Drone swarms

[Tiny Toy]

Some progress towards very large scale drone swarms: researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California have completed a demo where 50 modified Zephyr 2 UAVs were controlled by one pilot, a new world record. The UAVs use a mesh wireless network to coordinate their relative positions, some details on the navigational systems here.

[ArmChairCivvy]

Now, shotguns have to be made much bigger!

"Our flight configuration consisted of two “stacks” of 25 planes, with each “slot” in the stack separated 15 meters apart vertically. The two stacks were separated laterally so that the orbits and racetracks of one stack would not overlap with the other. Though we launched in altitude order, we designed the waypoint sequence with special “ingress” and “egress” points where planes could ascend and descend without entering the airspace of other planes. This altitude deconfliction meant that we could execute cooperative behaviors within a single stack in two dimensions, without having to worry about implementing collision avoidance due to separation in the third dimension. "

[bobp]

Imagine if the drones were all armed any potential target would need a decent defence to bring them down.

[ArmChairCivvy]

Drones, by definition, can be kamikaze so even a modest warhead (81mm mortar round, w/o the wings and other bits) is quite lethal against everything else than MBTs/ IFVs.
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Guided_ ... V_999.html

[ArmChairCivvy]

My previous recommendation, that every AFV commander needs to be a country squire who brings his personal shotgun that will then be attached outside the Commander's hatch, at Army's cost, does not seem to apply anymore

[SKB]

You're all forgeting drone batteries run flat after about 20 minutes... they then fall out of the sky

[bobp]

True the smaller drones don't stay up long and also require the operator to be close, so shoot the operator job done.

[Tiny Toy]

True the smaller drones don't stay up long and also require the operator to be close, so shoot the operator job done.

The current trials are with RP, but the electronics for autonomous vehicles is not orders of magnitude larger/heavier/more power-hungry, so expect that to be a possibility not a full generation away. Once that happens, you'd have to intercept the operator before launch.

[bobp]

Agreed autonomous drones are a different kettle of fish, as they don't have an operator however if they were swarming then there must be a degree of communication between them to prevent collision. So there could be a way to disrupt that via electronic counter measures.

[ArmChairCivvy]

Without an operator only GPS targeting would be light enough not to compromise the affordability aspect of a drone swarm in other ways
=> only applicable to stationary targets, so will the drone operator side have the means, beyond the line-of -sight

Surely, you will tell me it is another drone, higher up? Then the priority is to shoot those down (unlikely to be a swarm, even though could be multiples)

[Tiny Toy]

Not necessarily. By coordinating data from multiple sensor modalities (e.g. IR) you can reduce the probability of error to a negligible amount. There are literally thousands of different specific architectures for doing pattern recognition, the neural network based ones tend to be pretty small (after training, you don't include the training code) and there are significant parts that can be realised in VLSI rather than software, reducing processor load and power demand.

Also you seem to be assuming that we're always talking about aerial vehicles

[ArmChairCivvy]

Well, the USN has put them all under one (purchasing) command: air, sub & surface unmanned... makes sense.

Yes neural networks , and intelligent agents embedded in more structured software code, can be very useful and lighweight (compact part of the code, because they have a v specialist function)
- cfr. Apache's mwb radar doing first target detection, and then classification. I think the missiles can still do it, once on their way, so they prioritise MBTs and also try to avoid hitting dummies (the famous B-52 strike that caught a Serbian armoured bde in the open... all of it turned out to be masterly mastirovka (dummies)

[ArmChairCivvy]

Make the distances in this vid 25 m and the drones not 1 kg but, say, a 100 kg
http://gooby.naurunappula.com/org/d1/88 ... 287151.mp4