‘Collaborative, Portable Autonomy’ Is the Future of AI for Special Operations
Creating autonomous teams in contested environments will be a challenge of technology—and policy.
PATRICK TUCKER | MAY 25, 2022 04:05 PM ET
For a future fight against a near-peer military, U.S. special operators say they need smart, networked sensors and drones that can work together in contested environments with little human supervision. But as “collaborative autonomy” comes within technical reach, just how independent should these things get?
“We are going to use a lot of sensors, whether they're unmanned aerial systems, unmanned ground systems, unmanned maritime systems, unintended sensors, all working together, and what our goal is to have those working together collaboratively and autonomously,” SOCOM’s top acquisition executive, James Smith, said at NDIA’s SOFIC conference in Tampa, Florida, last week.
SOCOM has “a specific line of effort where we're focused on what we're calling ‘collaborative autonomy,” said David Breede, who runs a program executive office at SOCOM. That “line of effort” is concerned with such questions as “How do I get an unattended ground sensor talking to an unmanned aircraft and having an unmanned aircraft react based on the information that it got from that unmanned ground sensor? Not only collaboration across technologies and capabilities, but collaboration across program offices, right?” Breede said. In other words, special operations forces need sensors on the ground, in the air, and in space constantly working together to autonomously detect changes and sound the alert.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2022/05/collaborative-portable-autonomy-future-ai-special-operations/367408/
