A small unmanned aerial vehicle built by service academy cadets is shown here flying above ground. This type of small UAV was used by cadets and midshipmen from the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy, during a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-sponsored competition at Camp Roberts, California, April 23-25, 2017. During the competition, cadets and midshipmen controlled small UAVs in "swarm" formations to guard territory on the ground at Camp Roberts. (U.S. Air Force photo)
Drones have been used in conflicts across the globe and will play an even more important role in the future of warfare. But, the future of drones in combat will be different than what we have seen before.
The U.S. military can set itself apart from others by embracing autonomous drone warfare through swarming — attacking an enemy from multiple directions through dispersed and pulsing attacks. There is already work being done in this area: The U.S. military tested its own drone swarm in 2017, and the UK announced this week it would fund research into drone swarms that could potentially overwhelm enemy air defenses.
I propose we look to the amoeba, a single-celled organism, as a model for autonomous drones in swarm warfare. If we were to use the amoeba as this model, then we could mimic how the organism propels itself by changing the structure of its body with the purpose of swarming and destroying an enemy.
Russia's Khmeimim airbase in southwest Syria has increasingly become a target of regular attacks by armed fighters since New Year’s Eve, when a cadre of “radical Islamists” killed two Ministry of Defense personnel and completely destroyed seven aircraft in a brutal mortar bombardment. Though the Russians now deny the aviation losses, that strike represented one of the Russian military’s biggest debacles since the country became involved in Syria’s bloody civil war in 2015. But a more recent attack on Khmeimim introduced the MoD to a new technological threat — and Russia is not-so-subtly blaming it on the Department of Defense.
