More Brains, Less Brawn: Why The Future of Unmanned Systems Depends on Making Them Smarter

摘要

No arena is richer in possibilities than unmanned systems used by national and multinational organizations. These systems have been used extensively in today's conflicts and are already creating strategic, operational, and tactical possibilities that did not exist a decade ago. Unmanned systems have created substantial 'buzz' in policy, military, industry and academic circles, and have even spawned best-selling books such as P.W. Singer's Wired for War. In addition, they have generated innumerable articles in professional journals and magazines, as well as in 'popular science and literature' publications such as Wired Magazine. But for these unmanned systems to reach their full potential, important C4ISR considerations must be addressed. Currently, there is far too much discussion of 'brawn' and not enough 'brains,' that is, an almost exclusive focus on platforms and little discussion or focus on the C4ISR systems that will enable these impressive platforms to reach their full potential. Absent this focus, these systems will be severely sub-optimized in their ability to provide information and knowledge to the warfighter. We will present examples of ground-breaking work going on in the DoD laboratory community with systems such as the Multi-Robot Operator Control Unit (MOCU) System that are paving the way for a completely new paradigm - multiple unmanned systems controlled by one operator.