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Artikel aus dem Handelsblatt Journal Sicherheitspolitik und Verteidigungsindustrie vom 16.2.2024
How to build and deploy autonomous platforms faster
The mass-availability of low-cost, autonomous robotic systems creates completely new strategic challenges for defense forces. The world is witnessing this shift in the extensive usage of drones in Ukraine but none of this compares to what we will see in future conflicts with autonomous mass: platforms of different types and capabilities, being manufactured in hundreds of thousands at industrial scale and used in close coordination as swarms for ISR and effects in air-, land- and sea domains. The Replicator initiative of the US DoD is an example of a NATO ally to catch up with this new trend.
Autonomous robotic systems and software defined defense
The prerequisite for this concept to succeed is the ability to produce respective platforms at extremely low cost to allow their agile adaptation to mission specific requirements and their mass deployment and coordination. For this to happen, autonomous robotic systems architectures will have to mimic those in software defined industries like automation, automotive or telecommunication, which are characterized by the following tell-tale signs:
- Hardware architecture is standardized such that a common operating system can be used on all systems.
- The common operating system allows HW independent access to platform features and enables third parties to deploy applications across different hardware platforms.
- Networking protocols and interoperability standards are established so platforms can interwork and collaborate (DoD has started this with the RAS-A interoperability profiles).
- Onboard apps are the defining element of a platform’s mission capabilities and behavior.
Apps will perform navigation, sensor data analysis, target detection, identification and tracking in spectrum denied environments. The winning autonomous systems will be defined by the best onboard apps, not by their hardware.
Leveraging the western software engineering advantage
Fielding drones at this scale turns a drone problem into an autonomous computing problem: A myriad of devices need to communicate with each other, need to be continuously upgraded with new software and will need to undergo common operator training. Western companies have traditionally held the software advantage and autonomous robotics will be no different.
But it will require the defense customers and procurement organizations to re-think how they approach drones, shifting from a hardware to a software focus. Counter-intuitively this will even ease the core concern of hardware: Supply chain. With all drones running the same software, the outputs of different manufacturers can be pooled into one large fleet.
