"The Pentagon Wants Future Drones To Hunt Like Wolf Packs" Topic

"The U.S. military is preparing for a series of meetings that could shake up how the Pentagon flies its fleet of drone aircraft and move them toward hunting together in packs.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will host the gatherings in March for its Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program, it said this week. The major emphasis: Figuring out a way to move free of having a pilot operate only one drone with assistance from a sensor operator and a team of intelligence analysts through satellite links.

"Just as wolves hunt in coordinated packs with minimal communication, multiple CODE-enabled unmanned aircraft would collaborate to find, track, identify and engage targets, all under the command of a single human mission supervisor," said Jean-Charles Ledé, the program's manager, in a statement…"

Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

I seem to remember a quote from a book that stated that men should fight with the weapons of men, and not with the weapons of fiends.

I'm surprised it took this long for them to figure it out. I always thought that sending lone drones wasn't the way to go.

Dan

All fine right until you fight someone with a decent AA system…

how long do you think these gadgets would live around Donetsk?

If they're able to maneuver, and hunt in packs, independently, while staying in reasonable proximity to one another, I suspect the AA systems will be wiped out in short order.

They can already control drones in tight formations, to keep them from running into one another, as if they were trained ballet dancers, so, giving them a bit of ability to maneuver freely within loose-knit, maneuverable "boxes" to prevent collisions shouldn't be that much more difficult.

With datalinks, and other tech, they'll be able to attack from all directions, overwhelming their opponents easily.

'I seem to remember a quote from a book that stated that men should fight with the weapons of men, and not with the weapons of fiends.'

Damn that gunpowder stuff.

I have just been talking to a friend in the UK who is hoping to develop a system like this, using multiple autonomous drones reporting data back to an operator, for search and rescue purposes.

Don't forget pizza delivery tactics…it's important.

Funny, I was under the impression that this system had already been live-fire tested about 10 years ago.

Flight of 4 drone were told "attack target at [position]", the drones chose which drone was going to make the attack based on their positions, defenses and approaches around the target, and weapons loads on the drones…

You're probably right Lion, since news releases of secret programs are rather slow.

From what I've seen of little micro-drones, flying in formation, and in complex maneuvers (like figure eights, where they cross paths with one another, without colliding), I suspect they are a lot further along than they let on.

Of course, adding in weaponry, and ensuring proper safeguards to go along with that, is a bit more complicated, but probably not much that today's little microprocessors can't handle, with at least some guidance.

Lion, is this it?

link

Dan

Mako – drones aren't that fast are they?

So how will they respond to a proper, dispersed AA system?

Which will also, let's remember, have a lot of technology associated with it.

Hell, all you need to do is work out someway of interrupting the data feed, surely?

No, I'm remembering something that was open literature 10 years ago.

Probably a LockMart project.

"… So how will they respond to a proper, dispersed AA system?…'

Like a tell-tale that says, "Bomb here fer sure?""

Much easier said the done.

As is the data feed idea – that is not a new idea for counter-measures (and counter-counter-measures.) It is a big geek game where winning is measured in lives instead of points.

"… I'm surprised it took this long for them to figure it out. I always thought that sending lone drones wasn't the way to go…"

1) War on the cheap?

2) Perhaps you don't reveal you aces when a pair of deuces wins the pot? (makes the kill)

Iraq, and Saddam Hussein, reportedly had one of the best, modern, air defense systems money could buy.

It proved to be pretty abysmal, since we came up with strategies to defeat it, with manned aircraft.

We knocked out their command and control networks, and radar stations, and destroyed pretty much any local SAM, or AAA system that bothered to turn on their radar.

To do that, you can mix in aircraft, or drones with regular ordnance (bombs and missiles), and those nice, neat little HOJ (home on jamming) weapons. Turn on your SAM or AAA radar and you're dead. Leave your radar off and you're dead.

Not much to choose from in that scenario.

I suspect drones can do that as well, with far less risk, especially if they use a cluster-attack type coordination. Things will happen so quickly, from so many directions, that it'll be over before the men on the ground can react.

I'm not suggesting that today's, slow, long-endurance, prop-driven drones will be able to do that, but the X-47 style jet-propelled aircraft certainly should be able to.

They can takeoff and land, autonomously on aircraft carriers, so, they should be able to maneuver deftly through enemy airspace to take out targets easily too.

All that stands in the way is the funding to pay for them, I suspect.

Just look at what synchronized quadcopters can do:

TMP link

Dan