Military Drone Testing Could Lead to Future Deployments and Roles

Autonomous THeMIS robots operating in the BISim Virtual Battlespace 4 environment.

Autonomous THeMIS robots operating in the BISim Virtual Battlespace 4 environment. BISim

Theoretically, autonomous vehicles and drones could play a decisive role on the modern battlefield.

Drones, unmanned vehicles and autonomous robots of all shapes and sizes are starting to make big strides into government service. They help local governments with search and rescue, fight COVID-19 infections at public venues and even serve as explorers on other planets. Almost nobody has a problem with autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles taking on those roles. But when it comes to military service, it’s a little bit more of a complicated issue.

Theoretically, autonomous vehicles and drones could play a decisive role on the modern battlefield. They could do everything from scouting the landscape before an attack to evacuating wounded soldiers. And they could also be tasked with going into actual combat against enemy troops or vehicles.

The British Army recently held a massive wargame that involved thousands of drones and vehicles with varying levels of autonomy. Many different types of drones were tested, including groups operating in a swarm, and those that could transition from flying to swimming and back to flying. Individual soldiers were able to send orders or make requests of different autonomous vehicles or drones during the exercise to test out how a human and robotic partnership might operate on the battlefields of the future.

Exercises like the British one undoubtedly generate a lot of information about the strengths and weaknesses of autonomous vehicles in a combat environment. But they are enormous undertakings both in terms of time and resources. A much more economical, and arguably practical, approach would be to add autonomous vehicles into a simulation that could run near constant testing on their responses, intelligence and behaviors.

Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim) is a leader in this area. The company provides simulation training not just for various branches of the United States military, but also for countries around the world. Recently their customers have started to ask for autonomous vehicles to become a part of those simulations. Including smart robots in realistic virtual wargames would let leaders observe how an autonomous vehicle might act under fire, or refine better strategies for having humans and robots work together to accomplish their missions.

We talked with Senior Vice President of Product Management for BISim Oli Arup about the potential role of autonomous vehicles in combat, how the effectiveness of drones could be improved and what roles thinking machines might play in both the near term and distant future of the world’s most advanced militaries.

Nextgov: From what your customers are telling you, what is driving the desire for drones and autonomous vehicles in the world’s militaries?

Arup: The ability to add autonomous vehicles allows militaries to significantly increase capabilities without the need for more personnel at a time where active military service members are reducing worldwide. Autonomous vehicles provide several benefits such as freeing up existing personnel from support and logistics tasks, acting as force multipliers to frontline units, reducing frontline units exposure to danger and improving battlefield intelligence.

Nextgov: Are there any other factors driving drone use?

Arup: Commercial sector developments and financial investment are also driving adoption with things like cheap but high-resolution sensors and cheaper drones. And another factor driving interest is the whole concept of swarms of drones using autonomous swarm artificial intelligence behaviors to create never-before-seen defensive and offensive capabilities.

Nextgov: Some drone swarms were recently tested in real life during the big United Kingdom military operation. Could your Virtual Battlespace 4 (VBS4) simulation software, which was recently featured in Nextgov, help the U.S. military test those kinds of autonomous devices without having to stage a major operation in the real world?

Arup: VBS supports the creation and integration of a wide range of technologies and could simply add support for drone swarms. The question of ensuring that the simulated vehicles behave like the real ones can be complex, however. The simplest way is to use the real vehicle system and integrate it into the simulated environment rather than trying to rebuild and replicate an existing behavior.

BISim has already demonstrated the integration of a real autonomous vehicle AI system into VBS. The AI was being fed emulated visual and sensor feeds directly from the VBS virtual environment. Given the complexity and accuracy of the virtual environment feed, the AI was able to interpret the data as if it were the real world and use this data to control a virtual representation of the real platform. This represents an exciting concept where an autonomous vehicle AI can be validated in a simulated environment where the complexity of any potential battlefield environment can be replicated at any scale.

Nextgov: We have seen the addition of autonomous robots like the THeMIS UGV unmanned ground vehicles that are being used by militaries around the world into VBS4. Is anyone also adding potential future robotic technology into the simulation to see how it might affect or interact with human soldiers?

Arup: The U.K. Ministry of Defense have been using VBS as an environment to look into this exact question, examining how future autonomous vehicles fulfilling multiple roles can be used as part of a traditional force structure. The focus of much of the work done by our customers is not centered on the technical capability of the vehicles themselves but rather the practicalities of issuing orders to such vehicles and, importantly, the potential increases in cognitive load on any humans in the loop. There are a number of other countries we know of doing similar analyses.

Nextgov: Based on what you are seeing is possible inside the simulations, what do you think the future of autonomous vehicles and robots serving in military roles will look like?

Arup: In the short term, autonomous vehicles will likely fulfill tasks such as last mile resupply, providing front-line logistics support to troops and intelligence gathering. Realistically, the advancements in artificial intelligence mean there is potential for autonomous vehicles throughout all aspects of the military with the main obstacles likely to be organizational, legal or moral rather than technical. 

In the longer term, assuming these obstacles can be resolved, there is likely to be proliferation of autonomous munitions and the use of swarms of low-cost air vehicles used for both kinetic and [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] tasks. There is also likely to be a drive to swap autonomous vehicles into normal force structures such that a tank commander, for example, would be commanding largely autonomous subordinates rather than human crewed vehicles. As the technology improves, the ratio of autonomous vehicles to human crewed vehicles will alter in favor of more autonomous vehicles. This will likely be the case across all domains and will have a huge impact on tactics.         

Nextgov: You paint an interesting picture of the future battlefield. As autonomous vehicles take on more of a role in modern militaries, what do think about having robots with full autonomy able to attack or maybe even kill? That seems to be one area that most people struggle with.

Arup: The prospect of having fully autonomous armed vehicles is rightly a very serious subject. It is hard to imagine any near future where there isn’t a human in the loop to validate the AI decision process. However, it is exactly this kind of question that a simulation environment can help answer without the risk of letting armed AI loose in the real world.

Nextgov: Will simulations like the kind used to train human soldiers today continue to have an important role as more autonomous vehicles and weapons systems come online?

Arup: As the technology becomes more widespread, the ability to test the capability of systems in a safe simulated environment, we believe, becomes vital. Conceptually, it is the same logic as autonomous car software being trained through machine learning in virtual environments but obviously the consequences for an error in a weapon system are far more serious—not just injuries and deaths but also the impacts of such events.

Currently, there are limited training environments where even semi-autonomous systems can be used and even fewer where fully autonomous vehicles could conceivably be deployed with live weapons as part of a full training scenario. Virtual environments offer the ability to train AI models in a complex digital twin where the AI can encounter the huge complexity of any military engagement. 

Just as you wouldn’t want a human soldier to encounter the complexity and stress of the battlefield for the first time during active warfare, similarly you wouldn’t want to trust an AI system in active warfare if its behavior has never been validated in a virtual environment.

John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology. He is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.