Maximizing the utility of naval unmanned systems

The expanding use of armed, unmanned systems is not only changing the face of modern warfare, but is also altering the process of decision-making in combat operations. These systems have been used extensively in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will continue to be equally relevant - if not more so - as the United States' strategic focus shifts towards the Asia-Pacific region and the high-end warfare this strategy requires. The Department of Defense's vision for unmanned systems is to integrate these systems into the Joint force for a number of reasons, but especially to reduce the risk to human life in high threat areas, to deliver persistent surveillance over areas of interest, and to provide options to warfighters that derive from the inherent advantages of unmanned technologies - especially their ability to operate autonomously. The U.S. Navy has been on the forefront of UxS development. The 28th CNO Strategic Studies Group (SSG) spent one year examining this issue, and its report spurred increased interest in - and emphasis on - unmanned systems Navy-wide. Leveraging the SSG's work, recent Navy focus has emphasized the need to enhance UxS command and control (C2) capabilities to allow one sailor to control multiple systems in an attempt to lower Total Ownership Costs (TOC) of unmanned systems. This link between increased autonomy and decreased TOC has become an important theme in Navy UxS development. One of the most pressing challenges for the DoD is to reduce the prohibitively burdensome manpower requirements currently necessary to operate unmanned systems. Military manpower makes up the largest part of the total ownership cost of systems across all the Services. But how expensive is military manpower? To better understand this compelling need to reduce these manpower requirements, it is important to understand the costs of manpower to the U.S. military writ large. With the prospect of future flat or declining military budgets, the rapidly rising costs of military manpower, and the increased DoD emphasis on total ownership costs, the mandate to move beyond the “many operators, one-joystick, one-vehicle” paradigm for UxS that has existed during the past decades for most unmanned systems is clear and compelling. But this drive for autonomy begs the question as to what this imperative to increase autonomy comports and what, if any, downside occurs if we push UxS autonomy too far. Is there an unacceptable “dark side” to too much autonomy? There are concerns regarding the extant of autonomy military systems ought to have. Unless or until these concerns are addressed, these systems may never reach their full potential. While we accept advances in other aspects of UxS improvements such as propulsion, payload, stealth, speed, endurance and other attributes, we are still coming to grips with how much autonomy is enough and how much may be too much. This is arguably the most important issue we need to address with unmanned systems over the next decade. Unmanned systems become more autonomous in direct proportion to their ability to sense the environment and adapt to it. This capability enables unmanned systems to achieve enhanced speed in decision making and allows friendly forces to act within an adversary's OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act) loop. But while we need unmanned systems to operate inside the enemy's OODA loop, are we ready for them to operate without our decision-making, to operate inside our OODA loops? The Defense Science Board report, The Role of Autonomy in DoD Systems, put it this way: Instead of viewing autonomy as an intrinsic property of unmanned systems in isolation, the design and operation of unmanned systems needs to be considered in terms of human-systems collaboration. A key challenge facing unmanned systems developers is the move from a hardware-oriented, vehicle-centric development and acquisition process to one that emphasizes the primacy of software in creating autonomy. Unless or until these issues are addressed, the full potential naval unmanned systems may never be realized.