Department of Defense Announces Successful Micro-Drone Demonstration - Press Operations
Release No: NR-008-17 Jan. 9, 2017
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.
“I congratulate the Strategic Capabilities Office for this successful demonstration,” said Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who created SCO in 2012. “This is the kind of cutting-edge innovation that will keep us a step ahead of our adversaries. This demonstration will advance our development of autonomous systems.”
“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.
Originally designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering students, the Perdix drone was modified for military use by the scientists and engineers of MIT Lincoln Laboratory starting in 2013. Drawing inspiration from the commercial smartphone industry, Perdix software and hardware has been continually updated in successive design generations. Now in its sixth generation, October's test confirmed the reliability of the current all-commercial-component design under potential deployment conditions—speeds of Mach 0.6, temperatures of minus 10 degrees Celsius, and large shocks—encountered during ejection from fighter flare dispensers.
The “60 Minutes” segment also featured other new technology from across the Department of Defense such as the Navy’s unmanned ocean-going vessel, the Sea Hunter, and the Marine Corps’ Unmanned Tactical Control and Collaboration program.
As SCO works with the military Services to transition Perdix into existing programs of record, it is also partnering with the Defense Industrial Unit-Experimental, or DIUx, to find companies capable of accurately replicating Perdix using the MIT Lincoln Laboratory design. Its goal is to produce Perdix at scale in batches of up to 1,000.
A fact sheet about Perdix can be found here:
https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/Perdix%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
6 Comments
AeroMechanicalsays...Jesus, well that sound they make at the end is terrifying. Probably be great for "riot control."
Step two is presumably to get a hand-grenade's worth of explosives on each one and then be able to remotely assign them individual targets. Maybe just use facial recognition.
I surrender.
Digitalfiendsays...I thought the exact same - that sound at the end was unnerving.
PaybackIt's like the background music of every awesome horror movie ever. Kept waiting for the jump scare.
AeroMechanicalsays...I'm wondering if that noise is a design feature. I would assume that the ideal would be silent, if for no other reason it implies greater efficiency. Since they only have the one electric prop, I can't see why they would have to make that noise.
I think the props are either intentionally designed to make that whine or there is another bit on there making noise like the siren on a Ju-87 dive bomber. If so, that would imply that they are intended from the outset to be used as terror weapons.
In this case I don't think I have an issue with that. If you have a bunch of hostile folks holed up somewhere, and you can put the fear in them with these and thus make them surrender, that's fine. I just don't like to imagine the future when they have hours or days of endurance and they're used on civilian population centers, and that's surely the long term goal for little drone swarms like these.
I thought the exact same - that sound at the end was unnerving.
transmorphersays...They need an activation phrase - such as when a maniac angrily yells something about god being great in a particular language.
Then they could spread deploy them all over the place, and they would wait dormant until activated.
That would be a horror movie alright
a hand-grenade's worth of explosives on each one and then be able to remotely assign them individual targets. Maybe just use facial recognition.
I surrender.
siftbotUS FighterJets Deploying a Swarm of Drones has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims on that post.
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