As he noted, “until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don\u2019t know how to react because it seems so ethereal,” and while that is unlikely in the streets of America (for now),\u00a0Defense One’s Patrick Turner writes\u00a0<\/a>that\u00a0after nearly two decades of war against technologically unsophisticated foes, the Army Research Lab is reorienting to counter China and Russia<\/strong>\u00a0– with distributed bot-swarms and an internet-of-battlefield things…<\/p>\n The Army Research Lab is turning more\u00a0<\/strong>of its attention to fighting land wars against far more technologically sophisticated adversaries than it has in the past several decades. In the coming months, the Lab will fund new programs related to highly (but not fully) autonomous drones and robots that can withstand adversary electronic warfare operations. The Lab will also fund new efforts to develop battlefield communications and sensing networks that perform well against foes with advanced electronic warfare capabilities, according to Philip Perconti, who\u00a0became the director\u00a0<\/a>of the Lab in\u00a0June.<\/p>\n After nearly two decades of war against determined but technologically unsophisticated foes in the Middle East,\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0Army tech has, in some ways, fallen behind that of competing states,<\/strong>\u00a0according to a May\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0from the Center for Strategic and International Studies on\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0Army\u00a0modernization.<\/p>\n For instance, Russia has invested heavily in anti-access \/ area denial technologies meant to keep\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0forces out of certain areas.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\u201cThere are regions in Donbass where no electromagnetic communications\u2014including radio, cell phone, and television\u2014work,\u201d says the\u00a0CSIS<\/span>\u00a0report. In the coming months, the Army Research Lab will set forth on new research programs to counter these A2\/AD<\/span>\u00a0systems.\u00a0<\/strong>One thrust will be equipping drones and other autonomous systems with bigger brains and better networking so that they can function even when an enemy jams their ability to radio back to a human controller for direction. That\u2019s the idea behind the\u00a0Distributed and Collaborative Intelligent Systems and Technology<\/a>program, which will experiment with robots packed with much more onboard\u00a0processing.<\/p>\n \n\u201cAutonomy will play a big role\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0in future Army concepts of operation, Perconti said. \u201cAnd it has to be able to function within this contested environment\u2026That\u2019s what\u00a0ARL<\/span>\u00a0is thinking about. More than one network, working together, with as much processing as possible on the\u00a0node.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The amount of onboard processing should be sufficient to allow the drone to be highly independent. It would still call home (Perconti, like his peers across the Pentagon, sees no possibility that the\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0military would allow a robots to kill without a human saying yes.) But the dialogue between the drone and the operator would much more closely resemble an exchange between a commander and soldier, and less a human steering a\u00a0thing.<\/p>\n Perconti said\u00a0future Army drones and robots of all types should \u201cbe able to function to provide not raw data but information, and, in a sense, decisions about what needs to happen on the battlefield. When you don\u2019t have bandwidth, when you\u2019re under cyber attack, when you\u2019re being jammed. That\u2019s the problem we\u2019re trying to\u00a0address.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The Lab will tackle questions such as: when can autonomous systems come together to deliver effects and then disperse? How do you integrate autonomous robots into a war-fighting\u00a0command?<\/p>\n A second program called the\u00a0Internet of Battlefield Things<\/a>\u00a0seeks to put to military use \u00a0\u201cthe research that\u2019s going on in the commercial space\u201d on distributed sensors and Internet-connected\u00a0devices.<\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0CSIS<\/span>\u00a0report says that United States already enjoys asymmetrical advantage over adversaries like China and Russia in the way it deploys \u00a0sensors and networks to maintain a view of the battlefield, or situational awareness. But that\u2019s also part of the problem: \u201cRecognizing this threat, the Russians have made targeting and countering\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0situational awareness systems a high priority of its battlefield [electronic warfare] activities, necessitating co-united\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0investment to address and stay ahead of Russian counters,\u201d the report\u00a0says.<\/p>\n The challenge for the\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0Army now is to rethink battlefield sensor networks in a way that acknowledges that rapidly advancing commercial capabilities are eroding\u00a0U.S.<\/span>advantage. The\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0needs an \u201cunderstanding of the knowledge gaps are, the voids,\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>says\u00a0Perconti.<\/p>\n What exactly is an Internet of Battlefield Things?\u00a0<\/strong>The program announcement describes it as a group of largely autonomous sensors or even robotic parts (actuators) and robots \u201ccapable of adapting to acquire and analyze data necessary to predict behaviors\/activities, and effectuate the physical environment;\u00a0self-aware, continuously learning, autonomous, and autonomic<\/u><\/strong>, where the things interact with networks, humans, and the\u00a0environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Perconti said he expects\u00a0ARL<\/span>\u00a0to announce contract awards for both programs later this year,\u00a0allowing them to begin in earnest in fiscal year\u00a02018.<\/strong><\/p>\n *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n Fully-automated, self-directed battlefield drones? What could possibly go wrong?\u00a0Especially with Russia deploying Terminator 2-style fighting vehicles…<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/user3303\/imageroot\/2017\/07\/16\/20170711_rbokillers.jpg\")
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\n\u201cElectronic warfare is the single largest killer of Ukrainian systems by jamming either the controller or\u00a0GPS<\/span>\u00a0signals.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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