Paul Scharre on Robot Swarms
On June 11, at the eighth annual Center for New American Security’s National Security Conference, Paul Scharre, F ellow and Project Director for the 20YY Warfare Initiative discussed the future of robotics in warfare to include the use of unmanned swarms, which have been discussed extensively here . The video (below) is thought-provoking, and worth watching in its entirety , but we've provided the highlights, especially as they relate to naval systems. He describes several naval scenarios, including the use of unmanned surface vehicles to disrupt small boat swarm attacks on larger combatants and UAV counter-swarms . He also proposes that unmanned missile barges could work in tandem with the U.S. Navy's fleet of guided missile destroyers are limited in magazine capacity for missile defen se. In the undersea realm, Scharre alludes to DARPA's Hydra project, in which unmanned vehicles would sit dormant on the sea floor until required to awaken f...