The Pentagon wants to arm the American military with cheap disposable drones with potential for mass production. With such a request, the U.S. Department of Defense is primarily seeking help from commercial drone suppliers: earlier this week, the Defense Innovation Unit released a request for the development of unmanned aerial vehicles and also published the requirements for these systems.
"Recent conflicts have highlighted the asymmetric impact low-cost, one-way unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have on the modern battlefield," says project description issued by the DIU, and highlights that the American military must be able to employ "reliable, affordable, and adaptable" UAS platforms to deliver precision effects at extended ranges.
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The submissions from manufacturers must be submitted by October 14, with live flight demonstrations planned as early as around December this year, alongside evaluations. It is currently unknown for which branches of the U.S. military will be utilizing these systems, Air & Space Forces Magazine notes, nor if this project relates to the broader Replicator program, aimed at fielding "thousands of drones" across multiple domains.
"We seek a low-cost, ground-launched, unmanned aerial system that can carry a 10 kg payload (ideally 25+ kg) over 50 km (ideally 300+ km). The UAS should be capable of supporting high-speed, low-altitude, beyond line of sight flight operations in DDIL environments." The latter stands for disrupted, disconnected, intermittent, and low-bandwidth (DDIL) environments — the Pentagon wants the system to "execute its mission without continuous communication from an operator."
As for other criteria, the drones must be able to launch "quickly and expeditiously" from the ground, difficult to detect and track, navigate at low altitudes. The drone must carry a variety of payloads and those payloads to be easy to set up in the field.
Also, the manufacturer is expected to explain how its platform will carry out terminal guidance in under electronic suppression. In simple words, it means integrating technologies similar to the "machine vision" embraced by Ukrainian drone makers, allowing the drones to autonomously recognize the target with the help of AI learning. Overall, the drone should have intuitive software and be capable of integrating third-party components, in programming and hardware alike.
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