Air Force special operators are rigging the venerable uncrewed aircraft with an ISR swarm that may take just one person to control.
The venerable Reaper UAV could become a mothership for a single-operator drone swarm, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command said recently.
AFSOC’s Adaptive Airborne Enterprise project aims to develop highly autonomous swarms of drones for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—and perhaps even strike, Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind told an audience at the Global SOF Special Air Warfare Symposium in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
The project also aims to reduce the number of humans needed to control such a swarm down to just one operator.
“A2E is a three-phase initiative to develop airborne human-machine teams commanding a family of uncrewed and optionally crewed” aircraft, Bauernfeind said.
These swarms of Group 1 and 2 drones—essentially, ones weighing up to a few dozen pounds—would launch from MQ-9 Reapers and perhaps other medium-sized uncrewed aircraft, he said.
The overall vision is to use artificial intelligence and advanced human-machine Interfaces to allow operators to control multiple large and small drones simultaneously.
That would help AFSOC troops cover more terrain and hit more targets with a variety of effects, including cyber, electronic warfare, etc.
Source: DefenseOne.com
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