Mr. Roboto's Orbiting Dojo

Mr. Roboto's Orbiting Dojo
Most of Defense Tech's new crop of bloggers are loaded with security or technical experience: former platoon leaders, missile defense engineers, homeland defense analysts, insider magazine editors. Steven Snell, on the hand hand, is just your average, garden-variety maniac. But I'm loving this Brit's snarky wit. And I'm hoping this is the first of many posts for the site. Not since the Beastie Boys Intergalactic video have I been this excited about robots fighting. Defense Tech has detailed the Pentagon's numerous efforts to deal with a possible rumble in space before. As you may have guessed, they've been trying to cram everything from exotic micro-satellites to combat-ready marines into orbit. But even the blue-sky research brains at DARPA are behind the times when it comes to the coolest thing since naked Counter-Strike. New Scientist's tech blog reports: A mini-satellite carrying several small humanoid robots will (hopefully) be launched into space in October 2010. Once safely in orbit, the satellite will release its robotic passengers, who will proceed to fight each other in the vacuum of space. That's what organizers of ROBO-ONE, the annual Japanese robot fighting tournament hope to see in just a few years. The official ROBO-ONE site (translated) describes the competition as a "grapple athletic meet by the two-legged robot". In short, its not your usual arena match with competitive dad wrenching the controls from his teary-eyed child mid-battle. Is any of this actually possible? And will it be before my robot learns his own moves ? Frankly, maybe. Let's face it, robots fighting in space is pretty Rumsfeld . And if you combine the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's recent achievements and the popularity of home made robot kits in Tokyo, we could be watching a very good scrap.

Who Killed the Killer Drone - and Why?

Who Killed the Killer Drone - and Why?
In November, with great fanfare, the U.S. Navy and Air Force took over Darpa's biggest, most promising killer drone program, Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems, or J-UCAS. The idea was to develop a single family of weaponized drones operating from land and from carrier decks, backing up and ultimately replacing manned fighter jets. According to Dr. Michael S. Francis, J-UCAS Director, the program promised "a transformational shift in the operational application of airpower in the 21st century combat environment." Two months later, the 2007 defense budget split the program into separate Air Force and Navy programs. J-UCAS was dead. "We start joint, but we never carry it across the goal line for some reason," Rear Adm. Timothy Heely told Aviation Week after the decision was announced. I'm on the UAV beat for National Defense. In recent weeks I've spoken to many Air Force and Navy UAV program managers and operators -- and none have given me a straight answer on why J-UCAS went extinct. Janes has an idea: The Air Force and Navy drifted further and further apart on what their unmanned combat planes (the X-45 and X-47, respectively) should do. The gap got so wide, the one-size-fits-all approach stopped making sense. [The] USAF decided that its present conception no longer met that service's long-term needs. USAF ambitions are for a long-range strike aircraft embracing stealth, endurance, ISR [or Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] and attack capabilities, and, while the projected [J-UCAS vehicle] clearly offered the first and last of these, there was seen to be a mismatch between the aircraft's range/endurance and its modest 4,500 lb weapon load. Janes is on to something. A few weeks ago, somebody leaked Air Force plans to fold its half of the former J-UCAS program into its Long-Range Strike study, which is looking at ways to replace B-1s, B-2s and B-52s. Air Force Magazine explains: [Long-Range Strike] would replace the Joint Unmanned Combat Aircraft System--slated for termination--with a larger, faster unmanned bomber. The aircraft would have to cover very long distances and be able to loiter in the target area with a good-sized bomb load. Note that "good-sized bomb load" part. Last week, Navy Capt. Steven Wright told me that the Navy wanted J-UCAS not for strategic bombing, but initially for penetrating ISR and, later, for close air support -- both missions that require smallish, fast, medium-range aircraft like today's manned F/A-18s. Air Force again: The qualities the Air Force wanted in a next-generation strike aircraft were trending toward a larger and larger platform, equipped with a sizable bomb load and able to loiter in enemy territory for long periods, with periodic refuelings from a tanker. The size of the objective Air Force version of J-UCAS had been upped several times, and likely would have been enlarged again. And that meant parting ways with the Navy and its smaller, tactical armed drone. Defense Tech sources have another theory: that the Air Force killed its combat drone, Boeing's X-45, to keep it from competing with its manned fighter jet of the future, the Joint Strike Fighter. The reason that was given (strictly off the record) [by Air Force officials] was that we were expected to be simply too good in key areas and that we would have caused massive disruption to the efforts to "keep… JSF sold." If we had flown and things like survivability had been evenly assessed on a small scale and Congress had gotten ahold of the data, JSF would have been in serious trouble. And what was this shocking data? Say the mission is to take out a SAM [surface-to-air missile] site using a Small Diameter Bomb. That SDB has the same standoff launch max range regardless of the platform releasing it. Given that the state of the art for Low Observable (LO) design and material is much the same between the qualified aircraft designers in the U.S., how LO your system is largely a function of shape and cross section. Compare the shapes and profiles of the F-35 [JSF] and the X-45C. Who do you think is going to have the higher probably of being killed? Of course that "kill" in the JSF case means body bags and in the case of a X-45C, just the lost aircraft and far fewer of them. The Navy's Capt. Wright says that both the X-45 and X-47 J-UCAS demonstrators will continue development under the Navy UCAS program. Carrier trials are expected in 2011. Meanwhile, the Air Force will start from scratch or piggyback its UCAS/Long-Range Strike vehicle on an existing classified platform, perhaps the one mentioned by David Hambling here a few weeks back. For more, check out Noah's January post on how the killer drone program got bumped off. UPDATE 5:40 PM: Not everyone in the Defense Department is sold on the idea of turning J-UCAS into a strike plane -- or on the idea of the new aircraft, period. As Inside Defense notes, "Internal squabbling between two camps within the Pentagon is delaying the formal start of a study aimed at helping the Air Force shape its effort to field a new long-range bomber." May 8, 2006

Senators Love Robots

Senators Love Robots
The Senate Armed Service Committee loves drones. They're so smitten, in fact, that they're trying to force the Pentagon to prove why any new weapons system should be manned at all. Check out this snippet from the Committee's version of the 2007 Defense budget: The Secretary of Defense shall... develop a policy applicable throughout the Department of Defense on research, development, test, and evaluation, procurement, and operation of unmanned systems [which] shall include the... preference for joint unmanned systems in acquisition programs for new systems, including a requirement under any such program for the development of a manned system for a certification that an unmanned system is incapable of meeting program requirements. (emphasis mine). Now, this unmanned romance began a long time ago. Six years back, SASC Chairman John Warner called for one third of all military vehicles -- both in the air and on the ground -- to be robotic by 2015. Nobody expected it to happen, literally. But, as National Journal noted at the time, "Warner has already achieved his first objective. He has fired his shotgun into the heavens and gotten everybody's attention."

Enter the BomBot

Enter the BomBot
One of the nice things about being editor of Defense Tech is that people occasionally show up at your apartment with military robots. Take last Friday, for example, when Bradley DeRoos and Alex Gizis dragged one of their brand-new BomBots into my dining room. 600 of the machines have already shipped to troops in Iraq. Another 1800 are being built. And if the BomBots look more like toy trucks than military-grade hardware well, there's a reason for that. That's exactly what the things are. Gizis spent several years designing bad-ass digital controllers for RC cars -- the fastest of their kind, working in the 2.4 GHz band. They transmit drivers' orders in a hurry. And the controllers send all kinds of telemetry data back, like engine temperature and battery strength. It all worked so well, Gizis figured the military might be interested in some cheap, remote-controlled bomb-spotters. The current crop of ordinance-disposal robots cost $100,000 or more, he knew. Even the smaller, dumbed-down Marcbots, used on route patrol, can run about $15,000 each. Maybe, Gizis thought, he could come up with something cheaper. So Gizis started playing around with Traxxas E-maxx RC trucks, to see if they could do the job. At the same time, some Air Force Research Laboratory engineers (working with the Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division) were also fiddling with E-maxxes, to handle the same duties. But they couldn't get the radios to work. Eventually, everyone was brought together by the National Center for Defense Robotics. And within a couple of months, the first BomBots were being sent off to Iraq for testing. At 15 pounds, 22 inches high, the miniature truck isn't exactly bomb-proof. It doesn't have to be be. At $5,000 a pop -- dirt cheap, by military standards -- the bot becomes a sound investment even if it's blown sky-high after the fourth or fifth use. You could even imagine the BomBots keeping up with Humvees on route patrol, since the machines have a top speed of 35 miles per hour and a range of 1500 feet. Now, Gizis claims the trucks are also going to be used for bomb disposal, as well as bomb spotting. And that's a little harder to imagine -- despite the nifty, six-inch loading bay, big enough to dump off a C4 brick. EOD techs tend to be pretty particular about where they place their bang. The BomBots don't have the dexterity to pull off much precision. But for a souped-up RC truck, the machines are pretty cool. Who's that at the door now, I wonder?

Robo-Doggie's New Pal

Robo-Doggie's New Pal
Defense Tech loves robots, of course. But our favorite of 'bot of all is the four-legged mechanical pack mules known as the BigDog. We've been barking about the robo-fido, ever since it was a sketch on a drawing pad. So imagine the joy at Defense Tech HQ when we learned that there was a new puppy in the mechanical litter -- a second BigDog. The two bots were running around Marine Corps Air Station New River recently -- along with an exoskeleton-clad marine and a new trauma pod. The roboteers at Boston Dynamics have been training the 165-pound, two-and-a-half foot-tall BigDogs to carry gear for soldiers and marines over uneven terrain. So far, they've gotten the pooches to "run at a rate of 3.3 mph, climb a 35 degree slope and carry a 120 pound load," according to Marine Corps News. The bots have proved sturdy enough to take a big kick, and keep on walkin'. Maybe it's this sturdiness that's inspiring some to think about the BigDogs are most than just mechanical beasts of burden. This article -- and take this a can of salty Alpo -- says Darpa "is considering plans such as weaponizing the BigDog robots." Down, boy. Down.

Ja! German Bot Spies By Satellite

Ja! German Bot Spies By Satellite
Check it out, frauleins: The German Federal Armed Forces are experimenting with a prototype, satellite-controlled robot that can go on recon missions, while its human operator hangs out in Berlin. The satellite link, which can transmit video at 2 Mbps and receive control channel data up to 128 Kbps, makes the RoboScout something of an oddball in the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) world. As Peter J. Brown notes in the latest issue of Via Satellite magazine, satellite signals are easy to lose in the urban canyons and forested areas where UGVs are likely to operate. Plus, the uneven ground can cause the 'bots to tilt by 20 or 30 degrees in one direction or another -- which means locking onto a satellite gets even trickier. Most robot-makers go for radio-control, instead. RoboScout was one of more than 20 UGVs shown off during May's European Land-Robot Trial -- sort of a Continental answer to Darpa's Grand Challenge, but without the "'winners' and 'losers,'" the organizers note. The machines were put through a series of obstacles during their time under the Bundeswehr's care in Hammelburg -- "stairs, narrow passes, and collapsed ceilings... as well as ditches, fences and fire." And from the looks of the couple-thousand pictures taken at the event, RoboScout (and many of the other UGVs) handled themselves rather well. Achtung! June 30, 2006

Iran Missile Drone Bomb Hits Israelis, U.A.V. Pioneers

Iran Missile Drone Bomb Hits Israelis, U.A.V. Pioneers
UPDATE 07/15/06 11:19 AM: There's an old saw about war: that first reports are always wrong. Looks like that the case about this unmanned plane attack. "A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon," Fox News reports. The attack on Friday night had raised widespread concern in the Israeli military because initial information indicated that the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces. But the army's investigation into the attack, which left four Israeli sailors missing, showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan. "We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press. Another Hezbollah missile also hit and sank a nearby civilian merchant ship at around the same time, Nehushtan said. He said that ship apparently was Egyptian, but he had no other information about it. UPDATE 07/15/06 12:29 PM: Bill Roggio is now throwing cold water on the missile theory. "The use of a ground based anti-ship missile system in these attacks, while certainly a possibility, is unlikely as the characteristics of this system would certainly have been detected by the Israeli Defense Forces," he writes. "A UAV launched missile system, on the other hand, would be a more stealthy system. The UAVs are difficult to detect as they can fly in below radar, [and] can be flown by remote visual methods." Stay tuned. "An unmanned Hezbollah aircraft rigged with explosives slammed into an Israeli warship late Friday, causing heavy damage to the vessel," the AP reports. It's the first time the terrorist group -- any terrorist group -- has used a drone in combat, as far as I know. Hezbollah has flown simple "Misrad-1" unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, twice before, in November 2004 and April 2005. But those were reconnaissance flights, last just a couple of minutes each. And the drones were spotted fairly quickly, both times. But, as Defense Tech noted in the Spring, the UAV had the potential to be much, much worse -- "a suicide bomber on steroids, basically." That's what seems to have happened around 8:30pm Friday night to a Saar 5 navy gunship, ten miles off of the Lebanese coast, according to Ynetnews. It was reported that the stern of an Israeli navy war ship suffered a direct hit in an attack by Hizbullah, which damaged the helicopter landing pad area. The hit caused a conflagration, which was extinguished. No one was hurt in the fire. Shortly afterwards, crewmembers assessed the damage to the ship and discovered the hit was more severe than originally thought, and had caused damage to the ship’s internal operating systems... Four crewmembers are reported to be missing. There's more than bit of irony in Israel being hit with drone attacks. For years, the Israeli military was the world's leader in unmanned aviation. During the first Gulf War, Iraqi troops surrendered to Israel-made, American-run Pioneer UAVs. U.S. Army drone mechanics had to learn Hebrew, to repair their Israeli drones. But in recent years, the rest of the world has caught up. "Some 32 nations are developing or manufacturing more than 250 models" of UAVs, according to the Defense Department. In response, Pentagon extreme science arm Darpa has launched a $5 million per year effort to build a drone-killing UAV. But the results of that effort are still years away. For now, more conventional methods will have to be used to guard against terrorists' robotic air force.

High-Flying, Secret Drone Unveiled

High-Flying, Secret Drone Unveiled
Lockheed Martin has pulled the lid off of a secret, stealthy, high-flying drone. Built and flown by its famous "Skunk Works" division, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) could serve as a model for a new generation of robotic aircraft that hits targets halfway around the world. With a 90-foot wingspan and a tailless design, the "Polecat" UAV looks like a smaller version of the B-2 stealth bomber. And like the B-2, the drone has been built to be stealthy and sneaky. But the twin-engine Polecat is "90 percent composite materials, rather than metal," the L.A. Daily News notes. "The vehicle is also made from less than 200 parts," adds Aviation Week. "Adhesives are used rather than rivets, decreasing the amount of labor needed to construct it -- that approach also contributed to a lower radar cross section inherent in the design." The Polecat has taken two subsonic flights, around 15,000 ft. But, eventually, the idea is to fly it 60,000 and higher -- and break the sound barrier. Up there, contrails don't form, Jane's observes, so the plane can stay hidden even better. Plus, Lockheed wants to see how its composites hold up at high altitudes. Skunk Works is also trying to rig Polecat up with "a fully autonomous flight control and mission-handling system that will allow future UAVs to conduct their missions, from take-off to landing, without the intervention of human operators," Jane's adds. Already hard at work on a number of shape-shifting planes, Lockheed is working on ways for the Polecat and future UAVs to alter their structure -- and change their roles mid-mission, Jane's continues. An "extended-wing long-loitering [recon] planform" could suddenly change into "a swept-wing attack configuration." The addition of a tail, for example, that could morph from a horizontal into a vertical configuration - to allow a laminar-flow wing to fly and manoeuvre without undue risk in the thin air above 60,000 ft. A morphing tail might also be a desirable feature for a carrier-borne UAV. The company built the plane with $27 million of its own money over an 18-month period. But with the Air Force already pouring money in to high-altitude drone development -- and looking to put a new, multi-billion dollar fleet of long-range bombers in the air by 2018, that could be money extremely well spent. UPDATE 2:49 PM: Lockheed is doing more than building giant drones. The company is making itty-bitty, teeny-weeny UAVs, too. Darpa just gave Lockheed a $1.7 million, 10-month contract to build a drone "similar in size and shape to a maple tree seed." A chemical rocket enclosed in its one-bladed wing will power a sensor payload module more than 1,100 yards. Delivered from a hover and weighing up to 0.07 ounces, the module will be interchangeable based on mission requirements. Besides controlling lift and pitch, the wing will also house telemetry, communications, navigation, imaging sensors, and battery power. The NAV [nano air vehicle] will be about 1.5 inches long and have a maximum takeoff weight of about 0.35 ounces. In typical operation, a warfighter will launch the NAV and fly it toward the target by viewing its flight path through a camera embedded in the wing. Like a maple tree seed, the one-bladed device will rotate in flight, but its camera will provide a stable forward view and transmit images back to a small, hand-held display. As the system matures, a simple autopilot aboard the NAV will provide limited autonomous operations. Once the NAV delivers its payload, it will return to the warfighter for collection and refurbishment. UPDATE 07/24/06 4:06 PM: It turns out this secret UAV wasn't built, -- it was printed, New Scientist notes. In rapid prototyping, a three-dimensional design for a part - a wing strut, say - is fed from a computer-aided design (CAD) system to a microwave-oven-sized chamber dubbed a 3D printer. Inside the chamber, a computer steers two finely focussed, powerful laser beams at a polymer or metal powder, sintering it and fusing it layer by layer to form complex, solid 3D shapes. The technique is widely used in industry to make prototype parts - to see if, for instance, they are the right shape and thickness for the job in hand. Now the strength of parts printed this way has improved so much that they can be used as working components. About 90 per cent of Polecat is made of composite materials with much of that material made by rapid prototyping.

Israeli Drone Attacks Own Troops

Israeli Drone Attacks Own Troops
The Israeli Air Force "revealed on Tuesday that it had prevented a severe disaster" when it stopped an armed drone that was "shooting at Israeli troops." "A senior Air Force officer said that the UAV opened fire on ground troops operating in Bint Jbeil after receiving the coordinates from the Golani Brigade," according to the Jerusalem Post. "The fire was stopped when the IAF realized the mistake. No one was wounded in the incident." This is the first time I've heard of a UAV attacking friendly forces. There's no word on what kind of drone was being used. But I've seen at least one Israeli-designed unmanned plane -- the Hunter -- rigged up with high explosive Viper Strike anti-tank rounds. July 25, 2006

Who Killed the Killer Drone? (Redux)

Who Killed the Killer Drone? (Redux)
Lockheed Martin's recent unveiling of its Polecat UAV might be related to the nascent Air Force program to field a new bomber by 2018. But then, it might not. Some industry insiders believe the Air Force is bent on keeping pilots in bomber cockpits, no matter what. After years of steady growth in funding, development and operational use, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have begun to rival — and, in some cases, exceed — the capability of manned aircraft. The rapid maturing of military UAVs into armed unmanned combat aerial vehicles was seen in one of the most promising armed drone programs, the joint unmanned air combat system, or J-UCAS. J-UCAS began its life at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1998. Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman built jet-powered demonstrators: the X-45C and the X-47B, respectively. The X-45 was equipped for in-flight refueling and optimized for Air Force missions that demanded a high degree of stealth. The X-47 was less stealthy, but longer-ranged and designed to operate from Navy aircraft carrier decks. After seven years of successful design and testing, in November 2005, the Defense Department transferred J-UCAS to a joint Air Force and Navy office and scheduled a fly-off between the demonstrators. But then, in February 2006, the Pentagon ordered the Navy to take over J-UCAS. Air Force killer drone funding was redirected to a new, vaguely defined, "next-generation long-range strike" development program that, according to observers, is likely to include a mix of unmanned and manned bomber aircraft. Just months after its graduation from fringe research status to major procurement program, J-UCAS had been downgraded to Navy UCAS, or N-UCAS. The X-47 was largely unaffected, but the X-45 had lost its sponsor and, it seemed at first, any hope of ever reaching production. One Boeing employee who worked on the X-45 program said the Air Force’s about-face was a long time coming. He asked to not be quoted by name because his views do not reflect the company’s official stance. "We knew even from early 1999 and the original X-45A UCAV contract that we were fighting a political, cultural and budget prejudice that could kill us," said the employee. Many of the Boeing workers from the X-45 program, he said, were angered by the abrupt cancellation of J-UCAS just when they were nearly "on the cusp of making history in the aviation world." He speculated that the Air Force’s decision to withdraw from the program was partly financial — mostly to ensure that the J-UCAS would not drain any procurement funds from high-profile manned aviation programs such as the F-22 and the F-35 fighter jets. Another possible explanation for the Air Force backing away from J-UCAS, the Boeing employee said, is that the X-45 was running headlong against the Air Force’s pilot culture that prefers dropping bombs from cockpits, rather than from ground control centers. Read more in my feature on the late J-UCAS in this month's National Defense Magazine. The piece is co-written with National Defense editor Sandra Erwin.

Inside Global Hawk

Inside Global Hawk
The 18th Reconnaissance Squadron -- newest operators of the spiffy Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk drone -- offered me total access during a visit last week. I was impressed with the bird before my visit; I left even more so. Nearly a decade after its inception, the Air Force is finally migrating the Global Hawk drone from demonstration to production; the 18th standing up at Beale Air Force Base in northern California in May is just one aspect of this transition. Co-located 12th RS flies operational missions while the 18th trains pilots, sensor operators and maintainers. Now the Reserve 13th RS and the California Air National Guard have begun contributing crews to the active-duty squadrons. All this represents the "regularization" of Global Hawk ops. Meanwhile, Global Hawk production is ramping up at Northrop Grumman's Palmdale, California, plant, with around 17 aircraft worth $70 mil apiece under assembly for the Air Force. These are in addition to the seven (cheaper) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration aircraft delivered from 1998, three of which were lost in accidents. The Navy has taken delivery of two RQ-4As to explore its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance concept. One A model flown by the 12th RS is deployed to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A maintenance trainer A model is permanently parked in the 18th RS hangar on the same ramp space occupied by the 9th RW's Lockheed Martin U-2S Dragon Ladies. Finally, the first RQ-4Bs with longer wings and more payload capability begin rolling off the production line in late August. The Air Force plans to field more than 50 Global Hawks by 2015. The seemingly modest size of the projected RQ-4 fleet belies its enormous potential. The aircraft can orbit at up to 65,000 feet for as many as 30 hours while simultaneously carrying an Electro-Optical camera, an Infra-Red camera and a Synthetic Aperture Radar with Moving Target Indicator. Sensor data is relayed via satellite to a ground station (see pic at left) for processing and dissemination, giving theater commanders a multi-spectral bird's-eye view of the battlefield. The aircraft's endurance means it can do the work of many older (manned) aircraft such as the U-2, according to 18th RS commander Colonel Christopher Jella. Due to the limited endurances of the human body and traditional life-support systems, a U-2 force would need at least three aircraft and as many as 10 pilots to maintain a 24-hour orbit -- and it would do so at greater cost while risking those pilots' lives. Two Global Hawks could provide indefinite constant surveillance of a battlefield while risking no lives. While there are no cost savings in personnel (the Global Hawk community maintains a high pilot-to-aircraft ration in order to limit its crews to four-hour shifts), by cutting back on take-offs and landings (where most wear and tear occurs) Global Hawk operations reduce maintenance costs by over a given period versus manned aircraft. A rough calculus indicates that 50 Global Hawks might do the work of more than 100 U-2s. Considering that today's U-2 force numbers slightly more than 30 aircraft, this means a tremendous leap in the U.S. Air Force's surveillance capability. With the U.S. Navy, Australia, Germany and the U.K., among others, considering RQ-4 purchases, one imagines a robust future surveillance constellation for democratic nations. During my visit, I got to poke around the containerized Mission Control Element, where pilots and sensor operators crew (via Ku-band satellite datalink; see pic at right) aircraft that might be flying on the other side of the globe. I also checked out the similar Launch and Recovery Element, which takes off and lands the bird from its deployed location using a line-of-sight datalink. Plus there was a visit to the 18th RS hangar, where maintainers toiled on the squadron's RQ-4A. To call this remote-controlled plane BIG is an understatement. There has been a lot of Congressional waffling on the Air Force's recent request to retire the U-2 in favor of the Global Hawk. I was skeptical of the proposal myself until my visit. The U-2 is an impressive aircraft in its own right, but with Global Hawks rolling off the production line and proving themselves overseas, the old Dragon Lady's days are numbered. Check out some sweet pics at my Flickr!

Killer Swarms: The New Generation

Killer Swarms: The New Generation
I have an article in this month’s BBC Focus magazine –- “the world's best science and technology monthly” -- about swarming robots. Previously I've looked at the potential for the deployment of large numbers of battlefield UAVs, but this goes into some detail about what flocking and swarming behavior actually mean and how they are being applied to robotics. Nature is way ahead of us here. A flock of a thousand starlings can maneuver together with ease, changing flight plans from moment to moment, and without any central control. The methods they use are remarkably subtle and effective, and researchers are borrowing these from nature to enable multiple UAVs to operate in the same airspace without the risk of collision. The pioneering first flight of a flock of Onyx guided parachutes last year was a small milestone in unmanned flight. Swarms are a level up from flocks. With swarms there is communication between individuals – known as stigmergy – and the result is incredibly complex, ‘intelligent’ behavior. This is what iRobots Swarmbots are are about. The Swarmbots have already shown their ability to co-operatively explore and navigate, for example searching an area in the most efficient way without central co-ordination. But greater levels of integration are possible than nautre can achieve. The article includes an interview with Prof Owen Holland who is building Gridswarm: Imagine a large group of small unmanned autonomous aerial vehicles that can fly with the agility of a flock of starlings in a city square at dusk. Imagine linking their onboard computers together across a short-range, high-bandwidth wireless network and configuring them to form an enormous distributed parallel computer. Imagine using this huge computational resource to process the sensory data gathered by the swarm, and to direct its collective actions. You have now grasped the idea of a flying gridswarm. The latest incarnation of this concept is the Ultraswarm an indoor flying cluster computer composed of miniature robot helicopters. Although the article concentrates on civilian applications, from space explorartion to firefighting and domestic cleaning, most of the really advanced work in this area is military. Swarms are extremely robust, have a high level of built-in redundancy and are well suited to complex and rapidly-changing environments. Swarming robots are a natural for the battlefield. Because the individual elements can be made small and cheap, swarms can consist of a very large number of units – and the success of this approach in nature hints at how effective it is. UAV swarms are likely to arrive sooner rather than later. Check out the Killer Bee It’s a flying wing with a span of less than seven feet and an airframe made of three components. Its thick wing means it can be released from aircraft at high speeds. It has eight-hour endurance with a twenty-pound payload. A unique feature of the KillerBee’s geometry is that it can be stacked. Numerous planes can be stored in a small space. This, plus the ability to air-deploy the KillerBee at high speeds, means an airplane can release a single KillerBee for a close look at a dangerous target, or it can release a swarm of KillerBees to overwhelm the defenses of a target. As recounted in my book, Weapons Grade, things are likely to develop extremely quickly over the next few years, with swarming systems producing a transformation comparable to precision weapons. There are no technological barriers, just cultural ones. The new paradigm for air power is coming, and it's about to kick the door down. UPDATE: Contradictory reports over whether the drone shot down by the IDF yesterday carried a warhead. Certainly Hezbollah are aware of the possibilities.
"You can load the Mirsad plane with a quantity of explosives ranging from 40 to 50 kilos and send it to its target," Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is quoted as saying in November 2004. "Do you want a power plant, water plant, military base? Anything!" Range of the Mirsad-1 is likely to be well over 100 Km. August 7, 2006

Slate Takes on Mirsad-1

Slate Takes on Mirsad-1
Dan Kois at Slate called the other day with some questions about drones, especially the Hezbollah model that Israel reportedly shot down on Monday. Today his story on the subject went live: The Hezbollah drone, an Iranian-built Mirsad-1, is somewhere between a Raven and a Predator in size and less sophisticated than either. The Mirsad-1 cannot communicate around the globe via satellite technology, and it has no internal GPS navigation system. As a result, the Hezbollah drone was probably operated from a high hilltop by one or two people with joysticks and a laptop—with a drone like this one, it's imperative that the operator never lose direct line of sight.

J-UCAS Takes Another Hit

J-UCAS Takes Another Hit
Hot on the heels of the Air Force's February withdrawal from the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) and the Navy's takeover of the promising program, the attack drone is about to take another hit. X-47B Over CV.jpg"[A] co-worker who has good friend in the congressional budget office says the UCAS-D (as they call J-UCAS now) is headed for a $200 million plus cut next year," reports a Defense Tech source. What this will mean for Boeing and Northrop Grumman (each of which is building demonstrators) remains to be seen. Then there's this puzzling piece of news from the Farnborough air show, as reported by Flight International: The U.S. Navy has begun studying the need for a new stealthy strike aircraft -- a mission that was once to have been performed by the A-12, cancelled in 1991. "They will do a formal analysis of alternatives at some point," says Chris Chadwick, Boeing vice- president and general manager global strike systems. This is another stealth strike aircraft on top of the Lockheed Martin F-35C Lightning? Will it be manned? Is this just another repackaging of N-UCAS, like what the Air Force did in turning J-UCAS into its new Long Range Strike study? Color me confused. August 21, 2006

Robotic Frisbees of Death

Robotic Frisbees of Death
It ain't easy, picking out evil-doers in the urban canyons of the Middle East; there are so many places to hide. Taking 'em out can be even harder, what with all those noncombatants hanging nearby. But the Air Force thinks it might have an answer to this most vexing problem in counter-insurgency: frisbees. Not just any frisbees, mind you. Robotic frisbees. Heavily armed robotic frisbees. The Air Force recently tapped Triton Systems, out of Chelmsford, Mass, to develop such a "Modular Disc-Wing Urban Cruise Munition." "The 3-D maneuverability of the Frisbee-UAV [unammned aerial vehicle] will provide revolutionary tactical access and lethality against hostiles hiding in upper story locations and/or defiladed behind obstacles," the company promises. The circular drones will be lanuched "from munitions dispensers or by means of a simple mechanism similar to a shotgun target (skeet) launcher," Triton adds. Once in the air, they'll be tele-operated by soldiers on the ground. Or, if needed, the fightin' frisbees will pilot themselves as they hunt for guerrillas. Once they catch up to the baddies, the drones will use a series of armor-piercing explosives, shooting jets of molten metal, to eliminate their targets. And these MEFP [Multiple Explosively Formed Penetrator] "warheads will be controllable so as to provide a single large fragment (bunker-buster) or tailorable pattern of smaller fragments (unprotected infantry or light utility vehicles)." The decision of whether to go bunker-buster or infantry-annihilator mode can either be determined by the drones' human operators, "or autonomous target classification routine built into the UAV." Now, Triton's Frisbee-UAV concept isn't the first time roboticists have looked into disc-shaped drones. From 1992 to 1998, the Navy experimented with a set of unmanned, 250-pound, six-foot-diameter flying saucers. In 2002, Norweigan researchers showed off plans for a circular flying robot "inspired at least partly by the design of Star Trek's USS Enterprise," New Scientist noted. Around the same time, at the University of Manchester, Jonathan Potts studied how best to control UAVs "based on the Frisbee TM sports disc shape." "The Frisbee disc has proven its potential on the sports field as a platform for short free-flights," Potts wrote back in an '01 paper. Without "predefined flight orientation," a Frisbee drone "offers novel flight characteristics and manoeuvrability. It is potentially suitable for a variety of mission objectives fulfilling surveillance, communications, munitions and/or airborne radar warning systems." These days, Potts is focusing less on Frisbee-shaped robots -- and more on Frisbee competitors. "In recent years Jonny has applied his scientific knowledge to develop a range of sports discs with improved aerodynamic performance," says the website of his new company, which makes a line of "super-durable" spinners for $16 apiece. Explosives and robotic controls are not included. September 5, 2006

How Israel's Drones Fought the War

How Israel's Drones Fought the War
Israel pioneered the art of using drones in combat. So it's a little surprising that the robotic spy planes got so little play in the accounts of the Sabras' recent conflict with Hezbollah. Flight International tries to fix that, with a detail-rich report card on how the Israeli unmanned air force performed. With the outbreak of hostilities on 12 July, the air force focused its efforts on suppressing Hezbollah's launch capabilities, cutting off its resupply routes from Syria and destroying the fully Hezbollah-controlled quarter of Beirut. UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] served as the eyes and ears for these operations, launching from bases in central and northern Israel and also from landing strips usually employed by crop-spraying aircraft after rockets landed near air force facilities in northern Israel... Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) sources say the air force's recently delivered Heron 1 UAVs performed "beyond expectation" during the war, and demonstrated the full extent of the type's endurance while flying day and night missions over enemy territory. Heron air vehicles flew hundreds of sorties and amassed thousands of flight hours carrying 250kg (550lb) payloads comprising a variety of sensors. IAI says the medium-altitiude, long-endurance vehicle provided unmatched reliability, with no mission aborts. Air force sources say the Heron was used mainly for electronic-intelligence missions over Lebanon. The service's IAI Searcher 2s also flew thousands of mission hours with excellent reliability, IAI says. The air force also accumulated 15,000 flight hours with its Elbit Systems Hermes 450 UAVs in the conflict, flying round-the-clock missions with the type, which had previously recorded an annual usage rate of 10,000h. Three Hermes 450s crashed during the war: two as a result of technical problems and one due to operator error, with air force Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters having subsequently bombed the wreckage. Lebanese sources quoted in the Arab language press say the Hermes 450 was also used for precision attack missions. The Israeli air force declines to comment... Sources say Hezbollah was ready for the UAVs and in many cases camouflaged rocket launchers, particularly with the use of special "carpets" that absorbed the sun's heat and radiated it at night to affect the efficiency of Israeli thermal sensors. "In many cases we had to detect the launch flash to determine the location of the launcher," says an air force source. As well as highlighting the need for improved sensors, the campaign has prompted the Israeli air and defence forces to work together on an operating concept that will allow their UAVs to combine to provide a more detailed picture of an area of interest. "We will need improved optical payloads for day and night and a joint operational pattern between the Hermes 450 and the Skylark mini UAV," says one source. Another lesson learned is the need to equip tactical UAVs with countermeasures similar to those carried by manned aircraft. September 6, 2006

Funky Drone Down for the Count

Funky Drone Down for the Count
Even in the sometimes-wacky world of next-generation drones, Boeing's X-50A Dragonfly was a bit of an oddball. Helicopter-ish blades "that operated on the same principle as a rotating lawn sprinkler" would spin, to lift the thing off of the ground. Then, the blades would lock in place, forming a wing, so the 18-foot, 1500-pound, turbofan-powered Dragonfly could buzz around fast, like an airplane. Officials at Darpa were hoping that the machine would provide "a high-speed, rapid response capability from a VTOL [vertical take-off and landing] air vehicle with significant range and stealth improvements." But for now, those hopes have been dashed. The program has been axed, Aero-Net News reports. "The decision marks the end of the $51.8 million program, with Boeing using the leftover funds to compile a report on just what went wrong." Right from the start, the Dragonfly was troubled. More standard, VTOL plane combos, like the tilt-rotor Osprey and Harrier jump jet, were tough enough to handle. But the X-50A's "canard rotor/wing" was particularly tricky. In copter mode, it called for "exhaust from the aircraft's turbofan engine [to be] directed up the rotor assembly and through outlets at the rotor tips to cause the rotor to spin," Aviation Week notes. "For fixed-wing flight, the exhaust was directed out the aircraft's tail, causing the rotor to stop spinning and act as a wing, while additional lift was provided by the aircraft's fuselage." The Dragonfly's first test flight -- in December, 2003 -- came a year later than expected. Another flight, fifteen months after, ended disastrously; cross-coupling in the rotor controls caused the drone to crash. A second, back-up vehicle was enlisted. And in December, 2005, the Dragonfly successfully flew. But by April of this year, there was more bad news: another crash. "18 minutes in," Aero-Net News says, "the prototype once again lost control during a transition attempt [from fixed-wing flight to rotor]." DARPA says the second prototype was lost due to poor low-speed control authority, as well as extreme sensitivity to wake strength off the vehicle's rotor. The agency states the accident occurred after rotor wake hit the fuselage, and caused the Dragonfly's nose to pitch up violently -- and in excess of the abilities of the control system to recover.

Predators to the Rescue

Predators to the Rescue
Where Hurricane Katrina hit last year, the Air Force wanted to send in Predator drones, to serve as robotic spotters for search-and-rescue teams. The Federal Aviation Administration, still squeamish about drones flying in civilian airspace, negged the plan, however -- too much risk of a crash with a manned aircraft, the bureaucrats said. But a new deal between the flyboys and the FAA should allow the Predators to pitch in, the next time disaster hits. "A Predator would be limited to flying in restricted airspace at an altitude of 19,000 feet," Defense News reports. "Other aircraft would be expected to stay out of the Predator’s way." On short notice, the four disassembled [Predators] and their trailer-like control center could be loaded into a C-17 Globemaster III transport plane or on trucks and dispatched to the disaster region... From an airfield as far as 150 miles from the search area, a team of two pilots and two sensor operators would handle the Predators’ takeoffs and landings. Back at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., pilots and sensor operators would fly the search-and-rescue phase of the sortie and be in radio or phone contact with recovery operations workers. The Air Force uses a similar split operation for flights over Iraq and Afghanistan. In a disaster zone, Air Force tactical air control parties and others could use laptop computers hooked up to small antennas to view live Predator images and talk with the crews flying the aircraft. In addition to sending pictures from its thermal imaging and video cameras, the Predator can also determine location coordinates for rescuers. For example, the Predator can provide an approximate Global Positioning System map coordinate for anything it sees. At night, the aircraft’s laser spotter can mark areas for rescuers wearing night-vision goggles.

Attack Of The Genius Robot Cockroach Swarm

Attack Of The Genius Robot Cockroach Swarm
I have seen some radical ideas for attacking deep bunkers, but this beats 'em all... Having previously looked at Deep Digger and the Supercavitating penetrator, I was intrigued by an Air Force research Laboratory program called “Creative Robots to Defeat Deeply Buried Underground Targets” After finally getting clearance, I was able to interview Stephen Thaler of Imagination Engines Inc, the man behind the project. Thaler is evangelical about his brand of artificial intelligence, and the result is a piece in Wired News - "Experimental AI Powers Robot Army."
It’s quite a project. The idea is to develop software to make a collection of robots smart enough to break into, explore and neutralize deep bunkers. The challenges are gigantic. The robots have to deal with an unspecified number of unknown obstacles as they travel via cable runs, air ducts, service pipes or other channels, dealing with grilles, bars, doors or other checks. Then they need to correctly identify the target (waste bin, or WMD container?), which is easy for people but hard for robots – and this task requires being out of radio contact. They have to act in concert and help rather than hinder each other, co-ordinating their efforts to explore and map the facility. And all the time they have to be able to avoid, outwit or defeat the human defenders of the bunker, whose tactics, numbers and abilities cannot be predicted. Thaler’s believes his software can do all this. It’s an unusual neural network with the ability to ‘dream up’ new ideas, exploring likely approaches before putting them into action. For example, give it a set of robotic limbs and it will quickly find the most effective way of using them – a video here shows a six-legged robot figuring out how to walk from scratch with no programming in eight minutes flat. Imagination Engines’ capabilities also extend to sensors. Thaler describes products including a million-pixel array which can interpret input ‘an order of magnitude’ faster than any comparable system and another with formidable powers of recognition, such as distinguishing a T-72 from an Abrams. There is no programming involved: just show the system the two different objects and it figures out how to tell them apart. The most guarded aspect of the Creative Robots is their tactical intelligence, which seems to be considerable – Thaler describes them as "Machiavellian" in how devious they can be. The Creativity Machine's ability to explore the entire range of possibilities means that in principle it could dream up any tactic that a human could, and more besides. Within the next few months the software toolkit for Creative Robots will be available for the military. It will run on any standard hardware, turning a pack of dumb robots into smart team players capable of carrying out missions on their own. Thaler believes their speed makes Creative Robots superior to those that rely on human control, “performing at near-human levels of intelligence at Terahertz clock rates, while our joy-stick controlled robots are performing effectively at the 4 Hz clock rates characteristic of the brain.” The possibilities for civilian use are tremendous. There are a vast number of ‘hard problems’ involved in getting robots to interact with the everyday world which require intelligence. Thaler believes that he has the solution. Look out for a host of commercial and industrial applications. Dean Vieau, a consultant with many years of experience in the fields of Controls and Machine Vision, is an enthusiastic supporter. In one case study he carried out, Vieau found that a solution using Imagination Engines software was twenty times faster to develop and a hundred times cheaper than the existing approach. “Imagination Engines represents a significant advancement in the realms of AI. Not just esoteric academic conjecture but real world paths to concrete results.” As usual the military are developing world-changing technology that will filter down to the rest of us later. But are we really ready for killer robots yet? “There is a reluctance to entrust lethal missions to autonomous robots,” says Thaler. “However, the bad guys may not share the same reservations. The escalation is inevitable.”

Drones, Blimps Lose Out in Border War

Drones, Blimps Lose Out in Border War
For those of you hoping for hordes of drones and blimps to start patrolling the Mexican and Canadian borders, there's bad news this morning. "After a face-off among large military contractors, the Boeing Company was picked by the Homeland Security Department to lead a high-tech effort to secure borders," the Times reports. And unlike proposals from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and others, Boeing's plan for the Secure Border Initiative, or SBInet, doesn't rely that much on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or airships. "Boeing's proposal relied heavily on a network of 1,800 towers, most of which would need to be erected along the borders with Mexico and Canada. Each tower would be equipped with a variety of sensors, including cameras and heat and motion detectors," the Washington Post notes. Boeing teamed up for the project with an Israeli company that built a bunch of the imaging equipment used in Israel's controversial fence along the West Bank. That gear, Boeing said, would be less risky and expensive than UAVs or airships -- even though both have been used to watch over southern Arizona for illegals. But, not to worry: the Times says that there are still a few drones in the Boeing plan -- "small, relatively inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles that can be launched from a pickup truck by an agent in the field and then fly for, perhaps, 90 minutes." I'm guessing the paper means these drones here. "Homeland Security has been criticized harshly in recent years for initiatives that have either failed or far exceeded their budgets. In one case, cameras that the department installed on the borders broke down in bad weather," the Post observes. "The administration has spent $429 million of the taxpayer's money to try and secure our borders with two already-abandoned border security programs," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss). He expressed concern that the same thing will happen to SBInet. Mindful of that record, Boeing emphasized that all its technology has been proven to work. "The low-risk approach is probably going to carry weight here." "The contract will at least initially be much more limited than some industry officials had expected, valued at $80 million instead of the $2 billion estimate given for the six-year deal," the Times writes.