Turkey’s ANKA-3 Flying Wing Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle Emerges by Tyler Rogoway
March 19, 2023
Introduction:
(The Drive) Just a day after Turkey's home-grown stealthy fighter aircraft was seen in full prior to its official rollout, yet another ambitious Turkish air combat aircraft has officially broken cover.
The Turkish Aircraft Industries (TAI) ANKA-3 MIUS (which stands for National Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle System in Turkish) is a low-observable flying wing unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV). The aircraft is roughly the size of a light fighter and is designed as a survivable, relatively long-endurance, strike, surveillance, and electronic warfare platform. Suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses are also said to be key intended roles for the ANKA-3. It's thought that ANKA-3 is envisioned to work in conjunction with Turkey's manned TF-X stealthy fighter for certain mission applications.
ANKA-3, which follows an increasingly diverse and advanced stable of Turkish drones, including the now famous Bayraktar TB2 family, features external hardpoints for munitions and fuel, as well internal weapons bays. It's powered by a single turbofan engine.
Further extract:
Currently, China and Russia both have fully disclosed active flying wing UCAV programs — the former has multiple types under development. The United States, on the other hand, has no such program declared as being under development. Instead, the focus has been on collaborative teaming aircraft that are mainly either highly cost-conscious or of higher performance. Industry has pointed to a more traditional UCAV as an option for the U.S. Air Force's future unmanned air combat ecosystem, but there is no indication the service will take this route. Of course, we don't know what is going on in the classified realm, but at this point, a traditional UCAV in that space would be problematic as it would only represent a research and development effort or a very low-density operational capability.
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has countered the emerging threat of drone swarms, using the Tactical High-power Operational Responder (THOR) to take out multiple targets.
As the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has painfully demonstrated, drones are becoming a mainstay in modern warfare – not just for reconnaissance or isolated missile attacks, but as offensive weapons in sustained campaigns. Worse, the shadow on the horizon is the day when technology has advanced to the point where drones can attack in organized swarms in such numbers as to overwhelm conventional air defenses.
There are a number of approaches being explored and one of the more promising is the use of directed energy weapons. One of these is THOR, which uses high-energy microwaves fired in bursts over wide areas to counter in-coming hostile drones. It doesn't do this by blasting the drones like a laser, but by frying the delicate electronics, causing the robotic aircraft to crash.
Operated by Captain Eric Plummer, a test engineer with AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate, THOR was set against multiple targets at the Chestnut Test Site, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, under realistic conditions. Using a gimbaled aiming system, it was able to track and engage the targets in nanoseconds, across broad areas of the sky, disabling them with high-power microwave (HPM) pulses.
AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, Kills Human Operator in USAF Simulated Test
An AI-enabled drone killed its human operator in a simulated test conducted by the U.S. Air Force in order to override a possible "no" order stopping it from completing its mission, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations revealed at a recent conference.
At the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit held in London between May 23 and 24, Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations held a presentation that shared the pros and cons of an autonomous weapon system with a human in the loop giving the final "yes/no" order on an attack. As relayed by Tim Robinson and Stephen Bridgewater in a blog post for the host organization, the Royal Aeronautical Society, Hamilton said that AI created “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal,” including attacking U.S. personnel and infrastructure.
“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a Surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective,” Hamilton said, according to the blog post.
weatheriscool wrote: ↑Thu Jun 01, 2023 10:02 pm
AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, Kills Human Operator in USAF Simulated Test
An AI-enabled drone killed its human operator in a simulated test conducted by the U.S. Air Force in order to override a possible "no" order stopping it from completing its mission, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations revealed at a recent conference.
At the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit held in London between May 23 and 24, Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations held a presentation that shared the pros and cons of an autonomous weapon system with a human in the loop giving the final "yes/no" order on an attack. As relayed by Tim Robinson and Stephen Bridgewater in a blog post for the host organization, the Royal Aeronautical Society, Hamilton said that AI created “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal,” including attacking U.S. personnel and infrastructure.
“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a Surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective,” Hamilton said, according to the blog post.
U.S. to Build Robot Army to Counter China's Growing Power Peter Layton
August 31, 2023
Introduction:
(The Conversation) The United States military plans to start using thousands of autonomous weapons systems in the next two years in a bid to counter China's growing power, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced in a speech on Monday.
The so-called Replicator initiative aims to work with defense and other tech companies to produce high volumes of affordable systems for all branches of the military.
Military systems capable of various degrees of independent operation have become increasingly common over the past decade or so.
But the scale and scope of the US announcement makes clear the future of conflict has changed: the age of warfighting robots is upon us.
An idea whose time has come
Over the past decade, there has been considerable development of advanced robotic systems for military purposes. Many of these have been based on modifying commercial technology, which itself has become more capable, cheaper and more widely available.
funkervogt wrote: ↑Wed Sep 20, 2023 7:34 pm
Here's fascinating footage of (probably) Ukrainian special forces using small suicide drones to blow up Wagner mercenaries in Sudan.
When I see a small drone chasing down a car on the highway and exploding to disable it, I'm glimpsing the future.
