Feature army unmanned pages from web unmanned september 2017

GAINING GROUND Strategy lays out Army plan for moving forward with unmanned ground vehicles

by Rich Tuttle

In a demo scheduled for this fall, Palletized Load System vehicles such as will take part in a Leader-Follower exercise, which will inform the design of the program. Photo: Oshkosh Defense

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The United States is moving to a new generation of military unmanned ground vehicles, but it won’t be easy — the effort faces technical and doctrinal challenges along the way.

The current generation of about 7,000 UGVs of various types has proven its worth in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the robots have been used in more than 125,000 missions to identify objects, clear routes, and locate and defuse improvised explosive devices. More than 11,000 IEDs have been found and rendered ineffective by Army, Navy and Marine Corps teams, the Pentagon says.

But, it says, the rapid fielding and proliferation of UGVs that has made them so valuable has also resulted in configuration headaches — UGVs don't talk to each other, reliability and survivability could be better, sensing is deficient, the ability to deal with chemical, biological and other threats is lacking, and detection of explosives must be improved. And with so many types and models, maintenance problems come on top of all that.

Meanwhile, the military services are deciding how they will coordinate to fight future battles in multiple domains. The Army is betting that technology can be mined to come up with new UGVs and other systems to help defeat potential enemies like China or Russia. The Army's advantage in a coordinated fight, says Dave Johnson of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, is that it will be on the ground, using robotics to locate hostile systems and clear paths of attack for friendly air and naval forces. But the Army is realistic, saying integration of such systems into its own structure, or a three-way command, won't be easy.

To help reach the goal of integration, the Army has published the 26-page "Robotic and Autonomous Systems Strategy." The strategy, called RAS, sets what the service calls "realistic" priorities for the near-term (2017-2020); "feasible" priorities for the mid-term (2021-2030), and "visionary" priorities for the far-term (2031-2040). Between now and 2040, the RAS says, three projected technology advancements will help achieve these objectives: autonomy, artificial intelligence and common control. (For more on the Army’s plans, attend AUVSI Unmanned Systems Defense.

Protection. Security. in February.)

The United States is moving to a new generation of military unmanned ground vehicles, including fully unmanned and optionally unmanned systems, ones that use common controllers and modular designs — but there are still technical and doctrinal hurdles to overcome.

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The efforts of Bryan J. McVeigh, project manager for Force Projection at the Army Program Executive Office in charge of such work at Warren, Michigan, are aligned with the RAS plan.

First, he says, is the idea of common chassis; next is interoperability, which involves synergy with efforts of all the services, the Department of Defense, and industry through the National Advanced Mobility Consortium, or NAMC, which helps guide development of interoperability.

"Just imagine your computer," McVeigh says.

"You can basically use a USB port or a mouse on any computer and plug into it because computers know what the standards are. Imagine us now being able to do that for payloads."

This will mean no longer having to go to the half-dozen or so major robotics contractors to develop a niche capability, he says. More importantly, from the larger Army perspective, McVeigh says, is the fact that if the Navy, for instance, has brilliant success on one of its payloads, such as for the explosive ordnance demolition fleet of UGVs, "we can take that payload and integrate it into our platforms."

The Leader-Follower program could create convoys of the Palletized Load System vehicle, where one vehicle would control another. Photo: Oshkosh Defense

CRS(I) and MTRS For the near-term of 2017 to 2020, McVeigh wants the same chassis for two next-generation robots, the small Common Robotic System Individual, or CRS(I), a 25-pound man-packable robot that will check on what's immediately ahead of a squad, for instance; and the medium-size Man-Transportable Robotic System, or MTRS increment II, that will locate and clear land mines and IEDs in the path of maneuvering forces.

McVeigh's team is also moving out on an effort to lighten the soldier's load with the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport, or SMET, program. The idea is to take the 1,000 pounds or so of equipment that now has to be divvied up among squad members and put it on a robot.

"We're about to award up to 10 different contracts" for a demonstration of SMET concepts, McVeigh says. Four will go to two different brigades for a year of evaluations.

Meanwhile, requests for proposals are on the street for MTRS II and CRS(I). MTRS II awards are expected by late September, and CRS(I) contracts will come next year.

For the mid-term of 2021 to 2030, the focus is on autonomy, "moving into more of those systems that are currently in the S&T [science and technology] community."

The Leader-Follower program is typical. It allows the big Palletized Load System A1 vehicle to be operated in the unmanned mode. It will link an unmanned follower PLS to a soldier-operated leader PLS. TARDEC, the Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center at Warren, Michigan, will run a leader-follower demo this fall at Grayling, Michigan. It will lay the foundation for the Leader-Follower design.

"We're moving off a paper discussion into the real world," McVeigh says. Leader-Follower is "right on the cusp between near-term and mid-term objectives."

Technologies for things like Leader-Follower and the Route Clearance Interrogation System, or RCIS, which shields soldiers from the blast effects of IEDS, for instance, are here today, McVeigh says.

Lockheed Martin’s Squad Mission Support System vehicle, a version of which it plans to pitch for the pending Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport program. Photo: AUVSI

But, "we have to militarize them, we have to ruggedize them, we have to make sure we are looking at the cyber security ramifications of them." In fact, "the technology is actually starting to push our tactics, techniques and procedures," he says. "How do we plan on employing them?"

For the far-term of 2031 to 2040, the goal is steppingstone development of autonomous systems. Instead of a convoy, for instance, "you have an individual truck going out and dropping off and executing its supply mission," McVeigh says. Or an unmanned combat vehicle, which would be operated like an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Pfc. Gustavo Rosales serves as a demonstrator showing the strength of the Talon IV, the Man Transportable Robotic System, at Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center, Indiana. The MTRS II is on the horizon. Photo: U.S. Army/Maj. Penny Zamora

But there would always be a man in the loop, McVeigh says.

"I cannot envision, in my lifetime, that the Army" would go to fully autonomous combat systems, he says. "Even today, in the unmanned air systems, there's always a man in the loop deciding to engage or not to engage. I don't think we want that technology."

What if adversaries go that way? Would the U.S. have to? "That's beyond the scope of what I can talk to here," he says.

McVeigh oversees other efforts, including the Robotic Enhancement Program, or REP. It's intended to evaluate small quantities of state-of-the-art robotic systems and payloads to mitigate the problem of things becoming obsolete before they reach the field.

Another limited objective experiment involved explosive ordnance disposal, or EOD, systems. “Right now, the system we have is about twenty years old,” McVeigh said. “It’s used by us, it’s used by the Air Force, it’s used by the police departments of many of the larger cities. But it’s getting long in the tooth” and the EOD community wanted an upgrade. A technology far more advanced than anticipated was discovered and the user community was able to speed its requirements document process by several years.

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Instead of going with a “capability development document,” which says “this is what we want to do,” McVeigh said, the user community was able to use a “capability production document” that says “this is what we want.”

That eliminated a three- to four-year development cycle.

One evaluation compared different methods of communicating to unmanned vehicles in subterranean environments.

One method involved a hockey puck-like re-transmission device that was dropped at different turns in an underground test range. Another involved a marsupial-like robot that would release smaller re-trans robots as it moved along a tunnel.

With Leader-Follower, he says, TARDEC will show how to take what's commercially available and put it into military equipment.

"I think we've got the right approach with the senior leaders that understand we're not going to hit it out the park the first time at bat. We are going to need to do incremental improvements as the technologies mature. Part of this is putting the hooks in the early systems that allow me to upgrade these systems without, every time we have a new idea, scrapping it and starting from scratch."

"All of that helps to inform the requirement, so we have a really good example of what works and what doesn't work. ... If a technology fails, that's good information for us because it tells us it's not mature, you should go back into the S&T base before we put it into a requirements document. ...."

McVeigh says he's following industry's driverless car work, but notes that the military has some stiff requirements.

"I've got to take [that technology] to Afghanistan, to Eastern Europe, and on a resupply [mission], I'm not following the same route every time. So how do I do that?"

An artist’s rendition of the Common Robotic System – Individual, which is expected to have contracts awarded next year. Image: U.S. Army

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McVeigh says one priority is making sure senior leaders are informed about work across the robotic portfolio. A senior leader robotic forum meets every six months. At the meetings, "we walk through exactly where we are with the programs of record, where we are with the S&T community, and where are the challenges and opportunities." The two-stars in these meetings "are the ones that are engaging with the three-stars and higher."

The idea of moving to a new generation of military unmanned ground vehicles seems complex and McVeigh, who was one of the project managers on the doomed Future Combat Systems program, acknowledges the complexity of FCS, but also says it taught many lessons. For one thing, he says, the small and medium robots on the near-term "are a lot simpler than what they're made out to be." For another, industry has been a big help in actually laying out the interoperability profile — how different systems should work together.

A High Dexterous Manipulation System robot opens a zippered container as part of the the Limited Objective Experiment at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Photo: U.S. Army

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