The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and the Threat Systems Management Office operate a swarm of 40 drones to test the rotational units capabilities during the battle of Razish, National Training Center on May 8th, 2019. (U.S. Army Photo by Pv2 James Newsome)
WASHINGTON: The Army is on its way to developing an offensive drone swarming capability after recently awarding its first-ever contract for the effort, according to the general overseeing it.
“What we want is for you to fly multiple systems autonomously at the target,” said Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood, Director of Hypersonics, Directed Energy, Space and Rapid Acquisition, who also oversees the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office. Thurgood described a capability that would include a single operator flying many devices that can act both independently and together.
“And so that technology is still emerging technology,” he told reporters at the McAleese conference today. “It’s one thing to do a coordinated attack that looks like a swarm. It’s another thing to have one operator, multiple devices, some seeking, some looking for targets, some killing targets and interacting together without you pushing a button. That’s what we’re trying to get to.”
Army RCCTO last month awarded the firm BlueHalo an initial $14 million contract to develop a HIVE small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) architecture, the company announced in a press release. The company said it would use artificial intelligence and machine learning as a part of a “system-of-systems framework” for the drone swarm tech.
In an apparent reference to BlueHalo, Thurgood said, “The company we signed it with has a very strong UAS capability today.”
Describing potential scenarios, Thurgood said, “They do it kind of in a coordinated attack way. But if you’re on the defensive, you don’t really know that right? If you got five things coming towards you, you don’t know those five operators over there – You just know five things are coming towards you. So we’re trying to change that calculus a little bit.”
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On the flip side, Thurgood said the Defense Department is on track for the next demonstration of its counter-drone technologies at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., in April. The demo will center around high-power microwave technologies.
Companies will “bring their kit, whatever they believe is a good solution, and we have a grading criteria,” Thurgood said. “We give it to them beforehand. Here’s how we’re going to grade you and we start a live fire. And sometimes they do really good and sometimes that’s a challenge for them. And so at the end of that, we do an evaluation and if one of them does what we want them to do … at the cost we needed, then we open a contract with them. So it’s a way for industry to reach out because sometimes they don’t know how to do that and sometimes we’re not very good at it.”
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Last September, half of the companies chosen to showcase their counter-drone technologies backed out of a demo at Yuma Proving Ground because of COVID-19 restrictions and supply chain issues.
The Army-led Joint Counter-UAS Office plans to hold semi-annual exercises for industry to showcase their tech. The next demo will be held in September, but the JCO hasn’t yet decided on what the focus area will be, Thurgood said.
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