Swarm Theory - in the long run, will it work or not?

[Michael_Denmark]

- this is a hypothetical question related to a future millitary system being developed these years.

***

Thoughts about the swarm-theory and a video like this as inspiration.

MIT Indoor, Multi-Vehicle Platform: UAV Search and Track - (Aug 06)

In the video we see two potential future war robotic systems, in this baby stage of their development.

***

Imagine a human ground unit platoon, infantry, with high morale, with plenty of the right weapons against other human infantry and tanks etcetera, holding a small 100 * 100 meter perimeter of a defensive front-line in flat terrain with light tree cover and few scattered one-level buildings.

***

Now, imagine that this human infantry unit is attacked by between 300 and 500 of these bots in a swarm formation at night. The bots are actually deployed in layers with around 1 meter spacings in all directions to the next bot.

Imagine every of these UAVs in the swarm being equipped with precision weaponry systems, non-lethal and lethal systems.


***

Imagine that the human ground unit has costed a lot of time, money and energy to construct; from its first day in boot camp to the real thing at this defensive front-line perimeter.

Imagine the bots (UAVs) have costed only a tiny fraction of what the human soldiers have costed. In both time, money and energy.

***

So, even if the human infantry unit should be able to reject a night attack from above - with the end results of like 20-30 human soldiers dead and or badly wounded and all bots destroyed - Will a strategy of using these small weapons - in your opinion - against classical human infantry work in the long run or not?

What do you think?


---
About swarm theory

[com_kieffer]

By the time a military is able to field small drones in large enough numbers to be able to use them as an independent offensive tool the equipment of front line troops will have changed radically.

The main hurdles towards making such an attack possible in my opinion are :

developping precise instruments that can return the relative positions of all the elements in the swarm to avoid collisions and keep an optimal formation. This might be done with a new generation of more precise GPS systems, or radio location techniques or something else but it is a necessary hurdle to overcome before the system can be viable.

The second problem is creating sensors that are small enough to fit on such vehicles whilst having the precision to actually be useful a range.

The final problem is developping weapons small enough to fit on those vehicles, with little or no recoil so as not to send it flying after every shot but still have enough destructive power to kill or incapacitate an enemy soldier.

All these technologies though are not exclusively reserved to airborne offensive vehicles. If a small targetting system can spot humans from afar a similar system can probably also spot the swarm before it get very close.
So why not imagine a small defensive turret like weapon equipped with the same weapons that are deployed on the vehicles in the swarm specifically made to destroy swarms with precise fire.


So basically my answer is : i don't know. The birth of attack helicopters presented a challenge to the tank. Some said it would kill off the tank but 30 years later the tank is still an itegral part of our armies.
We can't predict what the advent of swarm systems will do to nature of the soldier in a ground battle. We're limited to speculation and personally i believe that wars will always be fought with real men. Robots and automated systems will only ever be a support for the soldier, they'll never take his place.

[[R-DEV]MAINERROR]

Now based on the situation you've described I would not use drones again. A well trained and equipped human unit might do way more havok than any unmanned robotic unit in my opinion.

But a question about the situation you've described. Are those UAV's autonomic acting and reacting units or man-controlled? If they are man-controlled you have to think about what might happen if the personell controlling these UAV's get killed in a bomb-attack for example.

I also don't think that futur wars will be fought by robots. No robot will ever be able to act like a human being just because no robot will ever be able to think like a human. I'm talking about ethics and so on, just what defines a human being.

EDIT: There was one very important sentence in this article about the swarm theory. "No ant sees the big picture.". Also the swarm doesn't. A human instead does and a swarm of humans does that even more effectively.

[Solid Knight]

I'd be worried about jamming technologies and EMP weapons. Consider, if your enemies built a swarm what type of weapon would you suddenly want to produce? Probably something that would fry a mass amount of those things.

[[R-MOD]Mongolian_dude]

Well, i think you've answered your own question Mikey.
The average modern soldier costs thousands of dollars to equip and train. Let us not forget the value of human life, as this is paramount also.
Considering these Man-hacks cost less in every way, yet manage to score a highly positive Kill/Cost ratio is self-evidence that the strategy of using these small weapons against classical human infantry work in the long.

However, if this became a persistent threat, im sure air burst countermeasures would not be hard to produce and field.


...mongol...

[[R-DEV]MAINERROR]

Well but here is a legit question then. How do you tell the UAV's which one is the enemy and which one not? And the most important question is. How do you tell them to differ if it's an enemy using a technique to look like a friendly unit for the UAV?

Swarm Theory using UAV's are good for information gathering for example, ye but I really don't see how they would be able to differ freind an foe.

[com_kieffer]

That's why IFF interogators have been installed on a large number of weapons systems. Nothing stops you from equipping each soldier with an IFF sytem.

[[R-DEV]MAINERROR]

THe problem with IFF systems on foot-soldiers is that a) they can be reused by enemy units if the IFF wearing units got captured and b) they can break.

Now a human being can differ between a friend ond foe to a certain extent but a fully autonomic UAV can't. Is the IFF unit broken for any reason than that soldier is most likely gonna die in an UAV attack.

Other major factors are jammers and EMP's.

[com_kieffer]

The challenge a UAV would have to get over to identify a soldier as being from one faction or another are the same challenges a soldier would have to overcome :

Visual identification, finding a characteristic element that can effectively distinguish the soldier, a camo pattern, a particular weapon, a patch, ...

The only challenge is to write a code that could do all those things effectively.

[fludblud]

hehe, this reminds me of the Darksword air to air UCAV, revealed in 2006 but still under development. it fits perfectly with the swarm theory.



imagine hundreds of these things in an air superiority battle, each partially controlled by a pilot on the ground, if yours gets destroyed, all the pilot has to do is assume control of another one on standby flying a pre determined flightpath and get back into the action.