Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations

Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2005-08-05
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309181232

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been used in military operations for more than 60 years, with torpedoes, cruise missiles, satellites, and target drones being early examples.1 They have also been widely used in the civilian sector-for example, in the disposal of explosives, for work and measurement in radioactive environments, by various offshore industries for both creating and maintaining undersea facilities, for atmospheric and undersea research, and by industry in automated and robotic manufacturing. Recent military experiences with AVs have consistently demonstrated their value in a wide range of missions, and anticipated developments of AVs hold promise for increasingly significant roles in future naval operations. Advances in AV capabilities are enabled (and limited) by progress in the technologies of computing and robotics, navigation, communications and networking, power sources and propulsion, and materials. Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations is a forward-looking discussion of the naval operational environment and vision for the Navy and Marine Corps and of naval mission needs and potential applications and limitations of AVs. This report considers the potential of AVs for naval operations, operational needs and technology issues, and opportunities for improved operations.

Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles

Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles
Author: Richard M. Clark
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Uninhabited combat aerial vehicles
ISBN: 9781410218155

In one form or another, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have been employed for over 2,000 years. Lt Col Richard M. Clark's Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles: Airpower by the People, For the People, But Not with the People, draws on that long history to gauge what the future may hold for uninhabited combat aerial vehicles (UCAV). The United States (US) Air Force's experience with UCAVs dates back to World War I and the US Army Air Service's order for 25 Kettering Bugs, explosive-laden unmanned minibiplanes. Over the next 60 years, the Air Force continued to experiment with-and periodically employ-UAVs/UCAVs in peace and war. Operational results were decidedly mixed. The Air Force abandoned UCAV development in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, but by the 1990s there was a marked resurgence of interest in UCAVs as a means of "doing more with less" while reducing combat risks to pilots. Given the problematic history of UAVs/UCAVs, knowledge of past experience could prove beneficial to the current generation of UCAV developers and planners. To that end, Colonel Clark examines technological obstacles that have handicapped UCAVs historically and which could continue to impede their future evolution. He then turns to more contemporary organizational and cultural issues that might hinder integration of UCAVs into the force. Clark concludes his study by proposing answers to two fundamental questions: (1) What are the major obstacles to UCAVs achieving meaningful operational status in the Air Force, and (2) Can those obstacles be overcome? Originally written as a master's thesis for Air University's School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS), Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles won the 1999 Air Force Armament Museum Foundation Prize as the best SAAS thesis on technology and aerospace power. The College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education is pleased to make this timely study available to the Air Force and beyond. JAMES R. W. TITUS Dean of Research Air University

Review of ONR's Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles Program

Review of ONR's Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles Program
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2000-08-24
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309069777

Joint Vision 20101 addresses the need for achieving military dominance through the application of new operational concepts. For the Department of the Navy, future operational concepts will hinge on a continuance of forward yet unobtrusive presence and the capability to influence events ashore as required. This capability will be enabled by the development and insertion into the forces of new technologies for providing command, control, and surveillance; battlespace dominance; power projection; and force sustainment. For example, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently proven to be valuable operational platforms for providing tactical intelligence by surveillance of the battlefield. To support naval force objectives, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) has established a research program within the Strike Technology Division (Code 351) of the Naval Expeditionary Warfare Science and Technology Department aimed at expanding the operational capabilities of UAVs to include not only surveillance and reconnaissance, but strike and logistics missions as well. This new class of autonomous vehicles, known as uninhabited combat air vehicles (UCAVs), is foreseen as being intelligent, recoverable, and highly maneuverable in support of future naval operations. Review of ONR'S Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles Program evaluates ONR's UCAV technology activities, including its vision documents and its science and technology roadmap (in areas of vehicle dynamics, communications, sensors, and autonomous agents) against criteria that would be selected by the committee, such as the relevance for meeting future naval priorities, the cost and time scale for its utilization, duplication of effort, and scientific and technical quality.

U.S. Unmanned Aerial Systems

U.S. Unmanned Aerial Systems
Author: Jeremiah Gertler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Drone aircraft
ISBN:

"To be sure, manned systems could accomplish many if not all of the same goals. But "unmanned systems reduce the risk to our warfighters by providing a sophisticated stand-off capability that supports intelligence, command and control, targeting, and weapons delivery. These systems also improve situational awareness and reduce many of the emotional hazards inherent in air and ground combat, thus decreasing the likelihood of causing civilian noncombatant casualties." "UAVs have gained favor as ways to reduce risk to combat troops, the cost of hardware and the reaction time in a surgical strike" and "to conduct missions in areas that are difficult to access or otherwise considered too high-risk for manned aircraft or personnel on the ground."--Page 3 (author).

Unmanned Combat Air Systems in Future Warfare

Unmanned Combat Air Systems in Future Warfare
Author: C. Wills
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2016-04-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1137498498

Control of the air is the foundation for all conventional military operations against an adversary with an air defence capability. In future warfare, will it be possible for Unmanned Combat Air Systems to undertake the tasks and accept most of the risks that, until now, have been the lot of military aviators?

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Author: David Glade
Publisher:
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2000
Genre: Drone aircraft
ISBN:

The development of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) could potentially revolutionize how military force is used in the future. While the early operational experiences with UAVs show great promise, their full range of capabilities is largely unknown. However, it is clear that these technologies will enable military forces to use aerospace power more efficiently, which means at lower cost and with less risk to the humans who pilot aircraft. The broader question is the wisdom of using unmanned aerial vehicles for employing lethal force, and in particular which air power missions are best accomplished by uninhabited, piloted, and autonomous vehicles. The corollary is to examine the essential roles of human pilots or operators in aerospace operations in the twenty-first century. Since it is common to draw distinctions between vehicles with an on-board pilot, vehicles with off-board operators, and autonomous vehicles, this study explores the essential role of pilots and contrasts it with the roles of remotely piloted and autonomous vehicles. The assumption is that piloted, remotely piloted, and autonomous vehicles have advantages and disadvantages in military operations, and that these vary in strategic significance for different levels of conflict. Since it is essential for the U.S. defense establishment to consider the strategic and technological implications of these types of aerial vehicles, this study is devoted to addressing the issues raised by the new generation of aerial vehicles.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles: Likely Missions and Challenges for the Policy-Relevant Future

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles: Likely Missions and Challenges for the Policy-Relevant Future
Author: Manjeet Singh Pardesi
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2008-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1437905536

Analyzes the strategic implications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from a Singaporean point of view and concludes that UAV¿s lack of situational awareness and need for ever-larger amounts of communication bandwidth are major drawbacks that can be partially compensated for by various means. However, the author concludes that UAV¿s will complement, but not replace, manned aircraft.

Armament, Arms Control and Artificial Intelligence

Armament, Arms Control and Artificial Intelligence
Author: Thomas Reinhold
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2022-10-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3031110439

Looking at a variety of armament sectors, the book examines how Artificial Intelligence (AI) impacts the fields of armament and arms control, how existing arms control measures will be affected by AI, and what new approaches based on AI have been or are currently developed. The significant increase in computing power, the increasing reliance on software, and the advent of (narrow) AI and deep-learning algorithms all have the potential to lead to disruptive changes for military operations and warfare, rendering many classical arms control instruments less effective, or even useless. On the other hand, AI might lead to completely new arms control approaches, raising the effectiveness and reliability of new verification measures. To provide a common understanding, the book starts by presenting a general introduction to the state of the art in artificial intelligence and arms control, and how the two topics are interrelated. The second part of the book looks at examples from various fields of weapon technology, including weapons of mass destruction (WMD), conventional armament, and emerging technologies. The final section offers a cross-cutting perspective based on the examples presented in the second part. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, as well as policy-makers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of peace and security studies in general, and armament and arms control in particular with a strong focus on AI.

The Defence Industrial Strategy

The Defence Industrial Strategy
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2006-07-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780215029812

Government reply to the 7th report (HC 824, ISBN 0215028597). The Defence industrial strategy published in December 2005 (Cm. 6697, ISBN 0101669720).

Stealth Warfare

Stealth Warfare
Author: David Alexander
Publisher: Triumvirate Publications
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2023-08-17
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN:

STEALTH WARFARE ... DECLASSIFIED Did Russia get secret US stealth technology from a downed Stealth Fighter? Did Nazi scientists working for Hitler's Third Reich develop stealth aircraft that were used as a basis for US stealth development? Is stealth technology creating new superweapons and superplanes for secret future war plans? Are UFOs connected with stealth? Do other countries, such as India, China, North Korea and Russia possess advanced stealth technologies? Has the US government secretly bought Russian stealth weaponry in order to study and reverse-engineer it? Are stealth aircraft really as stealthy as advertised? Or can they be detected and even tracked with available technology? These and other questions are answered in David Alexander's groundbreaking Stealth Warfare, the only book of its kind ever written, and one that tells secrets that the Defense Department, the CIA and agencies too covert to even mention want kept behind locked doors. In Stealth Warfare, a work that began as a classified study toward establishing developmental priorities toward the year 2030, bestselling author and globally recognized defense analyst and consultant David Alexander has framed the essence of stealth warfare from its mythological beginnings with the Trojan Horse to the modern technological marvels of stealth aircraft, submarines, and satellites. From the foreword by Col. John G. Lackey (Ret.), US Army: His groundbreaking Stealth Warfare is a singular achievement -- by far the most comprehensive open source reference to this field of military endeavor you will find – now and probably ever. Even with those classified, eyes-only portions removed for reasons of national security, it stands as an unparalleled reference source for the military professional as well as historians or the casual reader, and reads like the best fiction to boot In this epochal work, author David Alexander has skillfully outlined the history of stealth warfare, carefully weaving it into the American military genre by focusing on specific, carefully chosen warfare events, beginning with basic soldiering and ending with modern stealth aircraft, submarines, missiles, mines, drones, robots and the individual combatants’ battlefield equipment. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Alexander’s Stealth Warfare is his account of those technical realities that are so vividly described from the beginnings of high-altitude reconnaissance programs such as U-2 and SR-71, as well as overhead satellite surveillance programs like Corona. The understanding gained from the tactical histories and operational capabilities of the F-117A Nighthawk and B-2 strategic bomber provides an understanding of the vast superiority which the United States has in the air in regard to stealth technology. Unlock the secrets of stealth. Read David Alexander's Stealth Warfare... before it disappears. Reviews "The push to develop an awesome array of superplanes and superweapons was to be crowned by Goering's "thousand by thousand by thousand" directive, which was Luftwaffe shorthand for the need to build an aircraft capable of flying a thousand kilometers carrying a thousand kilograms of weapons at a thousand kilometers per hour. This ambitious master plan went hand in hand with the effort to develop a nuclear weapon that the plane would carry. The main goal of a long-range intercontinental bomber of this type would be to strike the United States." -- Excerpt from Stealth Warfare by author David Alexander "Lockheed aircraft designer Ben Rich, who worked for Clarence "Kelly" Johnson at Lockheed's Skunk Works wrote that "a low observable aircraft has to be good in six disciplines -- radar, infrared, noise, smoke, contrails and visibility -- otherwise you flunk the course." That these considerations figured in postwar advanced aircraft designs is self-evident even just from the standpoint of fuselage designs -- stealth is right in front of you if you have eyes to see it. Though the aerospace industry and the Pentagon tried to keep stealth research secret stealth was always part of the program. As mentioned earlier, the bulk of the programs of this era were black, that is, clandestine projects. Even those few projects whose existence was grudgingly revealed, such as the U-2 and A-12/SR-71 Blackbird family spy planes, were never entirely declassified. As Churchill observed, in war the truth must sometimes be protected by a bodyguard of lies. Divulging information about critical capabilities of military aircraft can and will give adversaries valuable clues to countermeasures it can use against them. For this reason it has to be assumed that a great deal of deliberate disinformation surrounds even the most familiar of white world projects. Another reason for the secrecy that cloaked special postwar aircraft projects is that much of it was based on captured prototypes and research done by Nazi technicians, many of whom were now working in the US under government auspices and official protection. Public recognition of these facts so soon after the war would have aroused a national outcry. The intelligence and defense establishments who had put those ex-Nazis to work needed to avoid such a scenario. A cloak of secrecy also surrounds the technology transfer issues that gave rise to postwar advanced aircraft programs. At the close of World War Two the United States came out the winner in a race by the three victorious Allied powers to grab the cream of Nazi weapons technology and the Reich's brain trust." -- Excerpt from Stealth Warfare by author David Alexander "British personnel, including RAF pilots on exchange programs, had been secretly involved in the Stealth Fighter programs run by the United States for a long time. Unknown to the public in both the US and UK, a secret protocol between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had led to a handful of key officials within the MOD gaining unprecedented access to the F-177A Stealth Fighter since the early 1980s. The partnership in stealth between the two transatlantic allies dates back to the Second World War where, as we've seen, the secrets of Operation Bodyguard, including Ultra and Enigma, were shared and cooperatively developed as a secret weapon against the Third Reich. Afterward, during the Cold War, the clandestine partnership in stealth continued against the Soviets and their East Bloc allies." -- Excerpt from Stealth Warfare by author David Alexander "One of the most sensitive military secrets of the Cold War is that in the early 1960s the Macmillan government in the UK turned over to the Kennedy administration virtually everything that the British knew about stealth technology, and it was a considerable amount. The British didn't then have the material resources to develop this technology, but the US, with its vast, virtually unlimited industrial capacity and bottomless money pit, very much did. The stealth relationship entered a new, clandestine phase: the UK would henceforward be an insider in US stealth development. By the time the F-117A Stealth Fighter was rolled out of a hangar at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada for its first public showing on April 21, 1990, ending speculation concerning the existence of a secret invisible warplane developed by the US, British RAF pilots had been training on the F-117A for at least a year, indeed since the earliest prototypes were available for flight trials in 1982. Beyond this, the F-117A was evaluated for possible purchase by the RAF but turned down by MOD; at 10 Downing Street there were other plans concerning future acquisitions of stealth aircraft." -- Excerpt from Stealth Warfare by author David Alexander "Regional disputes could be intensified by stealth because stealth enhances the lethality of conventional warfare and greases the slide towards escalation of the conflict. Once the conflict escalates it can become a vortex that draws bystanders in toward the center. The former bystanders, who are inevitably bigger powers, would then take sides and fight with one another. If all or most were stealth-capable, stealth-on-stealth warfare could produce a stalemate that might progress to the use of weapons of mass destruction as the conflict worsened." -- Excerpt from Stealth Warfare by author David Alexander