artificial intelligence it defects possible incoming threats from miles away. immediately gathering and processing information from a network of radars, cameras, and radio frequencies and, unlike older systems, identifying exactly what the threat is in real time. this might be hard for the human eye. it is relatively straight forward to a computer. reporter: lattice can determine whether something is a threat and launch a modified racing drone to get a closer look on its own. in this demonstration the white zone is the enemy and the black drone is the interceptor. the interceptor drone is launched, locked on