U.S. Navy Swarm on the Offense

摘要

For years, the U.S. Navy has been concerned with how it would defend against a swarm of vessels attacking its ships while transiting choke points. Recently, the Chief of Naval Operations directed OPNAV N84/the Chief of Naval Research to investigate transforming this long-held concern into a potential offensive capability by exploiting advancements in the field of robotics and autonomous systems. Why not develop a swarm capability for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) that uses autonomous control to make our adversaries worry about the threat we pose? In this context, "autonomous control" means a computer under remote human supervision would perform the perception and route-planning functions. This would provide a significant capability enhancement beyond today's remote-control technologies. Ultimately, the vision is that one operator will supervise many USVs that fight as a team.