Here’s a video of French Special Forces operating against the Islamic State, including some mopping up operations in Mosul:
A few points of interest:
Posts Tagged ‘drone’
Video of French Forces Fighting the Islamic State
Saturday, February 11th, 2017Pentagon Successfully Tests Microdrone Swarm
Wednesday, January 11th, 2017Given the name of my blog, you wouldn’t expect this development to escape my eye:
The Pentagon may soon be unleashing a 21st-century version of locusts on its adversaries after officials on Monday said it had successfully tested a swarm of 103 micro-drones.
The important step in the development of new autonomous weapon systems was made possible by improvements in artificial intelligence, holding open the possibility that groups of small robots could act together under human direction.
Military strategists have high hopes for such drone swarms that would be cheap to produce and able to overwhelm opponents’ defenses with their great numbers.
The test of the world’s largest micro-drone swarm in California in October included 103 Perdix micro-drones measuring around six inches (16 centimeters) launched from three F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, the Pentagon said in a statement.
“The micro-drones demonstrated advanced swarm behaviors such as collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying and self-healing,” it said.
“Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said William Roper, director of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office. “Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.”
And I tracked down video of the test:
Of course, there are all sorts of military and ethical considerations to truly autonomous drones. Like what theaters do you deploy them in, and under what conditions. And what do the first time they decide to dismantle a schoolhouse, or kill one of your own guys…
Tank Watch: Abrams To Control Drones?
Wednesday, December 28th, 2016The army is thinking of making the M1A2 Abrams tank a drone control platform:
The Army is preparing to configure Abrams tank prototypes able to control nearby “robotic” wing-man vehicles which fire weapons, carry ammunition and conduct reconnaissance missions for units on the move in combat, service officials said.
Although still in the early stages of discussion and conceptual development, the notion of manned-unmanned teaming for the Abrams continues to gain traction among Army and General Dynamics Land Systems developers.
Algorithms are progressing to the point wherein they will be able to allow an Abrams tank crew to operate multiple nearby “wing-man” robotic vehicles in a command and control capacity while on the move in combat.
As for how good an idea this is, it depends on the drone and depends on the mission. Reconnaissance seems like a natural, and some drones might work well at over-the-horizon top-down attack roles against other armored vehicles in rough terrain or beyond the range of the 120mm main gun (which is plenty far), assuming they can find a way to defeat active countermeasure systems like Drozd and Arena.
I can also imagine non-winged drones, like an updated, low-profile version of the old German Goliath tracked mine used for tasks like bunker clearing.
The M1A2s equipped with the System Enhancement Package (SEP) already have considerably upgraded electronics, and drone control is probably seen as a natural follow-on. The question is where do you store the drones and, if they’re not launched from the tank itself, what advantages does having local control over give you over remote control. I suspect that needing to launch the drones from the tank before rotating the turret is going to be a non-starter in most combat environments. Maybe that could be done automatically, assuming the kinks could be worked out in autonomous operation (a big if; all it takes is one friendly fire incident to scuttle that idea right quick).
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)