For a service that had fewer than 50 unmanned aircraft in its arsenal as recently as 2001, the U.S. Army is now planning to buy a diverse array of unmanned systems, from cargo haulers to long-range aircraft.

Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, vice chief of staff for the U.S. Army, kicked off Air Day at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems Defense and said when he was a Brigade Combat Team commander in 2003 on the march to Baghdad, he had no unmanned systems at all.

That isn’t the case now and won’t be the case in the future, as the Army now has more than 8,000 unmanned aircraft and “they are literally woven into the fabric of Army formations to such an extent that a leader in today’s formation cannot imagine operating without them.”

Going forward, the service plans to buy more to try to keep manned systems out of harm’s way as much as possible while dealing with an accelerated pace of innovation and a changing world that sees more people moving to urban areas and nationalism on the rise.

The Army will probably rely on “small, distributed formations against an often elusive enemy,” he said, which will “place a premium on all types of unmanned systems.”

That means increasing situational awareness, which includes fielding improved Gray Eagle UAS in fiscal year 2018. The General Atomics Aeronautical Systems-build UAS will have a greater payload capability and nearly triple the range.

The Army also plans to deploy ground robots that can haul soldiers’ gear and have a common interface for Shadow and Gray Eagle AUS to give commanders greater flexibility and reduce the operational workload, Allyn said.

Just as the commercial world is seeing driverless car testing be carried out around the country, the Army is looking at using leader-follower self-driving capability to get more supplies to the field with fewer people. One systems, currently being tested, is set for production by 2024. It would allow for up to four self-driving following vehicles for every one manned vehicle.

“We are increasingly going to operate in an environment where we try to minimize the exposure of maned systems when we don’t need to,” Allyn said. “The early returns on this effort will tell you that manned-unmanned teaming isn’t something that just works in the air, it also works on the ground.”

To facilitate maneuvering, the Army is working on the concept of scalable control, where control of a UAS in flight could be transferred from soldier to soldier or unit to unit as the need arose.

On the ground robot side, the Army is developing the Common Robotic System-Individual, a miniature system that could carry a variety of sensors and “provide soldiers with an on-site capability that now resides only at higher command echolons,” he said.

The Route Clearance Interrogation System is intended to find and excavate deeply buried improvised explosive devices, which Allyn said “will increase soldier standoff and ability to neutralize IED threats.”

Allyn said “it’s going to take a combination of manned and unmanned [systems] to dominate an increasingly contested environment in all domains. Manned-unmanend teaming will continue to be the way of the future.”

Readiness

Readiness was a point of emphasis for Maj. Gen. Bob Marion, Program Executive Officer for Aviation, as he addressed the audience at Air Day.

“Readiness combined with our technical overmatch is what’s going to carry the day for us,” he said.

Marion said it’s important to further transition maintenance and readiness into the hands of soldiers and operational commanders, with a focus on defeating threats to ensure the security and survivability of the Army’s systems.

Commercial systems could even be used, he said, but pointed out that not all commercially available systems are usable, and some should only serve as a basis for future development.

“If it’s available in the commercial market place, it’s available to our threats, it’s available to everyone else,” said Marion. He went on to add that in some cases, looking to the commercial market place can be a starting point, but in other cases, the service has to go beyond what’s available in the commercial market place and further develop that technology so it has that overmatch of capabilities.

Other areas of importance for PEO Aviation are a higher level of commonality between the Gray Eagle and Shadow systems, he said, as well as a focus on interoperability to support manned-unmanned teaming. Marion said he would also like to see a re-architecture of the of the Universal Ground Control Station, and focus on future tactical UAS, including those with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities.

A Year of N99

Fiscal Year 2016 saw plenty of “quick wins” for OPNAV N99, the Navy’s unmanned systems office, set up just last year. Rear Adm. Robert P. Girrier, director of Unmanned Warfare Systems, highlighted a few in his address, and said more are pending in fiscal 2017.

Some of the quick wins that have been delivered for UAS include enhanced shipboard recovery for the Puma UAS, which typically is recovered in the water; and reprogrammable payloads for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator (BAMS-D) UAS. For UUVs, the quick win of the year was precision payload and delivery on REMUS-based systems.

For Fiscal Year 2017, Girrier said he hopes to see UUVs achieve longer endurance, gain recharge capability, and be capable of navigation in denied environments. For UAS, he wants to see them have the capability to confirm contacts.

Girrier said going unmanned is not just something to do out of happenstance, but for better productivity.

“It isn’t unmanned for unmanned’s sake, it’s unmanned when unmanned brings a comparative advantage to our work,” he said.

2016 was a good year for several other unmanned systems, including the MQ-25A Stingray and the LDUUV. Four companies were awarded contracts for concept refinement for the carrier-launched tanker vehicle, and its request for proposals release date is fiscal 2017.

Although the Navy took the LDUUV program management back in house, it is expected to have increased industry participation moving forward, with industry efforts set to include design, hull fabrication and testing.

“It’s designed that way,” Girrier said.

Some areas of focus for Girrier and his team going forward include distributed fleet architecture, a family of unmanned systems and the rapid prototyping and demonstration of unmanned systems to get them in the field, or air or water, faster.

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