ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Unmanned systems on the battlefield are an inevitable consequence of the rise in lethal, precision weapons that make human survival unlikely, said former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work.

Speaking April 24 at a Mad Scientist Conference in Austin, Texas, Work said the U.S. won’t be able to recruit or afford a force large enough to fight in future megacity combat and won’t be able to protect soldiers who could be deployed.

The Army is working internally and with industry to greatly expand warfighting capabilities, with one planned option to have every vehicle operate either under the control of a soldier or autonomously, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley says.

“Every vehicle needs to have the capability to be robotic,” Milley said at a Jan. 17 breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare. Having alternative fuel options, better protection options and lighter weight are also priorities, he said. A lighter vehicle has better strategic and tactical mobility.

Jan. 23, 2017

Federal civilians might be recruited to fill shortages of unmanned aerial systems pilots as the Army continues to expand use of the vehicles.

Final decisions have not been made, the Defense Department says in response to a Government Accountability Office report on personnel issues related to growing demand for unmanned systems to support combat operations.

The Army is refining and aligning its strategy to counter the unmanned aerial systems threat that is looming ever larger.

A recent 13-page, unclassified “strategy extract” focuses on countermeasures for UAS groups 1 through 3 on DoD’s scale of five UAS groups, the smaller systems that can’t easily be countered by integrated air and missile defense systems.

“As UAS have become smaller, slower and operate at lower altitudes, they have become more challenging to detect, identify, and defeat,” the extract says. “Technological advances have exacerbated these challenges.”