U.S. military plans deployment of swarms of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles with inflight retargeting

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military has completed research on unmanned swarming technologies and has turned them over to the U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Drive reports. Continue reading original article

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

2 April 2021 -- The systems are the block 3 version of Raytheon's Coyote unmanned aircraft and launcher, a jam-resistant datalink, and software to enable drones to operate as autonomous swarms.

All of these technologies were developed in the Low-Cost Cruise Missile (LCCM) effort. While Raytheon led the development of the Coyote and its launcher, L3Harris was the prime contractor for the datalink, and the Georgia Tech Research Institute headed-up work on the autonomy software module.

Details about the LCCM unmanned project are limited, yet the project provides a decentralized autonomy capability for low-cost, conventional air-launched cruise missiles that can conduct networked integrated attacks, in-flight dynamic retargeting and reallocation, and synchronized cooperative and saturation attacks.

Related: Air Force issues last call for project to develop network technologies that enable swarming unmanned aircraft

Related: Military researchers ask industry for autonomous vehicle swarms technology with trusted computing built-in

Related: Navy researchers developing swarms of cooperating air drones for overwhelming land and sea attacks

John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics