Incremental Expansion in Expansion and Collaboration
A session at Sea Air Space – Unmanned Advancements in Warfighting – highlighted the imperative to collaborate and expand the technology envelope to advance unmanned vehicles throughout the battlespace. Experts also offered significant words of caution and advice to industry and the military, as they develop platforms and enabling systems.
Even the casual observer would have taken pause in noting the frenetic pace of unmanned system testing and development during February’s 2022 IMX, hosted by US Fifth Fleet. Sixty nations and organisations combined to put 80 unmanned systems through their paces in the air, surface and subsurface domains. Vice Adm Scott Conn, Deputy CNO for Warfighting Requirements and Capabilities, told delegates their services need to continue “resourcing and planning these types of events to advance their programmes.” Hopefully, business development professionals took note when the admiral offered advice on what is also needed to efficiently and quickly advance their programmes. “This is an evolutionary, not revolutionary process, to integrate unmanned capabilities before they scale […] We are still looking for disruptive technologies.” Applauding the collaborative efforts of industry and their defence counterparts, he turned his attention to artificial intelligence. “AI must also be a verb, and we must get much more disciplined about discussing AI and machine learning. We need some quick answers on: what machine learning to do we need; and how are AI/ML really linked to operations.”
The moderator, Dr Andrew Mara, VP for Federally Funded Research and Development Centers at the Center for Naval Analysis, added “Risks involve things like communications, logistics, training and infrastructure.”
Trust is an increasing research focus in warfighting labs as AI, manned-unmanned teaming and like developments advance. On cue, DARPA’s Dr Kenneth Plaks described his organisation’s ongoing work with unmanned undersea vehicles, gliders, surface vessels and other platforms, emphasising the importance of having human operators trust their robotic assistants. “I can see a future where it’s a human on the loop that says, ‘OK, go take care of that threat and let me know when it’s done,’ and it just does it.” To his credit, Plaks unveiled the art of the possible, in one instance mentioning the emergence of swarms of as many as 1,000 robotic vehicles and how managing them would require critical human command and control. “Think about efforts to control aircraft during Nellis AFB exercises and even managing 100 drones. We have to scale these efforts,” he asserted.
And finally, Dave Johnson, VP of Strategy at L3Harris, encouraged attendees by noting, “We can accelerate unmanned in all domains.” He then touched on several projects under development focused on live-fire, counter-mine and other systems. “There is a real progression of unmanned capability.”
Marty Kauchak reporting from National Harbor, MD for MON
