Strength in Numbers The Office of Naval Research's Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combatting Terrorism Department is developing a program known as LOCUST, for low-cost UAV swarming technology. 1. In a test next year, program officials are hoping to rapid-launch 30 small unmanned aerial vehicles to study, among other things, swarm control, turning maneuvers and tracking how far they are separated. 2. A similar test last year with unmanned watercraft used a technology called Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing to form a picket around an asset and protect it from an impending adversary. 3. Once LOCUST is brought to fruition, the idea is that each aircraft in the swarm can be preprogrammed to perform specific tasks, with the shared ability to communicate autonomously with each other.
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