A Survey on Joint-Operation Application for Unmanned Swarm Formations Under a Complex Confrontation Environment

With the rapid development of informatization, autonomy and intelligence, unmanned swarm formation intelligent operations will become the main combat mode of future wars. Typical unmanned swarm formations such as ground-based directed energy weapon formations, space-based kinetic energy weapon formations, and sea-based carrier-based formations have become the trump card for winning future wars. In a complex confrontation environment, these sophisticated weapon formation systems can precisely strike mobile threat group targets, making them extreme deterrents in joint combat applications. Based on this, first, this paper provides a comprehensive summary of the outstanding advantages, strategic position and combat style of unmanned clusters in joint warfare to highlight their important position in future warfare. Second, a detailed analysis of the technological breakthroughs in four key areas, situational awareness, heterogeneous coordination, mixed combat, and intelligent assessment of typical unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms in joint warfare, is presented. An in-depth analysis of the UAV swarm communication networking operating mechanism during joint warfare is provided to lay the theoretical foundation for subsequent cooperative tracking and control. Then, an in-depth analysis of the shut-in technology requirements of UAV clusters in joint warfare is provided to lay a theoretical foundation for subsequent cooperative tracking control. Finally, the technical requirements of UAV clusters in joint warfare are analysed in depth so the key technologies can form a closed-loop kill chain system and provide theoretical references for the study of intelligent command operations.