The US Navy has a new system that translates human battle plans into instructions that autonomous aircraft can understand and follow.
The system’s purpose is to make mission planning simpler for human operators by allowing them to communicate more easily. It lets operators focus their efforts on objectives instead of translating plans into acceptable formats for specific aircraft.
The Navy anticipates it will make autonomous aircraft easier to incorporate into the fleet.
The Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executives Munitions, which oversees naval weapons and strike capabilities, said on Tuesday that the service had successfully demonstrated the new Collaborative Autonomy Mission Planning tool, or CAMP. In a new release, officials said CAMP was shown off during a maritime environment test at Point Mugu Sea range in California earlier this month.
During the exercise, CAMP was connected to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.’s MQ-20 Avenger uncrewed combat aerial vehicle, which has been used as a test “loyal wingman” aircraft in the US Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The Navy demonstrated the entire process, from developing the mission plan to sending it to the Avenger and reviewing the results.
“CAMP is about making autonomy more usable by integrating into mission environments with both manned and unmanned platforms,” Capt. Todd Keith, program manager of the Strike Planning and Execution Systems team under the PAEM, said, per the release.
This demonstration showed how current mission planning can be directly connected to autonomous aircraft, he added.
“That can reduce the burden on our operators, improve interoperability and help bring collaborative autonomy closer to operational use,” Keith said.
When human operators plan out missions, they have to consider the individual roles and duties of the different aircraft and systems involved. They face challenges in translating those plans to autonomous platforms that require specific formats to process information and execute missions. Similarly, there are roadblocks in the back-and-forth communication between the operator and autonomous aircraft.
The Navy said CAMP addresses those problems, translating the plans and creating a common way for planners and autonomous aircraft to communicate. The system builds on the Navy’s Experimental Platform for Intelligence Combat effort, which has been focused on how uncrewed aircraft and systems can operate with humans and on their own.
Like other services, the Navy has been exploring how it can use autonomous aircraft and systems more. Those efforts include naval aviation and uncrewed aerial systems, as well as surface and undersea vessels. Service officials have prioritized building out these capabilities, which they expect to be necessary in future fights.
Last week, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a conference that the future joint force will need to adapt to new threat environments where autonomous systems and uncrewed capabilities are in heavy use.
“We have to transition the joint force to be prepared to fight and win our future wars by generating and delivering lethality at scale with an agile, optimized, high-low mix of combat capabilities to give the young members of the 2.8 million-member all-volunteer joint force the tools that they need before they need them,” he said.
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