New AI-powered strike drone shows how quickly battlefield autonomy is evolving
First-person drone piloting is yesterday’s news. Drones are becoming smarter as the electronic environment around them makes operator communication more difficult.
Patrick Tucker | October 10, 2024 12:01 AM ET
Artificial Intelligence Drones AI & Autonomy Industry
Small drones have been changing modern warfare at least since 2015, when Russia and Ukraine began to use them to great effect for rapid targeting. The latest addition is a strike-and-intelligence quadcopter that its builder hopes will do more things with a lot less operator attention.
The point of the Bolt-M, revealed by Anduril today, is to make fewer demands on the operator and offer more information than, easy-to-produce first-person-view strike drones, the type that Ukraine is producing by the hundreds of thousands. The U.S. Army, too, is looking at FPV drones for infantry platoons. But they require special training to use and come with a lot of operational limits. The Bolt-M, according to an Anduril statement, works “without requiring specialized operators.” The company has a contract from the U.S. Marine Corps’ Organic Precision Fires – Light, or OPF-L, program to develop a strike variant.
Bolt-M’s key selling feature is its autonomy-and-AI software powered by Anduril’s Lattice platform. The operator can draw a bounding box on a battlefield display, set a few specifications, and send the drone on its way.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/10/new-ai-powered-strike-drone-shows-how-quickly-battlefield-autonomy-evolving/400179/?oref=d1-featured-river-secondary
