The Mad Scientists at DARPA Plan to Crush Russia and China with 'Swarm' Weapons

[astr0144]

The Mad Scientists at DARPA Plan to Crush Russia and China with 'Swarm' Weapons.

The US keeping up its dominance weaponary over the other two main Nations..




The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Lockheed Martin and Raytheon a contract to develop ways to control swarming drones inside heavily defended airspace called CODE or Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE). Defeating so-called anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) threats—such as zones defended by advanced Russian and Chinese built integrated air defense systems—is a top priority for the United States as the world enters an era of renewed great power competition.

The key technology that underpins CODE is what DARPA calls "collaborative autonomy." Essentially, the DARPA concept envisions a future where autonomous drones "could perform sophisticated tasks both individually and in teams under the supervision of a single human mission commander." The drones would have to share data, decide on how to divvy up tasks, synchronize their actions and communicate with each other and their human commander—all by themselves.


"During Phase 1, we successfully demonstrated, in simulation, the potential value of collaborative autonomy among UASs at the tactical edge, and worked with our performers to draft transition plans for possible future operational systems," said Jean-Charles Ledé, DARPA's program manager for CODE. "Between the two teams, we have selected about 20 autonomous behaviors that would greatly increase the mission capabilities of our legacy UASs and enable them to perform complex missions in denied or contested environments in which communications, navigation, and other critical elements of the targeting chain are compromised. We have also made excellent progress in the human-system interface and open-architecture framework."

The CODE program will use a modular open architecture artificial intelligence software which would allow multiple drones to independently fly to the their objective and then find, identify and kill their targets while adhering to the established rules of engagement. DARPA envisions the CODE-equipped drones to be sophisticated enough to call for backup or take other actions in case of emergencies or if some kind of unanticipated threat appears.

Especially appealing for the Pentagon is the fact that CODE-equipped drones would only need one human to command an entire swarm. The human commander can monitor the entire force using a Windows-like interface in real time. Typically, while drones are called "unmanned aircraft systems"—it's a bit of a misnomer, each drone orbit can require up to 200 people to operate. It's a problem that has pushed the Air Force nearly to the breaking point.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-mad-scientists-darpa-plan-crush-russia-china-swarm-16642