Unmanned Warrior 2016 concludes

The Royal Navy-hosted review of unmanned technologies which took place on the West Coast of Scotland concluded on October 20.

The skies above the island of Benbecula, a remote Scottish outpost in the Outer Hebrides, have been clear and calm in October allowing several dozens of the world’s experts to showcase their technologies during the two-week exercise.

They appeared to outnumber the local population when representatives from the U.S. Navy, led by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), joined colleagues from the Royal Navy and various industry and research organizations at Benbecula’s West Camp and Range Head to test unmanned aerial vehicles as part of the first-ever Unmanned Warrior exercise beginning October 8.

Unmanned Warrior is part of Joint Warrior, a semiannual United Kingdom-led training exercise designed to provide NATO and allied forces with a unique multi-warfare environment in which to prepare for global operations.

Capt. Beth Creighton, the U.S. team lead and command element for the exercise, said the various participants were examining unmanned capabilities in five mission areas: geospatial intelligence collection; mine countermeasures; intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance; anti-submarine warfare; and command and control.

Lt. Cmdr. Rollie Wicks, a member of the Secretary of the Navy’s Naval Innovation Advisory Council (NIAC), worked closely with the Royal Navy to demonstrate the Airborne Computer Vision (ACV), an ONR-funded semi-autonomous targeting system aboard a Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Wicks said the systems he’s operating will “affect future naval operations significantly.”

In just a few days after arriving in Benbecula, the U.S. and U.K. navies successfully enabled interoperability between coalition systems to share blue force tracking data and intelligence. The ACV system accurately detected and reported more than twice the number of vessels at sea than the human-only operated missions.

“This capability, with its rapid processing of imagery on board, should increase the speed of warfare significantly,” Wicks said. “The image is processed in seconds, rather than minutes after collection, and we’re generating all the information that is required to target a potential enemy combatant at sea. That’s a real game changer for the U.S. Navy.”

For Bronson Ignasio, of Boeing’s unmanned systems subsidiary, Insitu, the advances made during Unmanned Warrior are the result of years of learning the best practices for implementing unmanned and autonomous platforms on the battlefield, such as the Scan Eagle UAV.

“It all started in 2003, after the invasion,” Ignasio said. “Scan Eagle deployed with the Marines to Fallujah, Iraq where it played a critical role providing air support for troops on the ground and giving ground commanders real-time intelligence to make calls at the same time.”

“At first, Scan Eagle was a more tactical asset,” he said. “We were providing cover for squad-based elements going down the road knocking on doors and providing expanded situational awareness for the guys on the ground. Now, we’re looking for targets or conducting search and rescue operations, conducting simulated man overboard scenarios or looking for potential targets or threats to the battle group.”

For smaller companies, the exercise enables them to demonstrate technologies and capabilities in a larger setting alongside defense industry giants.

AutoNaut Ltd. is a micro company with only 10 employees. Dan Aldis, demonstrating the AutoNaut unmanned surface vehicle (USV), said it is designed to deliver persistent offshore data capture in support of anti-submarine warfare using a unique wave propulsion system. “Participation in Unmanned Warrior gives us the opportunity to work alongside larger partners in industry such as Boeing and QinetiQ,” Aldis said.

Cmdr. Peter Pipkin, the Royal Navy’s fleet robotics officer and the UK’s driving force for planning and coordination of Unmanned Warrior, said the unique gathering of international naval warfighters with unmanned system experts has been an environment conducive to considerable synergy.

“Where else can you harvest the diversity of technology and problem-solving approaches that each team brings to the maritime autonomy challenge?” Pipkin asked. “I witnessed the rapid evolution of unmanned systems in real-time as needs flowed from the fleet to scientists, to software engineers and back again, in days instead of months or even years. Our partnership with the U.S. Navy and ONR remains a cornerstone for the path ahead of us.”