Future attack drone swarms over Ukraine may come in the form of first-person-shooter drones produced in the country, or the new platforms Western defense companies are putting into the mix. But it’s also possible they’ll be a combination of both—old and new drones working together with minimal human interaction.
That’s the vision of a Ukrainian startup called Swarmer, which is pioneering what could be the next evolution of drone warfare: software that can work with virtually any platform. The technology would make a do-it-yourself drone swarm possible, and the swarm as a whole would be able to detect targets and plan operations faster than a human. Serhii Kupriienko, the founder of Swarmer, told Defense One that Ukrainians on the front lines using his company’s software have already conducted more than 70,000 operations. The software already helps on-the-ground teams operate far faster, bringing the number of operators needed to conduct drone missions down from nine people to three: a navigator, a mission planner, and a drone operator.
Ukraine has produced a highly trained force of first-person UAV drone pilots, and their expertise is sought by other militaries around the world, including the United States’. But Swarmer’s software shows that future drone swarms could mostly pilot themselves, reducing barriers to entry and freeing up operators to do other tasks.
That also means future drone operations may not require highly trained drone pilots, just regular soldiers who can outline basic mission parameters. The swarm, sharing and analyzing data as a group, would figure out the hard stuff.
“Computers can collaborate and can work with each other in a much more efficient way and on a much wider scale than humans,” he said.
The drones linked together via Swarmer’s software can “exchange the targets, or they can choose the appropriate payload. Different drones can use and carry different kinds of payloads for different targets,” Kupriienko told Defense One. “They can execute complicated scenarios like [target] discovery, and they can give you visual confirmation of the damage [after the strike.] It could be done by the group of drones.”
That would enable the drone swarm to learn and adapt to enemy countermeasures more quickly.
Human pilots are still a part of the process, but they play a hands-off, supervisory role. And the software can be incorporated into a wide variety of platforms, which is critical to Ukraine’s battlefield success, Kupriienko said, because an adversary can more easily take down a drone if they know what specific kind to look for.
Now, he said, he’s looking to incorporate the software into larger drones, and refurbished aircraft that have been modified for unmanned operation. But larger drones and planes present a different set of complications. And in the meantime, he’s looking to greatly expand the number of drones that can participate in a single swarm into the hundreds.
This is where Swarmer’s work really shows a future path for drone warfare, Kupriienko said. For instance, bringing in ground drones that can communicate information to flying swarms in a way that has so far been missing from most operations.
“The next big thing is combined arms operations. So we are integrated with different kinds of drones, and we are developing scenarios and applications for combining arms operations with unmanned ground vehicles,” including robotic grenade launchers.
Sam Bendett, an adviser in Russia studies at the Virginia-based research organization CNA, told Defense One he’s seeing both Russia and Ukraine use more unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs, for actual assaults.
“Often, a small platform with a mine is sent first as a kamikaze vehicle to destroy fortifications or damage positions ahead of an infantry attack. There are also cases of combat UGVs armed with machine guns that conduct assaults ahead of infantry and often in cooperation with FPVs and tactical quadcopters. Several Ukrainian units like Khartia have used combat UGVs to destroy Russian positions and take Russian soldiers prisoner.”
Still, ground drones suffer from the same drawbacks as every other robot on the battlefield. “If they are using radio channels, then their signals can be potentially jammed. If they are commanded via fiber-optic cables, then the cable can be damaged or cut, disabling the vehicle. The key is to establish a communication between the UGV and the operator that can be impervious to physical or digital countermeasures. Often, UGVs are assisted in their command and control by an overhead UAV that can guide the vehicle to target. We are witnessing this in both Russian and Ukrainian units.”
The U.S. military is pursuing a wide variety of drone swarm concepts, some of which were on display last month at an Army T-REX exercise in Indiana. One of the big lessons to come out of that is that “autonomy” is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The more sensor data any particular drone has to work with—whether from other drones, satellites, infantry or ground vehicles—the better they will perform, especially in concert with one another.
Speaking at a recent industry event in Washington, D.C., Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael said lessons from Ukraine are helping the U.S. military rethink long-held positions on what can and cannot be automated, as well as the role of space-based communications.
“We’ve seen what space communications can provide in terms of communicating all around the world, the low latency and high bandwidth,” he said. “We’ve seen drones swarming together, acting in coordination, which has changed how we think.”
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