Rachel Volner

Airborne Autonomous Systems: Challenges and Opportunities

Airborne Autonomous Systems: Challenges and Opportunities Military, intelligence, and industry officials are universal in their praise for airborne (as well as other) autonomous systems. These systems have been used extensively in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and are already creating strategic, operational, and tactical possibilities that did not exist a decade ago. However, while these autonomous systems are of enormous value today and are evolving to deliver better capabilities to the warfighter, it is their promise for the future that causes the most excitement. These leading edge – and indeed, revolutionary, systems – offer unprecedented potential to be the game-changers that will provide tomorrow’s military with heretofore unimagined capability. Indeed, these systems have created a substantial “buzz” in policy, military, industry and academic circles and have even spawned best-selling books such as P.W. Singer’s Wired for War, as well as innumerable articles in professional journals and magazines, as well as in popular science and literature such as Wired Magazine. But for these airborne autonomous systems to reach their full potential, important C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) considerations must be addressed. Currently, there is far too much discussion of “brawn” and not enough “brains,” that is, an almost exclusive focus on platforms and little discussion or focus on the command and control aspects of these truly magnificent systems. The science of building unmanned air, ground, surface, and underwater vehicles is welladvanced. But with the very real prospect of future flat or declining military budgets, the rapidly rising costs of military manpower and the new DoD and DoN emphasis on total operating costs, the mandate to move beyond the “one-man, one-joystick, one-vehicle” paradigm that has existed during the past decades of airborne autonomous systems development is both clear and compelling. This means getting the C4ISR piece “right.” We maintain that failure to move beyond this “one-man, one-joystick, one-vehicle” status quo will impede or even derail the development of future airborne autonomous systems. We will then present examples of ground-breaking work going on in the DoD laboratory community (such as the Unmanned Vehicle Sentry (UV-Sentry) System and the Multi-Robot Operator Control Unit (MOCU) System) that is paving the way for a completely new paradigm – multiple airborne autonomous systems controlled by one operator – providing their own command and control and self-synchronization as the “way ahead” for future airborne autonomous systems. This proposed solution set will make airborne autonomous systems even greater contributors to the success of Naval Aviation than they are today. Our paper will also build upon and leverage recent work on autonomous systems conducted by the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group. Airborne Autonomous Systems: Challenges and Opportunities