There are many opportunities to use autonomy capability to increase the capacity of the intelligence analysts assigned to the exploitation function. Even with this staffing level, the rapid growth in data volume is making it very difficult to keep up. Maintenance: Using autonomy for on-board equipment health and status monitoring should improve reliability and reduce the maintenance staff required to support operations.Įxploitation: About a third of the staff required to support Air Force UAVs are devoted to processing sensor data and exploiting them to create useful information. This goal can be achieved by delegating decisions such as take-off and landing, waypoint navigation and sensor-enabled situational awareness to the computer. While it will be essential to maintain a "human in the loop" to supervise operations and to make critical decisions such as those related to weapons release, the effective use of autonomy technology will enable a single operator to manage multiple vehicles. Piloting/sensor operation: Currently, it takes multiple operators to manage the flight and sensor operation functions for both the Predator and Global Hawk systems. Using the Air Force staffing requirement for its remotely piloted aircraft combat air patrols (CAP) as an example, possible ways autonomy can reduce manpower include: To note, there is no mention of automating decisions to use lethal force.
First, the report presents three ideas for lowering the personnel required per CAP. There are two findings in the report worth highlighting.
Last week, the Defense Science Board-an advisory panel that advises the Pentagon on science, technology, and special issues-published a July report, The Role of Autonomy in DOD Systems, which addresses some of the new strategies and concepts for greater degrees of autonomy within the U.S. Moreover, through dozens of conversations with Pentagon and Air Force staff and officials who control, command, or develop future concepts for drones, I've learned that there are no plans for fully autonomous drones that conduct lethal strikes (although some believe that in threatening air defense environments, MALE drones should be empowered to autonomously return fire when attacked by air-defenses missiles or jet fighters). This fear, however, should be tempered somewhat by the fact that fewer than 5 percent of military unmanned aircraft are capable of dropping bombs. The idea of autonomous drones is understandably alarming to many, especially in making life or death decisions to drop bombs. The military's strategy to make the Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk systems more efficient and less costly is to replace human beings with greater autonomy in how drones operate. For the Global Hawk spy drone, as many as three hundred personnel are required for a CAP.
This breaks down to roughly 30 percent with the mission control element, or pilots and sensor operators to control from a distant site via satellite communications, coordinators, and maintenance or administrative personnel 30 percent in the launch recovery element, or pilots and sensor operators to control from the launch site via line-of-sight communications, and maintenance or administrative personnel and 40 percent in processing, exploitation, and dissemination, or the video and signals intelligence analysts, and maintenance or administrative personnel. For example, Predator or Reaper strike drones require between 168 and 190 people to maintain one combat air patrol (CAP), or the ability to sustain twenty-four-hour coverage of a specific area. Presently, a constraining factor in how they are used is that they require more people to man unmanned aircraft than most people realize. Unlike manned aircraft, or special operations raids, MALE drones can hover directly over hostile territory for between fourteen and forty hours (depending on their weapons and sensor payloads) without placing pilots or ground troops at risk of injury, capture, or death. Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drones-like the Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk-for spying on potential adversaries and attacking suspected militants has made them the default counterterrorism tools for the Obama administration. MORE FROM THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
0 kommentar(er)
