Amphibious assault ship USS America test-fires rolling airframe missile launcher to intercept remote- controlled drone during exercise to test ship’s defense capability (U.S. Navy/Demetrius Kennon) Swarm drones could easily take on the appearance of the U.S Navy’s Low-Cost Robotic Swarms in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology (LOCUST),3 an inexpen- sive, fixed-wing platform that is individ- Offensive Maneuver ually tube-launched and autonomously joins a swarm once airborne. Alterna- By Jules Hurst tively, ground-based swarm combatants might resemble miniature tanks like the Estonian ADDER weaponized ground vehicle.4 For the purposes of this article, or many years, military scientists of horse archers of the Asian steppe though, assumptions need to be made. have contemplated the advent of against less flexible foes.2 Whatever the Future swarm combatants will likely be swarming tactics as an evolution source of inspiration, few authors move F severable into two broad categories: fire within maneuver warfare, and futurists beyond the abstract employment of support swarms and maneuver swarms. have contemplated the execution of the robotic swarms. To fully explore swarm Fire support swarm combatants will tactics by cooperative teams of semi- utility in fire and maneuver, swarms carry one-time-use warheads that are autonomous drones.1 These projections should be inserted into the tactical con- changed modularly to deal with a variety expound on strengths demonstrated cepts of today—chiefly, the five forms of targets (area, point, soft-skinned, by hive-minded organisms such as bees of offensive maneuver recognized under hardened, airborne, and others). These or ants, which work cooperatively to Army doctrine. kamikaze-styled drones could be airborne defeat larger invaders through non-hier- or ground-based. They might be capable archal communications. Other swarm Swarm Combatants of independently recognizing enemy theorists reference the deadly effective- Much of the reluctance to begin targets through image classification or ness of the ephemeral, loose formations theorizing about specific swarm tactics need assistance from human controllers. stems from the absence of a clear devel- They will likely be individually inexpen- opmental path in the technology. No sive compared to many modern weapons one knows what swarm combatants will Captain Jules “Jay” Hurst, USAR, previously of war, including the precision-guided served as the Operations Officer of the USSOCOM look like or what their capabilities will munitions they may replace. Fire support Analytic Innovation and Technology Unit and be, and many prototype pathways exist. Senior Intelligence Analyst of 1st Ranger Battalion. swarms probably will be initially deployed JFQ 87, 4th Quarter 2017 Hurst 105 Finally, robotic maneuver swarms may offer the best platform to execute reconnaissance pull tactics, a subset of Auftragstaktik or mission-type tactics.5 In recon pull, commanders order units to conduct reconnaissance along the length of the enemy front to determine where to mass forces for the battle’s decisive operation and attempt penetra- tions or envelopments. A swarm could be particularly effective at this because of its potential to collect big data in real time. Without pause, swarm combatants could relay situation reports faster than any squad leader on a radio. Every soldier may be a sensor, but each swarm com- batant will be a sensor platform with an infallible memory.6 A shot fired by or at a swarm combatant provides a data point Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle designed to provide multiple surveillance, reconnaissance data, that, when aggregated, could help the and battlefield damage assessment missions launches from amphibious dock landing ship USS swarm (or human analysts and operators) Comstock, February 25, 2011 (U.S. Navy/Joseph M. Buliavac) determine the mass, density, and disposi- tion of enemy forces along its front. With by conventional field artillery and air as- orbit the battlefield like flocks of angry proper processing, this swarm data could sets, but in the future, semi-autonomous birds. provide commanders with a visualization systems specifically designed for this Maneuver swarms will likely be of enemy activity on the battlefield in real purpose may take this mission from them. more durable than their fire support time and improve their cognitive ability Something akin to a mini–mobile mortar, counterparts and exercise greater coop- to perceive a battlefield filled with tens of self-propelled howitzer, high-flying drone eration with human combatants on the thousands of robots, human beings, and aircraft, or a “truck with rockets” could battlefield. Unlike fire support swarms, vehicles. autonomously move forward with ma- maneuver swarms will be persistent and Imagine the power of thousands of neuvering elements to deploy responsive capable of multiple uses. A maneuver drones gathering combat data in real time fire support swarms. swarm might resemble a microcosm of and the rapidity with which weak points Theoretically, fire support swarm the combined arms forces that have made in the enemy line could be calculated combatants will be less expensive than up militaries since the mid-20th century. and exploited with a robotic coup d’oeil. precision-guided munitions, capable of They will reflect the synergistic mix of ca- Then imagine how quickly these same targeting without human intervention pabilities found there, but they may field drones could concentrate in an attack on through object recognition and able to air and ground assets in drastically dif- these points. The potential for a trained loiter overhead until needed by maneuver ferent ratios than are common in today’s swarm to observe, orient, decide, and act forces. Their largest advantage will be nu- Brigade Combat Teams. faster than human combatants in this sce- merical. Modern air defense systems are Robotic maneuver swarms lack the nario is frightening.7 When swarms face not designed to intercept large quantities biggest inhibitor of human combatants— one another, the speed of the swarm’s of small projectiles, and current missile fear. This apathy to casualties would coup d’oeil—determined by algorithmic systems would be overwhelmed if tasked prevent them from having their maneuver efficiency and processing power—may with intercepting a fire support swarm restricted by enemy fires, and their ability decide the outcome of battles, and if consisting of dozens of munitions. to field large numbers of swarm combat- robots ever become the military’s primary Maneuver swarm drones will resemble ants offers them a resilience against losing maneuver arm, a force’s mobile comput- modern air forces and armies on a mi- combat effectiveness unknown to human ing capabilities may be a key component croscale. Miniature quadcopters armed combatants. Maneuver swarms consisting in evaluating its overall combat power. with light machine guns might act as at- largely of aerial robots would also pos- tack aviation platforms, and scaled-down sess the ability to compress into a space The Role of the Air Force infantry fighting vehicles will imitate unimaginable by ground-based maneuver and Naval Aviation modern armor and mechanized infantry. units because of their ability to stack ve- Air Force and Navy assets will play criti- Flights of fixed-wing swarms will provide hicles in the air at different altitudes. cal roles in the delivery, sustainment, persistent autonomous air support as they and cyber protection of drone swarms 106 Joint Doctrine / Robotic Swarms in Offensive Maneuver JFQ 87, 4th Quarter 2017 on the land and in the sea and air, but article, maneuver swarms function under incapable of massing at a decisive point they will also have significant roles multi-Service control. with swiftness. Fire support swarms with in fielding and controlling maneuver Capability Assumptions. Autonomous straightforward attack missions may be swarms in land armies. Fixed-wing swarm technology only exists in nascent less reliant on intra-swarm communica- systems offer numerous advantages over stages, but to explore the use of swarms tions and should be less vulnerable to their rotary-wing counterparts in endur- in offensive forms of maneuver, we need electronic warfare. For this article, we as- ance, speed, and payload capacity due to make projections regarding their future sume that most future swarm combatants to efficiencies inherent in their aero- capabilities. will possess the means to communicate nautical design. Accordingly, fixed-wing Future swarm combatants will possess mid-battle, at least to the point where drones should make up a large portion sufficient artificial intelligence to oper- they will be able to intermittently com- of future maneuver and fire support ate semi-autonomously after receiving municate through burst communications swarms. Unless ceded to the Army, initial guidance from human operators. or while in close proximity to each other. these armed, robotic fixed-wing plat- Maneuver or fire support swarms should Both maneuver and fire support forms will be controlled by Air Force or be able to process tasks of the following swarms will be vulnerable to cyber attacks naval aviation, necessitating that both complexity without human control: by state and nonstate actors. The cyber Services further integrate their mission components of every Service will need command of these swarms directly with Attack all adult males within a 500-meter to make considerable effort to minimize land forces. radius