The US Air Force has awarded a $50 million contract to Anduril Industries to provide Altius 600 drones for Air Force Special Operations Command, advancing plans to turn the MQ-9 Reaper into a drone-launching “mothership.” Under the Adaptive Airborne Enterprise program, Reapers would deploy swarms of smaller drones to act as sensors, intelligence collectors, and communications relays across a wider battlespace, according to Sandboxx. The effort marks a major step toward distributed, unmanned warfare, highlighting the growing role of drone swarms and networked systems in future military operations. They write:
In the wildly popular science-fiction book series The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells, the title character is supported by a swarm of drones that he controls to serve as communications relays, sensors, targeters, recon and attack vessels, and anything else he might need. Whereas that series is still wholly fiction, here in reality we might be one step closer to this capability through a new $50 million U.S. Air Force acquisition program.
The $50 million contract was awarded to Anduril Industries to produce Altius 600 drones for Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) in an effort that could transform the MQ-9 Reaper into a “drone-launching mothership.” This type of capability takes what is referred to as an “air-launched effects” (ALE) mission – in which a manned aircraft launches drones – and transforms it, in effect, into an unmanned ALE mission. […]
These Altius 600 drones, once launched from a Reaper, would then collectively serve as a deployable grid of sensors used to find targets, provide battlefield intelligence, or act as communications relays for special operations forces in the field. Presumably, the Altius will be too small to carry their own weapons systems for attacking targets, but other armed Reapers or even manned aircraft could fill that role and act on targeting information.
Meanwhile, the Reaper mothership that launched the smaller drones would act as the mobile command and control center for its own drone swarm. The Reaper itself would presumably be directed remotely from some forward operating base in theater by AFSOC or other trained personnel. It is a true distributed command-and-control network, scalable to the needs of the mission, and a capability that would be well-suited for denied areas inaccessible to human troops and piloted-aircraft.
The AFSOC A2E program, when and if it becomes fully operational in this manner, would be another significant milestone in the transition of the modern battlefield into one largely dominated by drone warfare. That is not to say that humans are close to being removed from the battlespace, but rather that unmanned vehicles and robots will play ever more significant roles. This quickly-arriving mode of “future” warfare is inexorably coming our way, and this program is just another sign of it. It truly is a revolution happening before our eyes.
Read more here.
