Franz-Stefan Gady, The Diplomat: Drone Swarms: How the US Navy Plans to Fight Wars in 2016
‘Swarmbots’ could mean a new era in autonomous warfare.
Last week, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) released a video showcasing the U.S. Navy’s latest technology for conducting autonomous warfare: LOCUST, or the Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology program.
The LOCUST system can launch up to 30 small pre-programmed drones out of a rocket-launcher type mechanism under a minute, the video illustrates. Once airborne, the drones start communicating with each other autonomously and begin to fly in formation either to reconnoiter or attack an enemy target. “The breakthrough technology (…) utilizes information-sharing between the UAVs, enabling autonomous collaborative behavior in either defensive or offensive missions,” an ONR press release said.
The strategy behind “swarmbots” is simple: assault the adversary with a cloud of cheap and disposable drones and paralyze defenses by the sheer quantity of unmanned attackers in the air.
WNU Editor: I suspect that the big problem will be in communicating (and coordinating) all of these drones .... but if they can get over that obstacle .... I can see how such "swarms" will be able to overwhelm a target.
2 comments:
Russia once bragged that it could shoot a fly down out of the air. JFK's response was that 'we can shoot a fly down too but the real question is, which fly?'
The communication problem has been achieved few years ago i saw a demonstration of a few commercial type drones, flying in formation and performing different task together and was very impressive im sure they are far advance by now.
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