WASHINGTON — In the classic sci-fi book Ender's Game, the title character manages thousands of aircraft with a swipe of his hand.
That's the kind of command-and-control capability the Air Force needs to have for future drone swarms, Col. Brandon "BB" Baker, chief of the Air Force's remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) capabilities division, said during an Oct. 26 speech at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference.
Artificial intelligence and autonomy are advancing to the point where, in the near future, unmanned aircraft will no longer need pilots to move small drones with a stick and rudder, he said. "I need a way to orchestrate swarms, for instance, or a loyal wingman that's independent of our common structures that we have today, our common ground station that we have today."
The Air Force is seeking out technologies that could help transition the service from a common ground station that flies a single aircraft to a command-and-control cell with the ability to direct a swarm of small unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The service is working with commercial industry, particularly gaming companies, and will "create a presentation that's a cross between Ender's Game and Minority Report," Baker said.
"For those that have seen Ender's Game, you understand that there's a single individual that is able to control a massive number of platforms, thousands of platforms at the wave of a hand. I don't think that's too far-fetched for where we're going in the future," he said. "Manpower efficiency is in the future for the United States Air Force. It's not a nice-to-have, it's got to be baked in from the beginning. It's a must-have."
The Air Force’s interest in increasing its command and control capabilities is not limited to its RPA fleet. The service’s new chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, has made improving command and control one of his top three priorities. In September, he announced that Brig. Gen. Chance Saltzman, director of future operations, would lead that effort, which will include an enterprise capability collaboration team.
Baker envisions that a swarm of drones could be controlled by one or two people: a mission commander that orchestrates the swarm and another individual that would manage the health of the swarm by supervising the network, platforms and sensors and correcting problems as needed.
"As cognition increases and the network is more robust and artificial intelligence is delivered into that construct, we can probably get rid of even some of those manpower [requirements]," he said.
The service still has work to do before swarming drones become a regular part of the Air Force RPA inventory. Besides creating more sophisticated command-and-control capabilities, it also needs to develop advanced networks and "cognitive autonomy" technology that would allow unmanned aircraft to learn from their surroundings.
In the future, swarming drones may adopt the ability to sense their environment and make decisions based on the data it is taking in, Baker explained. This autonomy would be limited to areas like ISR and electronic warfare, while airstrikes would still require a human to pull the trigger.
Exactly when the Air Force begins operating swarming drones is unclear.
"I don't think swarming is tomorrow," he said. "It's not tomorrow in the A2/AD [anti-access, area denial] environment, certainly, but we want to look at swarming in terms of what we can do in the permissive to contested space."
When the service begins thinking about follow-on systems for the MQ-9 Reaper, Baker believes it should consider replacing some of the Reaper fleet with small UAS that can conduct surveillance missions at a low cost, leaving the more difficult missions for the more advanced MQ-9 follow-on platform.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the Air Force was working on the "Ender's Game" effort with Defense Innovation Unit Experimental. DIUx is not involved with the program, according to an DIUx official.
Valerie Insinna is Defense News' air warfare reporter. She previously worked the Navy/congressional beats for Defense Daily, which followed almost three years as a staff writer for National Defense Magazine. Prior to that, she worked as an editorial assistant for the Tokyo Shimbun’s Washington bureau.
