British Troops Get Small Swarming Drones They Can Fire From 40mm Grenade Launchershttps://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38909/british-troops-get-small-swarming-drones-they-can-fire-from-40mm-grenade-launchers British Army troops in Mali are now reportedly using tiny unmanned aircraft that can be fired from standard 40mm grenade launchers. These diminutive quad-copter-type drones can be fitted with various payloads, ranging from full-motion electro-optical video cameras to small high-explosive or armor-piercing warheads, and that can fly together as a swarm after launch.
... All told, the British Army's fielding of the Drone40, even in limited numbers with forces in Mali, is another example of how drones and other unmanned capabilities are only becoming more and more ubiquitous, including at the very lowest operational levels, among military forces around the world.
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2021 Is the Year the Small Drone Arms Race Heats Uphttps://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/01/2021-year-small-drone-arms-race-heats/171650/“Drones and most likely drone swarms are something you’re going to see on a future battlefield...I think we’re already seeing some of it,” said Army Gen. John Murray, who leads Army Futures Command.
“Counter drone, we’re working the same path everybody else is working in terms of soft skills and hard kills via a variety of different weapons systems. It just becomes very hard when you start talking about huge swarms of small drones. Not impossible but harder.”
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A range of payloads are possible, from grenade launchers, micro-munitions, shotguns, net launchers and cameras.
https://www.skybornetech.com/cerberus-gl--------------------------------------------
Indian Army Shows Off Drone Swarm Of Mass Destructionhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2021/01/19/indian-army-shows-off-drone-swarm-of-mass-destruction/At a live demonstration for India’s Army Day last week, the Indian military showed off a swarm of 75 drones destroying a variety of simulated targets in explosive kamikaze attacks for the first time.
The commentary accompanying the demonstration claimed that the swarm is capable of autonomous operation. You can see a video of the event here. While the swarm’s exact capabilities are not clear, the event is a clear indication of how the technology is developing — and proliferating.
... Some key capabilities demonstrated included a mother drone system that was part of the swarm, which released four `child drones’ each of which had individual targets.
The 75-drone swarm shows the current state of the art, but India’s goal is a 1,000-drone swarm. Swarms of small drones have the potential to overwhelm air defenses, and their low cost means they can be deployed in far greater numbers than existing systems. While massed drones in spectacular lightshows are all controlled centrally, in a true swarm each of the drones flies itself, following a simple set of rules to maintain formation and avoid collisions with algorithms derived from flocking birds. A thousand-drone swarm could hit a vast number of targets – enough for analyst Zak Kallenborn — Research Affiliate at the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) — to argue that it would constitute a weapon of mass destruction.
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A new Guinness World Record was set on Friday in north China for the longest animation performed by 600 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
If you know how to put a swarm of 600 drones in the right place at the right time you can do it with SEMTEX or C4 on each one.
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SquiddiesSince 2016, drone maker Shield AI, working with the Defense Innovation Unit, has been providing small drones to special operations with the ability to detect their location and maneuver without GPS signalling.
Shield AI co-founder Brandon Tseng compared imbuing drones with autonomy to making a self-driving car, teaching software to measure and make decisions about objects in physical space. “GPS is not reliable in dense urban environments, so the cars have to build their own maps of the world"
In about two months, Shield AI aims to release an upgraded version of its signature Nova drone with “vision-based autonomy,” a system designed to perform better at night than the current LIDAR sensors.
But the company’s most significant work is less about selling specific drones and more about developing autonomic systems that can work on a wide assortment of devices and weapons.
He said the company would demonstrate autonomous behaviors and maneuvers on a drone, perhaps from a different drone maker, sometime this year.
... “Once you have a highly intelligent system, you can start to swarm,” ... From there, stopping the drones is someone else’s problem.
Importantly, the same technology that is enabling more autonomy in small drones has big implications for larger drones and the way the two work together in future battlefields. In October, Shield AI entered into a partnership with large UAV maker Textron. The two are making a “proof-of-concept work to integrate Shield AI technology into Textron Systems’ proven air, land and sea unmanned systems,” according to a release from Textron.
... “Going forward, the Russian military will obtain multifunctional long-range drones that can carry different types of munitions. The [Ministry of Defense] is developing UAV swarm and loyal wingman tactics; and is working on testing and procuring loitering munitions,” as well as imbuing drones with greater autonomy. (The U.S. military has its own loyal wingman program. In December, the Air Force’s experimental Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie, took its first flight in formation with other jets.)
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Taliban PsyOps: Afghan Militants Weaponize Commercial Droneshttps://gandhara.rferl.org/a/taliban-commercial-drones-attacks-afghanistan/31075672.htmlThe Taliban has used small commercial drone aircraft in recent years for reconnaissance and to make propaganda videos of attacks.
But now, the militant group is deploying the remote-controlled devices as a new weapon against Afghan security forces.
Using a tactic of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in Iraq and Syria, Taliban fighters are rigging low-cost, over-the-counter drones with explosives and dropping them on targets.
Since October, the Taliban has carried out weaponized drone attacks in at least six of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Some have killed and wounded Afghan security personnel. Others have damaged military infrastructure.
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US Marines Need to Trust Unmanned, AI Tools for Future Warfarehttps://news.usni.org/2021/02/02/berger-marines-need-to-trust-unmanned-ai-tools-for-future-warfareThe commandant of the Marine Corps said the service needs to make some big changes in a few short years to stay ahead of China’s growing military capability, but
one of the biggest hurdles he sees is a lack of trust in the new unmanned and artificial intelligence systems he wants to invest in.Gen. David Berger envisions a Marine Corps that leverages AI to shorten the sensor-to-shooter cycle and quickly take out adversaries that could threaten Marine forces. He envisions a self-updating logistics system that knows where the adversary is and can find new ways to route supplies to Marines. He envisions unmanned vehicles moving supplies and even perhaps taking on medevac missions. But all this relies on Marines trusting the unmanned and AI tools he buys them, and Berger said that trust isn’t there just yet.
“In the same way that a squad leader has to trust his or her Marines, the squad leader’s going to have to learn to trust the machine. Trust. In some instances today, I would offer we don’t trust the machine,” Berger said while speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual expeditionary warfare conference.
“We have programs right now, capabilities right now that allow for fully automatic processing of sensor-to-shooter targeting, but we don’t trust the data. And we still ensure that there’s human intervention at every [step in the process]. And, of course, with each intervention by humans we’re adding more time, more opportunities for mistakes to happen, time we’re not going to have when an adversary’s targeting our network,” he continued.
“We have the ability for a quicker targeting cycle, but we don’t trust the process.”
... Berger said “we have got to move at an uncomfortable pace in unmanned systems” and later that “I am convinced, we’re going to go faster than we’re comfortable going for a long time.