Another step towards a whole lot of really small Bolos is announced by the DoD:
In one of the most significant tests of autonomous systems under development by the Department of Defense, the Strategic Capabilities Office, partnering with Naval Air Systems Command, successfully demonstrated one of the world’s largest micro-drone swarms at China Lake, California. The test, conducted in October 2016 and documented on Sunday’s CBS News program “60 Minutes”, consisted of 103 Perdix drones launched from three F/A-18 Super Hornets. The micro-drones demonstrated advanced swarm behaviors such as collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying, and self-healing. …
“Due to the complex nature of combat, Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said SCO Director William Roper. “Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.”
The demonstration is one of the first examples of the Pentagon using teams of small, inexpensive, autonomous systems to perform missions once achieved only by large, expensive ones. Roper stressed the department’s conception of the future battle network is one where humans will always be in the loop. Machines and the autonomous systems being developed by the DoD, such as the micro-drones, will empower humans to make better decisions faster.
Technically, I wonder if they attempt to have a composite brain, as implied, or if each individual simply follows a set of simple rules, as has been used in other such projects. A potential problem with the latter approach is that why the simple set of rules works in Nature with a flock of birds, I cannot think of an analogous situation for a combat situation. The approach might be a dead-end, or a subservient part of the greater solution.
Socially? No reactions at the anti-killer robot sites, but no doubt it’ll come. Lawfare notes the news release and that it’s going to be an important development.
