Truly Autonomous Systems for Optimized Sustainment and Readiness

The rapid advancement of autonomous systems is a challenge that the DoD must face head-on as it has eroded the US military’s traditional “offset advantages” by revealing new capability gaps such as protecting against drone swarms while at the same time creating new offset advantages such as remotely piloted aerial and ground systems that can keep soldiers out of harm’s way. Yet, as demand for these systems has grown, their limitations have become apparent. Many systems deemed “autonomous” are really not because they require teams of operators to launch, navigate, and recover the asset to recharge its batteries before storing them safely when not in use. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) have historically been two distinct and disparate systems requiring unique operations teams to execute and complete missions. This is inefficient because it does not take advantage of the commonalities of autonomous systems where synergies could be realized to reduce operations and sustainment cost, allow operators to focus on higher-priority tasks, and improve the mission effectiveness of these systems by working as a coordinated group of unmanned assets.