During the more than 17 years of continuous warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have proven to pose the most serious threat to service members stationed in combat theaters. Mitigating this threat, as such, has emerged as a primary mission for engineering and design teams in both industry and the U.S. Department of Defense. 
 
Additionally, research teams are well aware of the utility UAS can provide in the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) realm. Perimeters of harbors and land-based installations can be monitored and kept clear of obstacles and potential threats — without placing human lives in harm’s way. 
 
While using robots on the battlefield for such purposes is not new, innovations are changing how they are used, increasing their effectiveness significantly and protecting the men and women in uniform who rely upon their protection in the process.
 
In both counter-IED and ISR missions, new developments are entailing the use of multiple systems operating on land, in the air, at sea, and below the sea’s surface. These divergent systems are communicating with each other, in order to identify and eliminate threats at greater ranges and with finer acuity than now available. 
 
Navy initiatives
 
The U.S. Navy’s initiatives include a joint project in which its separate air and sea warfare centers are using existing platforms to perform explosive ordnance disposal. 
 
Designers offer a couple of caveats. First, no one should expect the human element to be eliminated entirely. Fully autonomous systems likely are years away from operational status. Still, they believe the combination of multiple robotic systems and human controllers will revolutionize the way wars are fought. 
 
“[We] were able to integrate and connect both manned and unmanned assets under the sea, on the surface, in the air and on land that honestly were not designed to communicate with each other,” says Terry Haid, who directs undersea systems for General Dynamics Mission Systems. He briefed on the company’s experience at AUVSI’s Xponential conference and exhibition in Denver.
 
The company plans to move forward with what it demonstrated during last year’s ANTX (Advanced Naval Technology Exercise), conducted at Newport, Rhode Island; Keyport, Washington; and Panama City, Florida. The Navy intends to have a matrix of manned and unmanned systems operating collectively, with significant capabilities of independent function, by 2045, Haid says. 
 
“Central to their employment will be having this distribution-netted collaborative arch, [for] command and control,” Haid says. 
 
Essentially, operators would tell the devices where to go and what to do. They then would go do it, with as little human interaction as necessary. 
 
During ANTX ‘18, scheduled for August, plans included the use of the same off-the-shelf systems as last year. Divergent systems would again include the Bluefin-21 and smaller SandShark UUVs, and the Blackwing UAV, as well as other systems. The Bluefins are essentially the same vehicles used to search the Indian Ocean for remnants of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared in July 2014. They are capable of launching the SandSharks, which would carry surveillance payloads and be programmed for specific aspects of a given operation. Also, Hammerhead launch canisters would propel small drones built by AeroVironment. 
 
Getting all of these divergent platforms to operate together was a daunting task, but they completed it nonetheless.
 
“The team did it in eight months. It was unusual to pull it together that quickly. A lot of credit goes to the engineers involved,” Haid says. “This year’s demonstration will continue to emphasize command-and-control aspects of the actual vehicles themselves.” 
 
Special attention will be paid to the aspects of how these operations would be conducted, “getting back to how do you plan these missions properly — starting up at the theater commander level all the way down to the captain on a submarine or surface ship,” Haid says. 
 
Each piece of equipment should be able to receive data and disseminate it as efficiently as possible. Undersea docking stations — Haid refers to them as “underwater 7-Elevens” — would serve as communications conduits among different underwater vehicles. Perhaps buoys would be able to go up and down from the docking stations. Everything would serve to “talk” to operations centers on vessels and ashore. 
 
Engineers and developers also want to know how autonomous these systems can be, if there are ways to improve energy efficiency beyond what batteries now can provide and would there be assurances that cyber security is as tight as possible. 
 
“How will they react when they find something in a command that doesn’t seem right? Are the algorithms in place? Are they getting smarter? Are there other technologies besides batteries [for power]?” says Haid. “We [incorporated] cyber security in all the equipment we built. We’ll emphasize [it] in manned and unmanned assets across several domains.”

A Bluefin SandShark small UUV takes part in the exercise ANTX 2017. Photo: Bluefin Robotics
 
Counter-IED challenges
 
For the counter-IED mission, researchers at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Maryland, face several challenges. They want to use multiple unmanned systems to improve the chances of finding explosive devices before they can harm personnel. Equally important, though, they have to convince the ordnance-disposal community that their system can help them do their job better.
 
Different military communities, such as aviation and EOD, have tendencies to approach their jobs parochially and often resist help from the outside. Furthermore, they too are trying to determine the boundary at which human interaction becomes absolutely necessary.
 
Ordnance-disposal robots have been in use for a while now. Connecting them to other robotic systems and having them communicate with each other is newer.
 
“An EOD robot is like … a radio-controlled car. You’re directing everything it does,” says Stephen Kracinovich, director of autonomous systems strategies at the Air Warfare Center at Patuxent River. “As we move forward, we’re adding more automatic functionality. But in the end, [with] a suspected IED, a human has to be a [remote] operator.”
 
A key issue they face is latency, the time lag between when an operator issues a command and the robot implements it.
 
Getting multiple systems to work together involves the use of network radios. Like cell phones, these radios broadcast a signal, look for something to connect with it, and connect autonomously. As the number of systems grows, each would be able to communicate within the network through physical, electrical and logical interfaces. 
 
A Northrop Grumman Fire Scout unmanned helicopter would carry a robustly constructed 285-pound Joint Modular Intermodal Container (JMIC) to a desired location, which would carry the ground robots. It also would be capable of providing the low latency and high bandwidth necessary to allow communications at distances of up to 50 miles.
 
Potential line-of-sight issues would be addressed by incorporating the JMIC’s communications payload. In time, once a mission is complete, the Fire Scout could retrieve the JMIC and its cargo. This job would be harder than the initial delivery, however, because location and orientation of the robot would be a variable. The Fire Scout would first have to find the robot while hovering, under brownout conditions. 
 
While ground and airborne unmanned vehicles are conducting EOD missions currently, each are being operated by aviators and ordnance-disposal teams individually. Under the system the Patuxent River team is developing, this would change. 
 
“When we combine it, it will be a single mission-commander station,” Kracinovich says. 
 
The humans who now serve as vehicle operators would become mission commanders. Platforms would manage themselves, while humans manage the missions.
 
Because the program is experimental, there is no funding in place for developing a version intended for quick delivery to the fleet, Kracinovich says. Should funding become available, he says they could produce a functional and field-worthy system within a year. 
 
Accepting technology
 
The next step would entail getting the EOD community to accept it, says Carl Fahrner, a project engineer, who also briefed attendees at Xponential in Denver. He and Kracinovich have been involved with UAS development long enough to witness initial institutional hesitance as it evolves into acceptance and innovation. 
 
“It’s hard for a Navy team to operate one way they’ve done for years and then change,” Fahrner says. “When we started with UAS at Pax River, people thought of them as toys. That’s probably what would happen with the EOD community. They’ll be suspicious and want it to prove itself.”
 
The acceptance process likely will become easier as the project evolves, Kracinovich says. They presently are working on incorporation of more autonomous functionality into the AEODRS (advanced explosive ordnance disposal robotic systems) program. 
 
Presently, the mission has to wait until the air vehicle is in place at the proper altitude. 
 
“But if you start adding autonomous functionality to the robot, it will be able to navigate to the IED. In the long run, the air vehicle will be able to pass information along to the robot — so that the robot has its path [to the IED] figured out,” Kracinovich says. 
 
Air assets assigned to the mission, be they Fire Scouts or other UAS, also would be able to use their electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors to survey areas for the presence of enemy insurgents, Fahrner says. 
 
“If they see people coming … [the UAS could begin to] load back onto the aircraft and take off,” Fahrner says. 
 
The capability could be tweaked to expand to other domains, Kracinovich says. 
 
“Any mission you can envision, it would be useful — not just EOD,” Kracinovich says.
 
“We’re purposely trying to knock down doors that are difficult, and then give [the technology away to stakeholders within the Navy and the other armed forces] so that they can use it,” Fahrner says. 

Below: A UAS launches from a Multi-Utility Tactical Transport vehicle during the Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX) 2017 at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California. Photo: U.S. Navy/John F. Williams