A New Generation of Military Unmanned Vehicles
09/23/2021
By George Galdorisi
At the highest levels of U.S. intelligence and military policy documents, there is universal agreement that the United States remains at war, even as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan conclude. As the cost of capital platforms—especially ships and aircraft—continues to rise, the Department of Defense is increasingly looking to procure comparatively inexpensive unmanned systems as important assets to supplement the Joint Force.
As the United States builds a force structure to contend with high-end threats, it has introduced a “Third Offset Strategy” to find ways to gain an asymmetric advantage over potential adversaries. One of the key technologies embraced by this strategy is that of unmanned systems. Both the DoD and the DoN envision a future force with large numbers of unmanned systems complementing manned platforms.
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have spurred the development of unmanned air vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles to meet urgent operational needs. As a result, the lion’s share of previous years DoD funding for unmanned systems has gone to air and ground systems, while funding for unmanned maritime systems (unmanned surface vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles) has lagged.
https://sldinfo.com/2021/09/a-new-generation-of-military-unmanned-vehicles/
